BROWNSVILLE, Texas — En una mañana fresca justamente antes del Día de los Enamorados, Viviana Longoria, de 16 años, se sumó al grupo de niñas que se bajaba del autobús en la Escuela Lincoln Park, llevando consigo un asiento de bebé.

Viviana, una joven serena y delgada, con un cabello que le llega a la cintura, pasó por delante de la oficina del director en el pasillo principal y dobló a la izquierda hacia el edificio en que están la biblioteca y la guardería infantil. Allí, Viviana entregó su hija, Bella Rose, una niña seria con ojos pardos de un año, a una maestra de guardería que la colocó sobre una alfombra junto a otros bebés.

Antes de marcharse, Viviana se volvió y saludó con la mano para despedirse de su hija. Bella Rose sonrió y aplaudió.

“Mi hija es lo mejor que me ha ocurrido a mí”, dijo Viviana más tarde. “Ella me motiva mucho”.

Aunque Viviana estaba oficialmente en segundo año en Lincoln Park un mes antes de que comenzara la pandemia, ella había ya completado suficientes tareas del curso para merecer un estatus de tercer año. Y a pesar de las interrupciones de la vida bajo la pandemia, tanto para estudiantes como para padres, se graduó esta primavera, un año antes de lo programado. Ella atribuye su capacidad para perseverar al apoyo comunitario que existe en su escuela pública poco usual, donde estudian alumnos de los grados sexto al 12, y que está orientada totalmente hacia alumnas embarazadas y madres adolescentes.

“Mi hija es lo mejor que me ha ocurrido a mí. Ella me motiva mucho”.

Viviana Longoria, de 16 años

“Permanecimos abiertos todo el tiempo”, dijo Dawn Hall, directora de Lincoln Park, quien ofreció a los estudiantes la opción de aprender en línea o en persona durante la mayor parte del pasado curso escolar. Las estudiantes que asisten a clase en persona tienen también la opción de utilizar la guardería.

El embarazo adolescente en Estados Unidos es mucho menos común que lo que era antes, pero la tasa — alrededor de 19 niñas de 1,000 entre las edades de 15 y 19 dan a luz — es todavía más alta que en otras naciones desarrolladas de occidente. Adolescentes latinas en Estados Unidos, de las cuales el 3 por ciento dan a luz cada año, son especialmente propensas a ser madres antes de cumplir 18 años. Los expertos atribuyen esto a una confluencia de factores, incluyendo la pobreza, la cultura, los traumas y la carencia de una cabal educación de salud sexual.

Los programas que ayudan a madres adolescentes a permanecer en la escuela pueden representar una diferencia significativa en el resultado de la educación y la vida tanto de las adolescentes como de sus bebés. Sólo el 53 por ciento de mujeres de veintitantos años que han tenido sus bebés durante su adolescencia se han graduado de secundaria, comparadas con el 90 por ciento de mujeres que no tuvieron sus hijos en ese período de tiempo, según Child Trends, una organización investigativa enfocada en personas jóvenes.

Los resultados de las mujeres hispanas — 100 por ciento de la población de Lincoln Park es latina — son peores. Sólo el 47 por ciento de las mujeres hispanas que tuvieron hijos en su adolescencia se graduaron de secundaria, comparadas con el 85 por ciento que no los tuvieron en su adolescencia. Y los embarazos son más comunes entre las adolescentes hispanas que entre adolescentes de cualquier otro grupo racial o étnico, excepto indias americanas y nativas de Alaska, según los Centros de Control de Enfermedades y Prevención.

Pero Lincoln Park es un tipo de escuela diferente, y ha estado ofreciendo a sus alumnas un camino diferente para construir un futuro. Con guarderías en la escuela y educadores que ofrecen planes de aprendizaje individualizados para cada alumna, la escuela provee una fuerte experiencia académica a la par que otras escuelas en el Distrito Escolar Independiente de Brownsville, un distrito con grado A situado en el extremo sur del estado, a sólo una milla de distancia de la ciudad mexicana de Matamoros. Lincoln Park es una escuela alternativa; a ninguna alumna se le obliga a asistir, pero las niñas embarazadas o madres solteras pueden optar por ser transferidas aquí.

“No enseñamos matemáticas de seis a ocho semanas y damos por sentado que la juventud [ha dominado] los conceptos de la matemática”.

Jennifer Driver, vice presidenta de políticas de SIECUS, organización que se enfoca en la educación de salud sexual.

La escuela ocupa edificios conectados en una calle tranquila con palmas y taquerías. Las aceras entre lo edificios están rodeadas de altas plantas de campana azul y mariposa típicas de Texas. Letreros que señalan hacia el laboratorio de computadoras, la guardería y los servicios de embarazo se alinean en los amplios pasillos de la escuela.

“Las niñas saben que no importa lo que pase nosotros las ayudaremos a avanzar”, dijo Hall, quien, a diferencia de las alumnas, es blanca y no habla español. Hall dijo que estaba particularmente orgullosa de la transición de la escuela de una calificación del estado de “necesita mejorar” a recibir una calificación de A en 2019. Medir la tasa de graduación de la escuela es complicado, dijo Hall, dado que los estudiantes no se gradúan de esta escuela alternativa; sus diplomas vienen de sus escuelas originales. (El distrito no proveyó tasas de graduación de escuela secundaria ni de nivel universitario de los alumnos de Lincoln Park.)

No todas las adolescentes embarazadas del distrito optan por estudiar en Lincoln Park, aunque muchas de las que tienen mayor necesidad lo hacen. “Recibimos a niñas con problemas”, dijo Hall.

Viviana no es una excepción. Su madre trabaja de cajera en un supermercado local y apenas gana suficiente para la familia; su padre está en la cárcel cumpliendo una larga condena. Antes de salir embarazada a los 14 años, Viviana contó que otras niñas la intimidaban y la hacían padecer de ansiedad y depresión.

Dijo que ella sabía de la existencia de anticonceptivos, pero decidió tener sexo sin usarlos. “Lo hice sabiendo que si ocurría, ocurría”, dijo sobre la posibilidad del embarazo.

Es difícil calcular exactamente el grado de comprensión médica sobre concepción y embarazo que se puede esperar que tenga una niña como Viviana, estudiante de una escuela pública en el estado de Texas.

La política estatal de educación de salud sexual varía mucho, lo cual hace difícil analizar los efectos de cualquier enfoque específico. Lo que sí resulta claro es que los estados con un nivel más alto de pobreza y con poblaciones de mayor riesgo y menos opciones de cuidados de salud reproductiva superan a los demás en la tasa de embarazos adolescentes. Cuando esos factores se combinan con la educación enfocada en la abstinencia, las tasas siguen siendo persistentemente altas.

Treinta y cinco estados, incluyendo a Texas, requieren que las clases de salud sexual, cuando se ofrezcan, se enfoquen en la abstinencia. De ésas, sólo un puñado requiere instrucciones sobre cómo utilizar o tener acceso a la anticoncepción, según datos agrupados por SIECUS, una organización que promueve políticas de una cabal educación de salud sexual. Es difícil trazar una línea directa entre las tasas de embarazo adolescente, las cuales han menguado nacionalmente, y lo que se les enseña a los niños en la escuela sobre la sexualidad, debido a que hay tantos otros factores, incluyendo la pobreza, la cultura y la disponibilidad de cuidados de salud. Aun así, los educadores aquí alegan que la información que los alumnos reciben es tan azarosa que no está claro lo que los alumnos saben (o no saben).

“Las niñas saben que no importa lo que pase nosotros las ayudaremos a avanzar”.

Dawn Hall, directora de Lincoln Park, una escuela alternativa para adolescentes embarazadas y madres solteras.

La ley actual en Texas no requiere que se enseñe la salud sexual en las escuelas públicas y estipula que, cuando se enseñe, las escuelas deben “enfatizar que la abstinencia de actividades sexuales, si se usa de manera consistente y correcta, es el único método 100 por ciento efectivo para evitar el embarazo”. Los elementos específicos de la instrucción se dejan al criterio de las juntas escolares individuales, que hacen su recomendación basada en el consejo de los comités asesores locales sobre salud. La enseñanza sobre anticoncepción es opcional.

Últimamente, la prensa ha captado debates para cambiar las normas de salud en cuanto a lo que los maestros deben o no deben enseñar acerca de la sexualidad y la identidad de género en lugar de lo que deben o no deben enseñar acerca de la concepción. El reciente debate en Texas, que duró un año y terminó en el otoño de 2020, se enfocó mayormente en la identidad de género, la orientación sexual y el consentimiento, tres conceptos que los legisladores votaron a favor de excluir de las nuevas normas. A partir de 2022, se supone que las alumnas de escuela intermedia reciban enseñanza sobre métodos anticonceptivos, pero los cursos sobre salud continuarán siendo una opción en la escuela secundaria.

Con muchos estados, incluyendo a Texas, inclinándose hacia restringir más aún el acceso a un cuidado gratis de salud reproductiva, los activistas que lo favorecen dicen que es importante lo que se enseña en las escuelas sobre sexo y embarazo.

Casi el 53 por ciento de estudiantes de escuelas públicas en Texas son hispanos, y el 76 por ciento de esos alumnos se crían en la pobreza. Ambos grupos tienden a tener altas tasas de embarazo adolescente. La tasa de embarazos adolescentes de todos los grupos demográficos en Texas es la séptima más alta del país: 28 nacimientos de 1,000, o el 2.8 por ciento entre las edades de 15 a 19, un 1 por ciento más alto que el promedio nacional.

“Se diría que Texas está yendo hacia atrás”, dijo Jennifer Driver, vicepresidenta de políticas en SIECUS.

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Independientemente de ideologías, Driver dijo que aun cuando la educación sexual se enseñe aquí o en cualquier lugar del país, a menudo es insuficiente. “No enseñamos matemáticas de seis a ocho semanas y damos por sentado que la juventud [ha dominado] los conceptos de matemática”, dijo Driver.

GeorgeAna Wilson, que ha sido maestra en Brownsville durante 27 años y ahora enseña ciencias en Lincoln Park, dijo que lo que les enseñan a los estudiantes de Brownsville sobre salud sexual depende totalmente de la manera en que sus maestros de ciencias decidan enseñar el tema, en caso de que opten por hacerlo.

El enfoque más reciente de ciencia de salud en Lincoln Park ha sido en las vacunas contra el Covid-19, que ya todos los maestros han recibido y a las alumnas se les ha incentivado a que las reciban también, según la directora Hall. Cada vez que una estudiante o un familiar de una alumna se ha enfermado, el personal de la escuela les ha alentado a que reciban tratamiento. Ella dijo que el personal ha hecho lo que ha podido para mantenerse en contacto con las alumnas, la mayoría de las cuales optaron por recibir sus clases desde sus casas durante el año escolar.

“Les suministramos laptops y tabletas, así como puntos de acceso a wi-fi a todas las alumnas que lo necesitaban”, dijo Hall. “Mantuvimos además ayuda técnica disponible para ellas y llamamos a cada alumna todos los días cuando no se conectaban”.

A pesar de que las condiciones de la pandemia representaron un desafío para los educadores de Lincoln Park, el personal estaba ya práctico en adaptarse rápidamente a las necesidades de sus alumnas.

“Hay tanto drama en las escuelas regulares”, dijo Viviana en febrero de 2020. “Y siempre hay chicos malos que se portan mal, y siempre hay riñas y drogas y todas esas cosas malas. Pero los maestros aquí saben cuándo una de sus alumnas falta … Y si está cansada, le dicen, ‘Recuesta la cabeza y descansa quince minutos’”.

Todos en la Escuela Lincoln Park se refieren a las alumnas como “las niñas”. Antes de dar a luz, las niñas no tienen idea del cambio que va a haber en sus vidas, dijo Dawn Hall, directora de la escuela. (“Las niñas piensan que ellas saben, pero no saben”, dijo.) Las niñas van a la oficina de Hall a llorar cuando sus novios encuentran otras novias. Siempre preguntan si los chicos van a regresar, dijo Hall. (“No, mi amor”, ella les dice. “Ellos siguen su camino”.)

28 nacimientos de 1,000, o el 2.8 por ciento entre las edades de 15 a 19.

Tasa de nacimiento entre adolescentes en Texas.

Y a muchas de las niñas, dijo Hall, los padres las echan de la casa, diciéndoles que lo que han hecho es un pecado. Y entonces muchas de ellas se van a vivir en las casas de sus novios, donde los líderes de la escuela dicen que las madres de los chicos las tratan como criadas. Cuando llega la Navidad, las niñas hacen listas que les rompen el corazón a sus maestras: toallitas húmedas para bebés, pañales, chupetes. No piden nada para ellas.

Cuando Viviana concibió en 2018, consideró brevemente hacerse un aborto. Muchas niñas en Brownsville optan por hacerse un aborto en Matamoros, donde el procedimiento es más barato y existe más acceso que en Estados Unidos, según estudiantes y educadores aquí. Un farmacéutico de Matamoros llamado Pablo, que no quiso dar su nombre completo debido a que el aborto es ilegal en el norte de México, dijo que muchas adolescentes de Texas vienen a su farmacia a comprar combinaciones de medicamentos para terminar embarazos.

“Las niñas vienen aquí y pretendemos que no sabemos lo que están haciendo”, dijo Pablo. Los medicamentos necesarios cuestan 185 pesos mexicanos (equivalentes a $8.45) en su farmacia.

Finalmente, Viviana decidió no hacerse el aborto. “Dios me dio este bebé para que yo pudiera poner mi vida en orden. Antes de tener a mi hijita, mi vida era un desastre”, dijo.

Hall dijo que todos los adultos de la escuela — incluyendo choferes de autobuses, empleado de la cafetería y conserjes — conocen a cada una de las 140 alumnas y a cada bebé por sus nombres y hacen lo que haya que hacer para que cada alumna asista a la escuela. Los autobuses escolares recogen a las alumnas y a sus bebés en sus casas siguiendo horarios individualizados. Y la escuela tiene una tienda donde las alumnas compran pañales, mamelucos, pomos y coches pagado con tokens que ganan mediante la participación en clase y una asistencia sólida.

Acaso lo más importante durante la pandemia, las alumnas utilizan un currículum auto-programado que encuentran en el internet bajo el nombre Edgenuity, el cual las ayuda a acumular créditos para graduarse a su propio paso. Y aunque los educadores de la escuela se preocupan de que las alumnas no profundicen en la materia como lo harían si tuvieran una maestra cerca, estar preparados para que las alumnas puedan estudiar en línea es una ventaja que la mayoría de las escuelas no tienen.

Algo que la escuela no ofrece es un curso de una cabal educación sexual, a pesar de que Lincoln Park tiene una enfermera a tiempo completo especializada en obstetricia. Las maestras dicen que las alumnas aprenden la biología del embarazo con sus médicos y por experiencia propia. Aun así, las alumnas a menudo se consultan mutuamente sobre qué tipo de dolor o sangramiento es normal y cuál requiere atención médica. Depender unas de otras sobre este tipo de consejo ayuda a las niñas a sentirse parte de una comunidad, dijo Wilson, la maestra de ciencia.

“Escuchar a un adulto es una cosa, pero oírlo de sus iguales lo convierte en algo muy real para ellas”, dijo.

Wilson, que dice que trata de enseñar lo más que puede sobre salud sexual en sus clases de ciencias, dice que ha oído a alumnas perpetuando mitos sobre sexo, como ponerse de pie después del acto sexual para evitar el embarazo. (No es cierto.)

La escuela no debe considerarse imposible de poder manejarse por mujeres jóvenes con hijos, dijo Alma Cárdenas-Rubio, la asistenta de superintendente del distrito para innovación, estrategia y tecnología educacional. Dijo además que el enfoque requerido para tener éxito académico provee un “receso mental” a alumnas cuyas vidas fuera de la escuela han sido problemáticas y caóticas.

53 por ciento

porcentaje de madres adolescentes que han recibido un diploma tradicional antes de cumplir 20.  La tasa de mujeres que no han dado a luz en su adolescencia es 90 por ciento.

Graduada de escuelas públicas de Brownsville, Cárdenas-Rubio conoce bien las vidas de madres jóvenes. Ella quedó embarazada a los 19 años y tenía temor de que las decisiones que había tomado en su vida la habían reducido a nada.

“Se lo que es pensar si una va a tener suficiente dinero para gasolina, o si va a tener problemas en la casa”, dijo. Pero su padre le dijo algo que le había cambiado la perspectiva entonces y ahora: “Tú no estás paralítica, tú estás embarazada”.

El padre de Cárdenas-Rubio era un abogado. La mayoría de las alumnas aquí no tienen padres con un empleo tan estable. Todas las alumnas de Lincoln Park tienen derecho a almuerzo gratis o a precio reducido. Muchos de sus padres son indocumentados y no pueden encontrar trabajo en Estados Unidos, según los maestros aquí. Y entre los que sí trabajan, la mayoría hace trabajo físico o trabaja en la industria de comidas rápidas. La pandemia golpeó especialmente fuerte a las personas de bajo ingreso.

Una escuela no puede cambiar todos estos temas, ni Lincoln Park lo hace todo perfecto. La escuela no ofrece clases de maternidad, por ejemplo, lo cual ha demostrado que, cuando se hace bien, ayuda a las nuevas mamás y a sus hijos. Y la depresión y la ansiedad, que según Hall muchas alumnas padecieron antes del embarazo, no se eliminan teniendo un hijo.

En última instancia, sin embargo, es posible que el mayor impedimento para evitar el embarazo sea la falta de estabilidad y apoyo emocional en las vidas de las alumnas. (“Las niñas quieren tener un bebé porque quieren sentirse amadas”, dijo Hall.) Y estabilidad y apoyo emocional son dos cosas que Lincoln Park provee.

Con el respaldo de sus maestras, sus iguales y su propio éxito académico aquí, Viviana dice que su deseo de proveer para su hija la ha impulsado a formular un plan concreto para su vida como adulta. En estos momentos ella trabaja a tiempo parcial en Raising Cane, un restaurante de comida rápida, y está matriculada para obtener un grado de asociada para certificarse como Técnica en Cuidados a Pacientes. Después de eso, tiene planes de asistir a un colegio universitario y después continuar en una universidad de cuatro años para obtener el título necesario para ser enfermera certificada. Los obstáculos entre el presente y ese futuro son innumerables, pero Viviana dijo que está motivada por el deseo de hacer lo que sea mejor para Bella Rose.

“Ahora que la tengo a ella, yo dejo de ser importante”, dijo. “Mi hija ocupa el primer lugar en mi vida”.

Traducido por Carlos Verdecia. Este artículo sobre madres adolescentes lo produjo The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Inscríbase al boletín informativo de Hechinger.

The post Cuidado infantil, asientos para bebés y otras maneras simples de mantener a madres adolescentes en la escuela appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — On a chilly morning just before Valentine’s Day 2020, Viviana Longoria, 16, joined the stream of girls getting off the bus at Lincoln Park School, infant bucket seats in tow.

A slim, poised young woman with waist-length hair, Viviana walked past the principal’s office, along the main hallway, and made a left into the building that houses the school library and the daycare. There, Viviana handed her daughter, Bella Rose, a serious one-year-old with big brown eyes, to a child care teacher, who placed her on a rug with other babies.

Before leaving, Viviana turned to wave at her daughter. Bella Rose smiled and clapped her hands.

“My daughter’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Viviana said later. “She motivates me a lot.”

Though Viviana was a sophomore at Lincoln Park the month before the pandemic began, she had already completed enough coursework to merit junior standing. And even with all the disruptions of pandemic life for both students and parents, she graduated this spring, a year ahead of schedule. She attributes her ability to persevere to the supportive community at her unusual public school, which serves students in grades six to 12 and is geared entirely towards pregnant and parenting teenagers.

“We stayed open the entire time,” said Dawn Hall, the principal at Lincoln Park, which offered its students the option to learn online or in-person for most of the past school year. For students who come in person, child care is also available.

Teenage pregnancy in the United States is far less common than it used to be, but the rate — about 19 out of 1,000 girls between 15 and 19 give birth — is still higher than in other Western developed nations. Latina teens in the U.S., about 3 percent of whom give birth every year, are especially likely to become mothers before turning 18. Experts point to a confluence of factors for this, including poverty, culture, trauma and a lack of comprehensive sexual health education.

“My daughter’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. She motivates me a lot.”

Viviana Longoria, 16

Programs that help teenage mothers stay in school can make a big difference to the education and life outcomes for both the adolescents and their babies. Only 53 percent of women in their 20s who gave birth in their teens hold a traditional high school diploma, compared to 90 percent of women who didn’t, according to Child Trends, a research organization focused on young people.

The results for Hispanic women — 100 percent of Lincoln Park’s population is Latina — are worse. Only 47 percent of Hispanic women who had children in their teens earn a traditional high school diploma, compared to 85 percent who did not become mothers as teenagers. And pregnancy is more common among Hispanic teens than among teens in any other racial or ethnic group, except American Indian and Alaska Native teens, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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But Lincoln Park is a different kind of school, and it offers its students a different path to build a future. With onsite child care and educators who offer individualized learning plans for each girl, the school provides a strong academic experience on par with other schools in the Brownsville Independent School District, an A-rated Texas district that sits at the state’s southern tip, just a mile from the Mexican city of Matamoros. Lincoln Park is an alternative school; no student is forced to attend, but pregnant or parenting girls can choose to transfer here.

The school is housed in connected low-slung buildings on a quiet street dotted with palm trees and taquerías. Sidewalks between the buildings are lined by tall groves of Texas bluebell and butterfly weed. Signs for the computer lab, daycare, and pregnancy services line the school’s wide hallways.

“The girls know that no matter what, we’ll get them through,” said Hall, who, unlike her students, is white and does not speak Spanish. Hall said she’s particularly proud of the school’s transition from receiving a rating of “needs improvement” from the state to receiving an A in 2019. Tracking the school’s graduation rate is complicated, Hall said, since students don’t graduate from this alternative school; their diplomas come from their original campuses. (The district did not provide high school graduation or college-going rates for Lincoln Park students.)

Not every pregnant teen in the district chooses Lincoln Park, but many of those with the greatest outside needs do. “We get the girls who have problems,” said Hall.

Viviana is no exception. Her mother works as a cashier at a local supermarket and struggles to earn enough for the family; her father is serving a long jail sentence. Before she got pregnant at 14, Viviana said that she was bullied and suffered from crippling anxiety and depression.

She said she knew about contraception but decided to have sex without it. “I went into it, like, knowing that if it happened, it happened,” she said of the prospect of pregnancy.

Exactly how much medical understanding of conception and pregnancy a girl like Viviana attending public school in a state like Texas could be expected to have is difficult.

State policy on sexual health education varies greatly, making it difficult to analyze the effects of any one approach. What is clear is that higher-poverty states with larger at-risk populations and fewer reproductive health care options lead the pack in terms of teen pregnancy rates. When those factors are combined with abstinence-focused education, as they are in Texas, rates remain persistently high.

Thirty-five states, including Texas, require that sexual health classes, when offered, focus on abstinence. Of those, only a handful require instruction on how to use or access contraception, according to data gathered by SIECUS, an organization that promotes comprehensive sexual health education policies. It is difficult to draw a direct line between teen pregnancy rates, which continue to decline nationally, and what children are taught in school about sexuality, because there are so many other factors involved, including poverty, culture and healthcare availability. Still, educators here said the information students get is so haphazard that it’s unclear what students know (and don’t know).

Current Texas law does not require sexual health education to be taught in public schools and stipulates that when it is taught, schools must “emphasize that abstinence from sexual activity, if used consistently and correctly, is the only method that is 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.” The specifics of instruction are left to individual school boards, who make their recommendations based on the advice of local school health advisory councils. Teaching about contraception is optional.

Lately, debates about changing health standards have made the news in regards to what teachers should and should not teach about sexuality and gender identity rather than what they should and should not teach about conception. The recent debate in Texas, which lasted a year and concluded in the fall of 2020 was mostly focused on gender identity, sexual orientation and consent, three concepts legislators voted to leave out of the new standards. Starting in 2022, middle school students are supposed to be taught about birth control, but health courses will remain optional in high school.

With many states, including Texas, moving to further restrict access to free reproductive health care, advocates say what is taught in schools about sex and pregnancy matters.

Almost 53 percent of public school students in Texas are Hispanic, and 76 percent of these students grow up in poverty — both groups tend to have higher teen pregnancy rates. The teen pregnancy rate for all demographics in Texas is the seventh highest in the nation, at 28 births per 1,000, or 2.8 percent, among 15- to 19-year-olds — a full percentage point higher than the national average.

“Texas is kind of going backwards,” said Jennifer Driver, vice president of policy at SIECUS.

Regardless of ideology, Driver said that even when sex education is taught here, or anywhere in the country, it’s often insufficient. “We don’t teach math for six to eight weeks and assume that young people have [mastered] math concepts,” Driver said.

GeorgeAna Wilson, who has taught in Brownsville for 27 years and now serves as Lincoln Park’s science teacher, said what Brownsville students are taught about sexual health education is completely dependent on how their science teachers choose to teach the subject, if they choose to do so at all.

The more recent health science focus at Lincoln Park has been on Covid-19 vaccines, which all teachers now have and which students are encouraged to get, according to Principal Hall. Any time a student or student’s family member got sick this year, school staff reached out and encouraged them to get treatment. She said staff did everything they could to stay in touch with their students, most of whom opted to learn from home, during the school year.

“We provided laptops and tablets as well as ‘hot spots’ to all our girls who needed them,” Hall said. “We made technical assistance available to them and we called each girl each day when they did not sign in.”

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Though pandemic conditions challenged educators at Lincoln Park, the staff were already practiced at adapting quickly to their students’ needs.

“At a regular school, there’s so much drama,” Viviana said back in February 2020. “And there are always bad kids that misbehave, and there’s always fighting and there’s drugs and all those bad things. But teachers here, they know when one of their kids is missing … And if you’re tired, they’ll say, like, ‘Oh, put your head down for fifteen minutes.’”

Everyone at Lincoln Park School calls the students “the girls.” Before the babies are born, the girls don’t understand how much their lives are about to change, said Dawn Hall, the school’s principal. (“The girls think they do, but they don’t,” she said.) The girls come into Hall’s office crying when their boyfriends find different girlfriends. The girls always ask if the boys will come back, Hall said. (“No, sweetie,” she tells them. “They’ve moved on.”)

And, Hall said, many of the girls are kicked out by their parents, who say what they’ve done is “pecado,” the Spanish word for sin. And then many girls go to live at their boyfriends’ homes, where school leaders here say the boys’ mothers often treat the girls like maids. Come Christmas, the girls make wish lists that break their teachers’ hearts: wipes, diapers, pacifiers. They don’t ask for anything for themselves.

When Viviana became pregnant in 2018, she briefly considered getting an abortion. Many girls in Brownsville choose to get abortions in Matamoros, where the procedure is cheaper and easier to access than in the United States, according to students and educators here. A Matamoros pharmacist named Pablo, who did not want to give his full name since abortion is illegal in northern Mexico, said many Texan teens come to his pharmacy to purchase combinations of medications known to terminate pregnancies.

“The girls come here and we need to pretend that we don’t know what they’re doing,” Pablo said. The medications needed cost 185 Mexican pesos (equivalent to $8.45) in his store.

Ultimately, Viviana decided against getting an abortion. “God gave me this baby so I can get my life in order. Before I had her, my life was all over the place,” she said.

Hall said all of the school’s adults — including the bus drivers, cafeteria servers, and janitors — know every one of the 140 students and every baby by name and do whatever is necessary to ensure that every student attends school. School buses pick up students and infants at their homes on individualized schedules. The school runs a store in which students pay for items such as diapers, onesies, bottles, and strollers with tokens they earn through class participation and consistent attendance.

Perhaps most importantly during the pandemic, students use an online, self-paced academic curriculum called Edgenuity, which helps them earn credits towards graduation at their own pace. And though educators at the school worry students did not get as deeply into the subject matter as they would have with a teacher near them, being already set up for students to learn online was an advantage most schools did not have.

Related: Home visiting is proven to help moms and babies — so why aren’t we investing in it more?

One thing the school does not offer is a comprehensive sexual education course, although Lincoln Park does have a full-time nurse trained in obstetrics. Teachers said students learn about the biology of pregnancy and birth from their doctors and from personal experience. Still, students often turn to on each other for advice on what kind of pain or bleeding are normal and which require medical attention. Depending on each other for such advice helps the girls feel like part of a community, said Wilson, the science teacher.

“To hear it from an adult is one thing, but to hear it from their peers makes it real to them,” she said.

Wilson, who said she tries to teach as much as she can about sexual health in her classes, said she has heard students perpetuate myths about sex, like that standing up after sex prevents pregnancy. (It does not.)

School should not be considered impossible for young women with children to manage, said Alma Cardenas-Rubio, the district’s assistant superintendent for innovation, strategy, and educational technology. She thinks the focus required to succeed academically actually provides a “mental break” for students with troubled or chaotic lives outside of school.

A graduate of Brownsville public schools, Cardenas-Rubio knows something about the lives these young mothers lead. She became pregnant at 19 and feared that her life choices had narrowed to nearly nothing.

“I know what it’s like to wonder if you’re going to have enough money for gas, to wonder if you’re going to have problems at home,” she said. But her father told her something that she said changed her outlook then and now: “You’re not paralyzed, you’re pregnant.”

Cardenas-Rubio’s father was a lawyer. Most of the students here do not have parents with such stable employment. All of the students at Lincoln Park qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Many of their parents are undocumented and are unable to find work in the U.S., according to teachers here. And among those who do work, most do manual labor or work in the fast food industry. The pandemic hit frontline, low-income workers especially hard.

One school cannot change all these issues, nor is Lincoln Park getting everything right. The school does not offer parenting classes, for example, which, when done well, have been shown to help new moms and their children. And depression and anxiety, which Hall said many students suffered before pregnancy, are not eliminated by having a child.

Ultimately, however, the greatest impediment to pregnancy prevention may be the paucity of stability and emotional support in students’ lives. (“The girls want to have a baby because they want to be loved,” said Hall.) And stability and emotional support are two things Lincoln Park does appear to provide.

Bolstered by her teachers, her peers and her own academic success here, Viviana said her desire to provide for her daughter has driven her to make a concrete plan for her adult life. Right now she is working part-time at Raising Cane’s, a fast food restaurant, and is enrolled in a two-year associate’s degree to earn certification as a Patient Care Technician. After that, she plans to earn the bachelor’s degree necessary to become a registered nurse. The hurdles between today and that future are myriad, but Viviana said she’s motivated by a desire to do right by Bella Rose.

“Now that I have her, it’s not about me anymore,” she said. “My daughter comes first.”

This story about programs that help teenage mothers stay in school was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Before I became a journalist, my life was structured according to school bells: I woke up at 6 a.m., drove to school, and spent my days in my second grade classroom, attending to the needs of 7- and 8-year-olds.

After becoming a freelance journalist, my daily life looked much different: I woke up when I wanted, except when I was traveling on assignment. I talked to dozens of people per day, or to no one at all. I stopped thinking about methods for keeping track of pencils and haven’t thought about spelling rules in years.

Until the coronavirus happened.

55.1 million — number of public and private school students stuck at home during the pandemic

Now, I find myself dusting off old strategies and using out-of-shape teaching muscles. And while the in-person nature of my situation may be unique — I’m quarantining with the family who lives upstairs, spending time with the children while their parents work — I’ve discovered that I’m part of a group of former teachers returning to education during the pandemic to help educate the 55.1 million public and private school students stuck at home.

Motivated by a desire to contribute, former educators around the country are returning to the classroom, virtually. Many are volunteers who are eager to help bored kids and overwhelmed parents, while others are using teaching to pay the bills while their professional lives are uncertain.

Related: Teachers need lots of training to do online learning well. Coronavirus gave many just days.

Melody Serra is a 33-year-old former kindergarten teacher living in San Francisco. After making a career switch, she now teaches software engineering to low-income college students, some of whom have children.

When schools began to close in the Bay Area, Serra said several of the parents in her classes were anxious about how they would get their work done with children at home. “I realized that this was something that everyone was worried about,” she said.

“Some parents are asking us just to read to their children because they don’t have time to do that anymore.”

Melissa Robinson, third-year medical student

Serra decided to put together a virtual class for her students’ children and opened them to any child who might want to join. Now, she offers a free hour-long class over Zoom, a video conferencing program, three times a week.

Every class covers a broad theme, such as outer space, octopuses, or Antarctica. Her students range in age from 4 to 10, and while most are located in the Bay Area, she said she’s had children drop in from as far away as the United Kingdom.

On the other side of the country, the coronavirus has put medical student Melissa Robinson, 24, on hold, waiting to finish her third year at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell on Long Island. Finding herself with more time on her hands since clinical rotations have been suspended, Robinson organized a group of her classmates into a tutoring corps that provides online help to students in four high-poverty neighborhoods near campus.

“Some parents are asking us just to read to their children because they don’t have time to do that anymore,” she said.

And while Serra and the Hofstra medical students provide instruction for free, some educators are taking paid virtual teaching jobs with existing online education outlets.

Andrew Geant, the co-founder and CEO of Wyzant, a website that connects tutors to students, said his company has seen tutoring applications increase by 75 percent since stay-at-home orders began to take effect in March. The new applicants represent a 40 percent increase in applications from licensed teachers.

“[Licensed teachers] know the standards, they know the techniques, and they know where kids will need to be when school does reopen.”

Brian Galvin, Chief Academic Officer of Varsity Tutors

Brian Galvin is the Chief Academic Officer of Varsity Tutors, a company whose focus, pre-coronavirus, was helping students prepare for standardized tests. In recent weeks, the company has focused on developing a program called Virtual School Day, which offers 100 live classes and guarantees at least 30 hours of video instruction for every grade level, every week. From his home in Ventura, California, Galvin told me that many of the people the company has hired to create this curriculum are former teachers or teachers at independent schools that have not shifted to online instruction.

Galvin says he’s been impressed by their expertise.

“They know the standards, they know the techniques, and they know where kids will need to be when school does reopen,” he said.

Related: Coronavirus is making it easier to become a teacher in a state with severe shortage of educators

At least here in New York City, no one knows quite when that will be — and the kids I’m spending my days with aren’t holding their breath. The third grader in my charge said that though she wishes she were back with her friends, she’s become accustomed to staying at home.

“It feels normal but abnormal. Like, now it feels normal but it isn’t normal.”

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MANCHESTER, Ky.— Inside Rosie Bus, a colorful minibus that crisscrosses the countryside here in eastern Kentucky, Paisley Barrett, 4, surveyed a tray filled with clear round containers. She quickly selected one toward the back, which had a cartoonish drawing of a pair of socks taped to its lid, and started going through each of the small plastic items inside.

“This here’s a fox,” she declared, brushing her finger over its curled tail. Tennant Kirk, the early childhood project director at Berea College’s Partners for Education, nodded encouragingly.

Paisley went through a few more items — blocks, locks, rocks, a box — then she came to an item that gave her pause. “I ain’t got no idea,” she said.

Kirk turned to Paisley’s mother, Ashley Barrett. “I think a lot of children these days have never seen one of these old grandfather clocks,” she said, before turning her attention back to Paisley, explaining that “clocks”—like “locks,” “rocks” and “fox”—rhymes with “socks.” Rhyming is an important pre-reading skill, and Rosie’s educators take care that children learn the concept.

Paisley nodded, then reached for the next container. “I just love her enthusiasm,” Kirk told Barrett. “She is so ready for kindergarten.”

If it weren’t for the Rosie Bus (and Rosie’s counterpart, the Sunny Bus), many children like Paisley wouldn’t have the opportunity to receive any formal preparation for kindergarten. In small towns like Manchester, nestled in the lush, rolling foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, families are faced with a paucity of preschool options. Some families who meet the income requirements qualify for Head Start, a federally-funded preschool program for children living in poverty, but letting children attend means sending them on a long bus ride that could last over an hour, something many parents are unwilling to do. Although some children qualify for local public preschool options, figuring out the requirements to get in is often difficult for parents to navigate, Kirk said.

However, the most significant obstacle to kindergarten-readiness here, she said, may be the common belief that young children don’t belong in any formal program. Kirk said she is often asked, “Why should a 4-year-old go to school?”

So, Kirk explained, when she and Dreama Gentry, Partners for Education’s Executive Director, developed the idea for the buses, they realized they had to confront not only the logistical challenges of reaching young children living in poverty and isolation, but also families’ suspicion of pre-kindergarten programs in general.

For families like the Barretts, the benefits of the program have been huge. Barrett said that after Paisley participated in nearly two years of Rosie Bus lessons, she decided to enroll her in a local public preschool program this fall.

“When she got to preschool, they said that she was so advanced,” Barrett said. “And I bring that back to the Rosie bus. That’s what I owe it to. I could never have brought her to where she’s at by myself.”

Related: Hope in coal country: Parents without diplomas keep their kids in school

After reading about a similar program in Colorado, Kirk and Gentry developed the Readiness Bus program in 2016. Their department at Berea College — located 60 miles away from Manchester, in Berea, Kentucky — applied for a grant from the Kellogg Foundation, and, after the department acquired the two buses, the program got off the ground several months later. (Note: The Kellogg Foundation is one of The Hechinger Report’s many funders.) From the outset, the two women knew that Partners in Education would run the program for two years, after which they would hand it over to local organizations, who would control staffing and assume operating costs.

From the beginning, each bus has had two adults onboard: an early childhood specialist who works with the children on fundamental academic and social skills, and a “family navigator,” who works with their caregivers. (Both adults take turns driving the bus, which is small enough that it does not require a special driver’s license.) Family navigators build relationships with caregivers, and help them identify goals — such as improving their family’s nutrition, getting out of debt, repairing their homes, or earning a GED — and the concrete steps needed to reach them. Additionally, the bus’s operators host evening events once a month, during which parents meet with community members who provide services such as financial planning or nutritional advice. These events also provide ways for caregivers to meet each other and share their struggles and childrearing strategies.

“If we’re going to make a significant impact on children’s learning and developing brains, we have to serve the whole family,” said Gentry, who credits work with parents and other caregivers as fundamental to the program’s success.

In the past two years, overseen by Berea College, the Sunny and Rosie buses have served nearly 100 preschoolers, ages 3 and 4, and their families. The buses will soon be operated by two local organizations: Rosie will be run and staffed by Red Bird Mission, a Christian social services organization in the town of Beverly, and Sunny will go to Save the Children, in neighboring Perry County. Though the organizations will adapt the curriculum slightly — Red Bird Mission, for instance, will add a Bible story to the literacy activities — the approach will remain largely unchanged. The Family Readiness Bus “complements what we are already doing,” said Kari Collins, Red Bird’s executive director.

Children and families in both of these areas face profound challenges. Appalachian Kentucky suffers from what the U.S. government terms “persistent poverty,” meaning that it has had poverty rates at or exceeding 20 percent for over 30 years.

The effects of this play out in a number of ways. A generation ago, the biggest employers in eastern Kentucky were coal companies, which received significant incentives, including tax breaks, from local and state governments to operate in the region. When the companies left, thousands of people found themselves unemployed, with no other job prospects in the area. The same governments that had incentivized the coal companies to come provided virtually no social services — such as job training programs, GED programs, or even food banks — to ease the void left by their departure. Widespread public preschool didn’t make the list either.

Related: Wealthy cities can afford to expand pre-K: What about everybody else?

The counties served by the buses are also considered food deserts. Families, many of whom either do not have a car or can’t afford much gas, do not have anywhere nearby to find nutritious food. Many residents share the costs of an hour-long drive to a grocery store once a month, where they use their limited funds to buy processed food that will last the longest. As a result, many young children develop problems with both obesity and tooth decay. (Bill Collins, a local dentist, said that since the beginning of 2019, he has had to provide five full sets of dentures — top and bottom — to children under the age of 15.) The obesity rate for children ages 10 to 17 in Kentucky was 20.8 percent in 2018, the third highest in the country.

The family navigators staffing the buses have helped families tackle all these problems by connecting them with job training, home repair services, helping them find affordable ways to improve their diets, and more.

Most critically though, the buses offer a free, low-stress way for families to check out what school for 4-year-olds is really all about. Not counting the kids served by the buses, only 29 percent of Kentucky’s 4-year-olds attended publicly funded preschool in 2018, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. And only 51 percent of the state’s children enter kindergarten prepared to learn the curriculum, according to Kentucky’s 2018 kindergarten readiness results. The effects of this lack of preparation can persist into adulthood.

“Kindergarten readiness is tied to third grade reading, which has been tied to high school graduation—which is tied to college going,” Gentry explained.

However, in recent years, educators in the region have been facing another significant hurdle: meth and opioids. The rate of opioid deaths in Kentucky was 28 per 100,000 in 2017 — nearly double the national average of 15 per 100,000, according to the latest data available from the federal government. This has created a situation in which many children are being taken in by grandparents and other relatives, who may themselves be overwhelmed or otherwise ill-equipped to take on caring for needy, energetic young children. Statewide, 9 percent of Kentucky children live with relatives other than their parents, the highest proportion in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Locals estimate that the percentages in the counties served by Sunny and Rosie are much higher.

In Beverly, Kristy Roark, a kindergarten teacher who grew up in the area, said “there aren’t many intact families” and the consequences of that are manifold.

“When Grandma is taking care of them, they’re less likely to follow authority or be held accountable because they get whatever they ask for,” she said. “Grandma’s tired, and Grandma’s going to give you whatever you want so she can rest. Children lose their ability to problem-solve because a lot of time they watch videos which doesn’t stimulate the brain.”

But what Roark worries about most is the attitude of preemptive self-defeat she often encounters. “Families face stereotyping of ‘I’m from the mountains, I’m not smart enough to go to school.’ So that becomes, ‘I can’t be successful.’”

The Family Readiness Bus, she said, counters some of these effects. The students in her classroom who were served by Rosie and Sunny bring stronger academic and social skills than those who didn’t.

Related: To smooth transitions from home to pre-K to kindergarten, states must invest in every aspect of early ed

Aleah Wolsey, 5, is one of those students. “We did games, we would play with animals, we would do puzzles and stuff,” she recalled. “My favorite book was ‘One Time Froggy Made a Birthday Cake for His Mom.’” (She was referring, most likely, to “Froggy Bakes a Cake,” a picture book by Jonathan London.)

Among her classmates, Aleah is clearly a leader. On a recent visit, a group of girls watched admiringly as she demonstrated how to write the letter E. (And she was confident among adults as well. When a visitor, carrying a tablet, asked her how to spell her name, she took the tablet saying, “Oh, I’ll just type it myself.”)

Getting more kids on the same trajectory as Aleah is the goal of the preschool bus program, said Chris Morgan, who has worked as both an early childhood specialist and as a family navigator on the bus. He emphasized that in order to do this, family support was crucial. “Our primary thing was to empower parents to make sure that they were their child’s advocate from the time of birth all the way through school,” he said. “They have the ability to help their child learn — they’re the first and most important teacher that the child has. You just have to help them see that.”

Back in Manchester, as Paisley sat on the floor, making her way through a container with a picture of a cake on its lid — rake, bake, steak, snake — Barrett reflected on her family’s experience with Rosie. Her two-year-old son, Parker, sat in her lap; he would start his time on Rosie the following year. She hoped the little boy would develop a love of learning like his older sister.

“Paisley didn’t ever talk about going to school until we started the bus,” Barrett said. “But once we started the bus, she begged me every day, ‘When do I get to start school?’”

This story also appeared in The Christian Science Monitor.

This story about preschool options was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our newsletter.

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Editor’s note: This story led off this week’s Future of Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes every Wednesday with trends and top stories about education innovation. Subscribe today!

BRYANT POND, Maine — EB Hoff, 14, was running for class treasurer of the Class of 2022.

She announced her candidacy at her school’s wooden lectern, decorated with a drawing of a howling wolf. It was early June, and EB’s no-nonsense attire — a pale yellow sweater and black, ironed shorts — made her stand out from the slouching, jean-clad candidates lined up beside her.

She read confidently from her prepared statement. “Every fundraiser we did this year, every school event, every time one of my commitments needed something, I was there.”

Speaking at length of her vision and qualifications — at one point she reminded her 47 classmates that she had faithfully executed officer duties “since I was elected in fourth grade” — EB looked up every so often at her peers, sprawled on the grass in front of her. A few boys were laughing and poking each other with sticks, but most of the students seemed to listen with genuine interest. All clapped respectfully when she finished.

The kind of leadership and responsibility that shone through EB’s speech is actively encouraged at this unusual program in rural Maine. Called the Telstar Freshman Academy, or TFA, it involves all its district’s ninth graders in a hands-on learning method that uses outdoor-based projects and community-building activities as ways to teach across several disciplines.

The program is aimed at helping students feel connected to each other and their community in a place where — as in so many rural areas hit hard by the opioid epidemic and the 2008 recession — connectedness and a shared sense of purpose have been in short supply.

Kelly Dole, the school’s science teacher, says that when she first started teaching at Telstar High School, in 1998, students were often unprepared for life after high school. Coming from rural townships in western Maine, half of them qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, and many were part of families experiencing unemployment, domestic violence or substance abuse. In her decades at the traditional high school, she saw her students becoming increasingly aimless and disengaged.

But since 2014, she says, when the district introduced this new outdoor project-based approach, students’ ambition and sense of identity have dramatically improved. Instead of going to a traditional high school, all freshmen in MSAD 44 — a western Maine district including the rural towns of Bethel, Newry, Woodstock and Greenwood — spend every morning at the Bryant Pond 4-H center (which also serves as a summer camp), and return to the main high school to have lunch and take math and elective classes. As part of the program, the freshmen engage in intensive community-building exercises, including tending to animals, learning to rock climb, running a restaurant — and coaching each other as they run for student government.

Related: A little-known program has lifted 9th grade performance in virtually every type of school

“This style of learning, this family atmosphere that we have here, it’s a real positive in kids’ lives,” Dole said. “The kids just have opportunities through this program that are really quite astonishing.”

David Murphy, who has served as the district’s superintendent since 2002 (and has worked in the district since 1984), explained that the approach was born of necessity. “High school is not really working for most kids,” he said. “And it’s certainly not working for small schools with rural kids.”

Prior to 2014, students were distracted and disengaged, often doing the bare minimum to graduate from high school (if they did at all). To change these attitudes toward school, Murphy reasoned that the district needed to reimagine students’ first, pivotal year in high school, after they move from eighth to ninth grade. “If that transition feels scary or intimidating for kids, or if they don’t feel supported, or if they just feel overwhelmed, it’s hard to get that time back,” he said.

Working with Ryder Scott, the statewide director of the University of Maine 4-H Camp and Learning Center, Murphy created a program that merged outdoor and farm-based education with academic instruction, ultimately creating a faculty of five: a humanities teacher, a science teacher, an outdoor education teacher and two 4-H professionals. Together, they created a curriculum that incorporates state academic standards into personalized learning projects that reflect students’ particular needs and interests, such as caring for the campus goats and planting a self-sustaining classroom garden.

Additionally, they take advantage of private grants to support, among other experiences, a class trip to Washington, D.C. — which is particularly meaningful for the many students who have never traveled outside western Maine — and a mentorship program for students who have experienced trauma.

Dole said that this holistic, student-centered paradigm has changed her approach to teaching — for the better. Now, she said, as she approaches her lesson planning and her teaching, she asks herself questions she never asked before: “Do I need every kid to really deeply understand plate tectonics? versus, as a 14-year-old, What does it mean to be a student? What does it mean to work in a group or get along with others? Or to communicate in an effective manner? Or to be a positive force in your community?”

Though the program is still relatively new, schools leaders say students’ academic growth (as measured by standardized tests) has improved, and an external report by the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance found that students themselves reported an increase in their sense that they can make a difference in their communities and that they are learning skills that will help them in the future. However, according to faculty and students alike, the benefits of TFA’s approach are difficult to quantify.

EB Hoff, the candidate for treasurer, put it succinctly. At the end of her speech, she smiled at her classmates and spoke of their next chapter, 10th grade: “I can’t wait to start making a difference.”

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Earlier this year, Ricketa Bluford, a teacher at the Elk Grove campus of the Sacramento Academic and Vocational Academy (SAVA), assigned her students a personal narrative essay. The one submitted by Maria Garcia, a senior in her independent study class, stopped her cold.

“The beginning of my senior year I got addicted to drugs and was really depressed. I was in a very toxic relationship and let a man control my every move and thought. … When the drugs stopped working I thought about the next best thing or what I thought it was. …”

Maria, then 17 and addicted to cocaine, wanted to end her own life.

As the essay recounted, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. After several weeks of interventions by doctors and caseworkers, and with the help of family members and educators from SAVA, she began to improve. She expressed the desire to go back to school

Despite her newfound determination, though, the journey to on-time high school graduation — only nine months down the road — would not be easy. As her senior year began last fall, Maria had completed only 100 of the 200 credits she needed. SAVA was her second high school, and she still lacked fundamental academic skills. She lived with her aunt and uncle — her father had left and her mother, who was addicted to drugs, was ill-equipped to care for any of her 10 children — and Maria struggled to navigate the chaos of her life.

By her own account, though, her greatest obstacle was her lack of confidence.

“The other teachers at my old schools would make me feel stupid,” she said. She had internalized an identity as a checked-out, trouble-making kid.

According to Morri Elliott, SAVA’s principal, Maria is a “typical” SAVA student. On average, he says, the school’s new students have attended two prior high schools and test four years below grade level on reading and math. They tend to have low motivation and self-esteem, come from families in poverty and be susceptible to forces such as drugs, violence and gangs. They are at high risk of dropping out. Many students have been involved in the criminal justice system, have vulnerable citizenship or residency status or have experienced homelessness. Many have special needs — previously diagnosed or not — and many are in the process of learning English. Some are involved in the foster care system, and many are the children of teenage parents — or are already parents themselves.

“We want a kid that you don’t have any idea what to do with,” says Elliott.

A teacher, Jason Wasserman, says, “It’s all the underdogs.”

Related: Personalized learning gives students a sense of control over chaotic lives

The school takes many approaches to educating these students, but central to them all is a belief in the benefits of intensive one-on-one relationships. In the case of Maria Garcia, it was the indefatigable support of one teacher, Moriah Theroux, that motivated her to get on track.

“Every time I walk in the door — I’m not even exaggerating — every time I walk in that door, Ms. Theroux opens her arms and is like, ‘Hey girl! Oh my God, you’re doing so good!’” Maria said, beaming. “She’ll say, like, ‘You’re the best student ever.’ And it’s not even fake! And she does it all the time. When I come in here, tired as heck, she says, ‘Hey girl, you’re doing it!’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m going to go home and I’m going to work hard.’ ”

For students like Maria, “working hard” means crafting a customized course of study with an assigned teacher — in her case, Ms. Theroux — tailored to the student’s outside work schedule, academic needs and career goals. On computers provided by the school, students independently watch instructional videos and complete assignments through Edgenuity, an online curriculum provider. At least once a week, the student and teacher meet to choose academic units from Edgenuity’s library — all the lessons are aligned to California state standards and are curated by the school — and to schedule times for the student to take Edgenuity’s unit exams on campus.

Aside from its academic model and mentorship approach, SAVA prides itself on its Career Technical Education (CTE) curriculum. Along with their academic work, students enroll in at least one of ten vocational “pathways,” which are designed to foster or develop interests applicable to postsecondary employment. Taught by local experts, these pathways include such diverse offerings as Residential and Commercial Construction, Fashion Design and Merchandising, Performing Arts, and Agricultural and Natural Sciences.

Related: One possible solution for the future of career and technical education

Maria said that the courses she took last year in the Food Service and Hospitality pathway (one of the school’s most popular) enabled her to gain work experience and skills — and attain financial independence.

“The culinary classes helped me get my first job, at Subway,” she explained. “As soon as I went into the interview, I showed them my resume — which the school helped me build. And I showed them my food handler’s card — which the school helped me get. And they asked me questions like, ‘How would you sanitize the dishes?’ And I knew that — because my teacher told me that!”

Maria has moved on from Subway to work at Sandwich Spot, across the street from campus. She works full shifts on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and attends school Tuesdays and Thursdays. She does her Edgenuity work before and after her shifts, attempting to complete one unit — which equals one credit — per day. When she doesn’t understand a concept, she seeks help at school.

Entering her final semester, Maria has 20 credits left, meaning that — less than seven months after being released from a psychiatric hospital, two years behind where she should have been in terms of academic credit — she is now well on her way to graduating on time.

“It’s awesome,” Maria reflects.

She pauses. “It makes me really happy.”

*  *

Sacramento Academic and Vocational Academy is among a small (but growing) cadre of high schools across the country that embrace alternative approaches to educating society’s most vulnerable students. The school is clearly doing something well: 80 percent of its students graduate from high school — which is remarkable considering that every one of its students was at risk of dropping out of the school system entirely before enrolling. About half of the school’s graduates go on to higher education, nearly all to local community colleges.

Since opening in 2007, Elliott said, the school has grown significantly. At first, it was merely a collection of makeshift classrooms scattered around a nondescript parking lot in southeastern Sacramento. Now, thanks to consistent parental interest and local support, the school is a conglomerated network of six campuses in six different regions of the city. (The newest and smallest campus, which currently has only 10 students, is in a homeless shelter.)

Elliott, who has been the school’s principal since 2012, began working there in the nascent stages of the school’s existence — and of his own career. After teaching for a year at a local public school, Elliott took a job as an independent study teacher at SAVA. Now, Elliott is a constant, companionable presence at all of the school’s campuses, and seems to interpret his role as, at least in part, chief cheerleader to students and faculty alike.

On a drizzly February day, Elliott roamed the Power Inn campus, poking his head into classrooms — observing students sewing a kente-cloth dress in one while, in the garage next door, a boisterous group welded a jagged-edged bumper to a truck — and reflected on SAVA’s trajectory.

The journey to the current incarnation took time, he said. A few years ago, an accreditation visit proved a rude awakening when the school’s academic curriculum — which, according to faculty, primarily consisted of slapdash photocopied packets created by individual teachers — was found to fall short of state standards. As a result, Elliott and other administrators decided to purchase a more systematized, rigorous curriculum from Edgenuity.

Other changes came after observing and listening to students’ needs: new pathway offerings (“A kid told me that he was interested in pursuing a career in fire safety, so I found a great firefighter to teach a course”), instruction in basic life skills (“Adulting 101”) and a sex education curriculum.

Related: What do at-risk students, English language learners and adult college students have in common?

Also, Elliott said, when it became clear to faculty several years ago that the school needed a new, uniform approach to student engagement and behavior management, he decided to train every staff member in an approach called Capturing Kids’ Hearts. Now, both he and the staff members agree that the program has been effective in creating a school culture defined by firm-but-loving structure, flexibility and the individualized attention SAVA students need.

One recent morning, the main hall of the SAVA Sim Center campus embodied these values. In the center of the room, sitting upright at desks or sprawled on yellow couches, students clacked on keyboards and wrote in paper notebooks, headphones in ears; chatted softly in groups of three and four; and munched on breakfast distributed by their peers via rolling gray metal carts. (The school provides free snacks, meals and clothes for any student who requests them.) A mother walked in with her diffident 14-year-old son, asking the receptionist, in Spanish, for information about how to enroll him. (She later said that the school reminded her of the “escuelas abiertas” — “open schools” — her family members attended in Mexico.) In one corner, students met one-on-one with teachers; in another, administrators reviewed lesson plans and data with faculty members. A heavily pregnant student got up suddenly to hurry to the bathroom. Twice in one hour a teacher called for attention, singling out a student: This student, he announced, has completed all of her graduation requirements; can she please have a hearty round of applause?

Students enter and leave, enter and leave. There is a calm, consistent buzz to the place — it feels at once orderly and busy, well-managed by adults but filled to the brim with adolescent energy. It feels like it’s, well, working.

It’s clearly working for Maria Garcia, who, like so many other students at the school, came close, again and again, to giving up on a high school diploma — and, at her lowest, on life itself. But her personal narrative essay finishes with a very different story:

“When I came to Sacramento Academic Vocational Academy, all the other experiences from my past didn’t matter because this school made me feel really important and like my education was important to them and to myself.

“In my life, I disappointed a lot of people. But I plan on spending the rest of my life impressing everyone.” 

This story about at-risk students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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