~* Cue Vitamin C's Graduation song*~
Flow chart for students to follow as they work on their Stand Up project in these last few weeks!
Shalayah's graduation party at my house was full of family, friends, and many kind words and reflections from the past to put in perspective what a monumental day that saturday was for her. She has overcome so much adversity to make it to this point... I am proud beyond words. 3 years with her really flew by like that *snaps*
For those of you who are not familiar with her and I's story, I submitted this to the admin building who are going to use it for a Adams 14 video featuring her and I:
I met Shalayah when she was a
sophomore at Adams City High school and I was working as an Americorps
Attendance Advocate. She was on my caseload as someone who needed assistance
with attendance to prevent . As an Americorps member, my job was to identify
the barriers that were coming between students and academic success. For
Shalayah, many factors were at play as to why she was not coming to school and
ditching her classes. She was not receiving support at home, she was without a
place to call home a lot of the time, and anxiety and depression kept her from
thriving socially at school.
After working with her one on
one through out the year, I realized that she was a student who was slipping
through the cracks and if someone didn’t help to motivate and express care for
her in school, then she could turn into a number, another statistic. Between
many different shelters and housing situations, shalayah eventually started to
come to all her classes but only after taking 4 different RTD buses from
downtown just to make it to class at 7:30 in the morning every weekday, her commute took 2 hours so she was waking up at 4am. She
brought her grades up and started to become more engaged in school and even
held a job. I started teaching at the school during her junior year, the class
was called YESS Mentoring. YESS stands for Youth Empowerment Support Services
where older students mentor younger students and learn about social-emotional
skills with a focus on social-justice. It was here where she found a mentor,
Kevin, who really aided her in coming out of her shell in social situations and
further helped her with school work. She got the opportunity this year to help,
not only a younger student, but her entire class. She applied to be the mentor
leader which is a paid position where she is expected to mentor and teach her
entire class about different social-emotional topics. She has flourished in
this role and really stepped up to the plate, finding purpose in her
responsibility and her ability to be a role model to her peers.
I am so excited for Shalayah’s
future because she is someone who is extremely committed to her own growth. She
has matured in so many ways, she has learned how to grow up fast and take care
of herself when no one was there to do it for her. She is independent, she is
strong, and she is capable. I am so happy and honored to have been there for
her transformation and to see her off into adulthood to further her education.
It is in our YESS class where she found her passion to help other people which
has helped her to realize that she wants to help people in her career one day
as an EMT. She is the epitome of what it means to be motivated and mature in
the face of hardship. Seeing her graduate will be bittersweet, sad because she
has been by my side everyday at lunch and at class, I take her home afterschool
as well, and to go from spending so much time to nothing will be hard but I
know she will be off to bigger and better things to better her future!
See photo of Shalayah and I in 2016 when we first started working together, both young and tattooless! :
2017
See current photo of Shalayah and I on graduation day below <3 :
This student's graduation will be the hardest goodbye of my career thus far. She is registered at Red Rocks Community college and is signed up to begin her EMT training in the fall. So excited to see where she goes, I know I will have this student in my life until I'm old and wrinkly.
The roses from the seniors who said their goodbyes at the changing of the seats ceremony. I miss them already but know they are off to change the world!
Until next week (OUR FINAL WEEK!!!!! WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE?!)
Ms. C
