Trayvon’s older brother, Jhavaris Fulton, 21, is a junior at Florida International University.

When he was a child, Trayvon saved his father’s life.

“That was my main man. That was my hero. He saved my life, actually pulled me out of a house fire. He was 9 years old at the time. A 9-year-old kid saved his dad’s life. And I wasn’t there to save his life,’’ Martin said in an MSNBC interview that aired Thursday. “As a dad, that makes me feel bad because I know my son was depending on me to be his savior. And I couldn’t save his life at that time.”

Trayvon spent his freshman year and much of his sophomore year at Carol City, where on Thursday, more than 1,000 students walked out to honor him and fight for justice in the case.

His first year there, Trayvon would spend mornings at the high school — a roomy campus of cream buildings in Miami Gardens — and then go to George T. Baker Aviation School for the rest of the school day. Inspired by his uncle, Ronald Fulton, who had a brief career in aviation, Trayvon saw his future in planes.

“He loved flying and working with his hands. Barrington Irving took him on his plane at the Opa-locka Airport. He got a chance to sit in the cockpit and that did it for him,’’ said Fulton, referring to the youngest person and first black person to pilot a plane around the world solo in 2007. “He wanted to be a pilot or work as a mechanic in aviation. He was mechanically inclined and could fix just about anything.’’

Math was his favorite subject, according to one of his Carol City teachers, Ashley Gantt .She taught his sophomore year English honors class where the curriculum included works such as T he Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Sometimes he’d come to the second period class looking exhausted. Gantt would call out his name.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Gantt. I’m not asleep. I’m listening,” he’d reply, she said.

He’d often wear a hoodie at school – just like the one he was wearing the day he was killed in Sanford.

“Once he came in wearing a UM hoodie. I’m a Florida Gator,” Gantt said. “I’m like, ‘You can’t come into my class with that.’”

Gantt said she never saw Trayvon behave aggressively or show disrespect.

“He was just a sweet kid, she said. “He got As and Bs. If he received a C on an assignment, it was because he was just being a kid that day. He was very smart.”

Students at Carol City, some who now wear Trayvon memorial buttons, have compared his death to that of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago, who went to visit family in Mississippi and never returned. Emmett Till was pulled from his bed, beaten to death and dumped in a river for allegedly whistling at a white woman, one of the nation’s most famous civil rights cases.

“The injustice [is the same] in both situations — Zimmerman is still free and the killers of Emmett Till, they went free eventually,” Gantt said.

For Gantt, Trayvon’s death has become a teachable moment, telling her students: “You have to know what your rights are. You can wear a hoodie and walk into a gated community … you have the right to do that and not be profiled.”

At Krop, a sprawling campus near the county line, home to some 2,700 students, a few of the students recalled the days they shared with Trayvon in middle school. He attended both Norland Middle and Highland Oaks Middle schools, both also in North Miami-Dade.