Grads With a Past, and a Future
It’s just a piece of paper.
Tell that to director Steven Spielberg, who added a bachelor of arts to his Oscars and Emmys when he graduated last month from Cal State Long Beach. Or to Laker star Shaquille O’Neal, who returned to college to earn his bachelor’s eight years after he left to become a millionaire in the NBA.
Or to the two dozen men and women who marched across a middle-school stage in Watts last week to collect high school diplomas long delayed.
They didn’t have to fit their classes at Jordan-Locke Community Adult School around basketball games and directing gigs, but around minimum-wage jobs and caring for kids. It wasn’t so much about finding time in busy schedules, but about finding purpose in lives marked by bad breaks and bad choices.
And though a high school diploma sure won’t put them in the league of Spielberg and Shaq, it’s priceless when the currency is pride and self-respect.
For some, last Thursday’s commencement marked the end of a journey. Antonio Miller had been a middling student who thought he was on track to graduate with his Locke High class in 1994. “I missed a couple of tests.” He shrugs. “Then I didn’t have enough credits to graduate.”
He found a job, did OK and tried to convince himself it didn’t matter. But not having that piece of paper “made me feel like I was missing something,” he said. “I didn’t want to be a failure.” It took him six months to finish his classes and six seconds to strut across the stage in his cap and gown, pumping his fist at friends in the stands. He doesn’t know what’s next--”I just feel like I had to close that chapter”--only that he already feels better about himself.
For others, graduation opened a chapter. Denise Lynch has done fine without her diploma. She held a government job for 18 years and pushed her three sons to do well in school. But in the 23 years since she dropped out, she never stopped dreaming of something better. Diploma in hand, she begins classes next month at Cerritos College. Her plan? She smiles shyly and adjusts her mortarboard. “I know it’s going to take a while,” she says. “But I’d really like to become a lawyer.”
And for all those in the class of 2002, that walk across the stage Thursday night was a lesson in the value of second chances, and a testament to tenacity.
“It took me 42 years, but I made it,” crowed 61-year-old Odell Marie Baptiste Noel, as she shared cake and punch in the school vestibule with her fellow graduates. She had to leave her Catholic girls’ school in New Orleans when she got pregnant at 17. Her five children finished high school; now their children are graduating. “Cracking the books again was a challenge,” she said. “But when my grandkids started getting their diplomas, I figured it was time to get mine.”
Benita Jimenez also dropped out to have a baby when she was 17. She’s 33 now and pregnant again--with No. 5--but that didn’t stop her this time around. Already, her diploma has won her a job as a teacher’s aide. She plans to enroll in college this fall to earn her degree and teaching credential.
The son, now 16, whose birth derailed her first go-round, was her motivation to get back on track. “I didn’t want my son to think ‘Why didn’t she finish?’ ” she said. “I wanted him to see his mom graduate before he does.”
It’s easy to find tales of failure in Watts, where more teenagers drop out of school than graduate. But inside the classrooms of the adult-ed program, stories of success abound, as well.
“Our students have a lot of barriers--economic hardship, child-care issues, problems with transportation, low self-esteem. A lot of them just get stuck,” said Maxine Hammond, principal of the Jordan-Locke Community Adult School.
The school, part of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s network of adult-ed programs, aims to get them unstuck with free high school classes, vocational training, career guidance and referrals to community resources for child care, financial assistance and counseling. Classes meet days, nights and weekends--in neighborhood schools, libraries, churches; in housing projects and community centers, in parole offices and at drug rehab programs.
For Sedella Carter, this year’s valedictorian, that accessibility made all the difference. She left Locke High School pregnant, 15 years ago. “Between gangbanging and ditching, I was so far behind I wouldn’t have graduated anyway,” she says.
She went back to school two years ago not because of any grand passion or great plans, but because she noticed a class across the street from her church, on the morning that her pastor preached that you can’t change your life by waiting for a miracle to drop from the sky, you just have to go back and pick up where you left off.
This time around, she became an A student, doing homework alongside her two sons. And she stoked the dreams of countless others with the message of her speech on commencement night:
“It’s never too late to pick up where you left off,” she said. “It’s never too late to graduate.”
Sandy Banks’ column is published Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes. com.