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"COMPASS program a success "
Gloucester Daily Times, My View, Friday May 27, 2005
There was an article in the Gloucester Daily Times had written on Thursday, March 24 that mentioned the COMPASS Youth Program at the very end of the education article. The last paragraph said we were school dropouts. We read this during English class and were upset that no one had asked us who we were, but had reported it in the newspaper as though it were fact.
We are not students who didn't want to attend school or who wanted to drop out. We are students who made a decision to make a change in how and where we learn. It wasn't working for us at the high school — for lots of reasons and we knew it. So, we came to COMPASS because we wanted to stay in school, not because we wanted to drop out.
We know teenagers get labeled and we know we've been labeled, but we also know we have been misjudged. At COMPASS no one is judging us and we can be who we are when we come in the door. With that said, we'd like to set the record straight: We intend to graduate with a Gloucester High School diploma. We are working hard to the best of our ability to overcome the obstacles, and we have a lot of them. More than most. It might take us longer, but we are determined students who have goals we will reach.
Some of us have already been accepted to colleges and most of us plan to go on to college at some point. Some of us already have full time jobs and we've got internship plans for the summer. Some of us are going into the Coast Guard, some of us want to go to acting school, and some of us are enrolled in criminal justice programs. The list goes on.
There are 17 of us down here this year. Eleven of us are seniors. We know we've got obstacles and haven't done high school exactly like everyone else, but we're not dropouts. COMPASS is a place where we are surrounded by family and friends who encourage us to go for our dreams while not letting us get away with anything.
We have learned to take responsibility for our actions and our lives. We get to school every day without school transportation and we are taught how to manage our behavior in the classroom. We also do community service and clean our school.
We know we're lucky to come to COMPASS and that we have Dr. Sullivan to thank for his belief in what we could achieve if given the right learning environment. Thanks to him and to Action Inc. we have a learning space where we feel accepted, understood and appreciated.
We wrote this to prove a point. We are just everyday teenagers who want to graduate and have a happy, successful life. We're not labels or statistics in a budget. We're the COMPASS Crew. We're friends and we're family, not just a school.
COMPASS Youth Program students: Krystle Bergmann, Bobby Hopkins, Krystal Cusenza, Nicole Chiancola and Bobby Rowe
For related articles:
Budget panel backs COMPASS Gloucester Daily Times
6/20/05
Tutor program in need of assistance Gloucester Daily Times 5/13/05
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