A New School Year: New Beginning

It’s the last weekend before my kids go back to school. I’m certain they’re feeling all sorts of things: excitement, anticipation and even anxiety.  If I remember right, I bet they’re wishing that summer would last longer.

But for some kids, school represents so much more than just a place to take classes. For them, school is their safe place. It’s the one place where they can dream. It’s the place where they have a community that cares deeply about their success. For them, the start of school holds special meaning.

I think about the new community of girls at the Young Women’s College Prep Charter School, which launched just last year with 79 seventh-grade girls — many of them aiming to be the first in their families to one day attend college. Those girls are now moving up to eighth grade and a new crop of seventh graders will join the school. Those eighth graders now get to be the upper class, helping the new students learn what it means to be a YWCP girl.

I also think about the young men who attend New Beginning, a program offered by the Rochester City School District and administered by the Center for Youth. New Beginning is for boys who are ready to change their lives but need a special place to do it.

It began four years ago when Elaine Spaull, executive director of the Center for Youth, met with young men who were incarcerated. They told her they were ready to go back to school and learn. Working with dedicated RCSD educators, the Center for Youth created the New Beginning program to offer young men who have gotten off track — either through incarceration or through other brushes with the juvenile justice system — a new opportunity to engage in school, but in a smaller environment.

Elaine Spaull, executive director of the Center for Youth

Students at New Beginning receive a different kind of attention — attention not only to prevent dropping out or further incarceration, but attention to help them dream and hope for a better future.

As Spaull says, “We don’t call these boys at-risk; we believe these are young men of promise. And the promise we make to them is to tell them what is right with them instead of what’s wrong with them.”

The educators provide not only a full-scale curriculum in education but provide the kind of emotional and social support that transforms lives. Spaull says, on any given day, many of these young men are homeless or go without food. New Beginning provides a stable structure and environment for them to find their better selves.

Kenny Vargas, an 11th-grader this year who attends New Beginning, says he can’t wait for school to start. Last year he made honor roll for the first time ever. He chose to go to New Beginning because he says after some challenges, he and his mother decided he would do better in a small school environment. But even more than the education he receives there, Kenny says he feels like he has a family at New Beginning: “People who can relate to what I’ve been through,” he says.

Kenny spoke about how New Beginning is helping him realize his dream of being an architect, a photographer or — his backup plan — a doctor. This past summer, Kenny was a teacher’s aide at the School of the Arts, where he seemed to connect with the students he was helping. “The little kids got to me,” he says.

Well, Kenny got to me. His new school-year mission is to make honor roll again. He reminded me that every school year is a... New Beginning.

For more information about how to make a difference for New Beginning or the Center for Youth through Fashion Week of Rochester, go to: www.centerforyouth.net.