Rudbel Y. Alfaro was telling other Wakefield High School sophomores about his relationship with his chemistry teacher. "I ask a lot of questions," he said. "My teacher does not necessarily like that, but you ask and you ask. . . . You can't give up."

Ten other students sat on folding chairs in a circle in the auditorium foyer of the Arlington County school. They had heard such stories before, because they were part of a unique effort to persuade adolescent black and Hispanic boys that they could, if they pushed hard enough, get their high school -- and eventually the world beyond their school -- to take them seriously.

The program, called "the Cohort," has shown rapid progress in a short time. There are 39 black or Hispanic junior and senior boys in 62 Advanced Placement classes at Wakefield this year, nearly triple the number when the program started in 2000, school officials say. "Life is like a game of chess -- you got to think two moves ahead. That is what we are always doing in the Cohort," said Michael Wanzer, who, like all 20 senior program members, is planning to attend college.

This all-male club devoted to academic achievement and personal growth is the work of three Wakefield staff members: Delores Bushong, 57, a resource teacher for the gifted; Alfred Reid, 44, a school counselor; and Alan Beitler, 50, a social worker. They hold weekly lunches, organize annual college trips and maintain close contact with the 88 students in the program.

"It makes a lot of sense," said Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "Kids want to belong. . . . You can come up with a positive structure of belonging" or risk ceding that turf to gangs and other negative influences.

In the national struggle to raise the level of academic achievement for minority students, one uncomfortable fact is often overlooked: A large majority of the black and Hispanic students who are taking the harder courses, getting better grades and going on to college are female. Wakefield High is 46 percent Hispanic, 27 percent black and at least 40 percent low income. It has done much better than most schools in getting minority and low-income students ready for college, based on AP participation rates, but the Cohort founders noticed four years ago that there were still very few minority boys in AP classes.

"We didn't have any role model to follow," Reid said. But research indicated, Bushong said, "the critical importance of establishing relationships with students, especially minority students."

Reid, Bushong and now-retired minority achievement coordinator Lillian Carter already were getting the school's ninth-graders ready for more challenging courses and making sure they took them. They decided, with the enthusiastic approval of then-Principal Marie Shiels-Djouadi, to respond to boys' complaints that they did not want to take harder courses because their friends weren't doing so. In fall 2000, they identified 20 ninth-grade boys whose middle school teachers thought they could handle a challenge and put them in the same advanced English and social studies courses.

The teachers of those classes were somewhat startled, Reid said. Members of the all-male Cohort -- a word the creators heard often in graduate school -- did not sit still at their desks and write all the main points down neatly in their notebooks. They moved and stretched and tapped their fingers and usually didn't say much, but in time began to show they were getting something out of the courses, their teachers reported.

To qualify for the Cohort, students can have no grade lower than a C for a quarter. The sponsors at first threatened to expel from the group those who slipped below that level, but the students objected. Reid remembered one saying, "We don't need this group when we're doing good. We need this group when we're not doing good." So the rule was discarded. The school also eventually expanded AP support for girls to avoid discrimination claims.

The stone-floored hallway where the Cohort for each grade level meets weekly is not very welcoming. There is an empty trophy case on the wall and doors to the auditorium and the outside on either side. But it is their space, and they listened carefully last Tuesday as Zagwe Yemanu, already taking AP European history, told what that was like. "When you take an AP course, it changes your life," he said. "I learned I needed to change my study habits."

The weekly discussions enhance Cohort members' speaking skills. Cohort sponsors also provide tips that students without college-educated parents rarely hear at home. Responding to a question from sophomore Joshua Swinton, Bushong suggested that since he had taken the regular psychology course at Wakefield, he should take the AP version. "It is a good idea," she said, "and because you had it before, it is easier."

Beitler takes the lead in organizing the college tours, finding ways to book low-cost overnight accommodations. Forty-six Wakefield students -- including some minority girls -- took the bus trip to four Virginia colleges last fall. Bushong is the expert on each student's academic standing, helping teachers appreciate the potential of their Cohort peers.

Reid graduated from Wakefield in 1978. At the time, he said, he was uninterested in his studies and saw a counselor only one time. He has become the catalyst at lunch meetings, often asking the uncomfortable questions that give the discussions depth. When an exchange about fatherhood led to several bitter statements from students who felt abandoned, Reid pointed out that if statistics held, many of them would be abandoning their kids, too.

A highlight this year, the teachers and students said, was the Cohort Parent-Son banquet, entitled "Passing the Torch." Seniors gave speeches on what the program had meant to them. Senior German Martinez said later, in an interview: "The friendships made in Cohort are not like any other friendships. I can almost guarantee that in a few years I will get a phone call from them to go to their promotion parties, or their weddings."

The teachers are blunt with students about the reason for having a Cohort. "We looked at the AP courses and saw there weren't enough minority males," Bushong said. Now that word has spread, she is getting volunteers. When one ninth-grade Cohort applicant thought Bushong wasn't certain of his ethnicity, he interjected: "I'm from Egypt, and in case you don't know, Egypt is in Africa."

He got in, because like all good Cohort members, he knew the importance of sticking up for himself. "At the first shot of a war," said Alfaro, still talking about his chemistry class, "you are not going to run backward and say, 'Retreat! Retreat!' You are going to stay and fight."