• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

High School Students With Mental Health Issues Get Life Skills Through Work

Posted on: Tuesday, 18 October 2005, 15:00 CDT

By ANDREA SCHOELLKOPF Journal Staff Writer

For a group of West Mesa High School students, real learning begins the moment they arrive at a local pizza parlor.

Vacuuming, wiping down windows and tables, and preparing the tables for incoming birthday parties have become a lesson in life skills, according to Robert Witt, department chair of the Behavior Intervention Program at West Mesa.

Routine, he said, is enormously essential to helping kids succeed in the Life-Centered Career Education program.

The students built a sidewalk at school, for instance, by laying concrete squares -- and learned math skills in the process.

They learned fractions by working with wrenches and fixing children's bicycles.

"Ours are the most severe kids (with mental health issues) in the district," Witt said.

The students come into the program after being diagnosed with autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, radical attachment disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome and exposure to crack in utero.

There are 45 students in the district's mental health program at West Mesa, of whom 15 participate in the work program if it's decided they need a more vocational focus -- and less classroom time -- in their education.

Witt has all their work tied to state academic standards, and because the students are diagnosed with mental health problems, he also meets the state health requirements.

Dropout rate drops

He said the students are passing the state competency exams at higher levels than students in regular education, both statewide and at West Mesa. Math, Witt said, is taught with more of a business angle, so students can learn what "FICA" is when their Social Security is withdrawn, how to write and balance checks and how to tell if they are getting their fair share on a paycheck. "Our kids are passing the competency at high levels," he said. "We don't just take them to go play." The program has seen real success in the seven years it has been around, Witt said. When it first started, there was a 70 percent dropout rate. It's now about 10 percent. Behavior issues dropped by 70 percent to 80 percent after the program was implemented. Out of 19 graduates in the program over the seven years, only one is incarcerated, compared to a national average of one in four for students with mental health issues. Witt fears the demise of the program, he said, as national

Dropout rate drops

testing standards are pushing for students like his to be in the classroom more.

Sarah Sednek, 16, recently had transferred back to the program after stints at two other area high schools.

"I like it because I know everybody," said Sednek, who says she has bipolar disorder. "It's where I can get an education and learned job skills."

She already has earned privileges of riding the city bus, rather than the yellow school bus she calls the "Twinkie bus," from her home near Old Town.

She said the other schools didn't offer her the job focus she wanted or wanted her to wait until her senior year. She said the classwork wasn't as challenging for her, either.

"All we did is sit and play games," Sednek said.

Much of what the students are learning is through concrete application.

One student, for instance, began rattling off fractions, and the staff learned it was because of work he was doing with bicycles for the Vecinos del Bosque Neighborhood Association. The bikes are later donated to needy children at Albuquerque elementary schools.

"It's because of the wrenches," said Witt, who is also working on a similar program with Los Puentes Charter School.

When the students were rewarded for repairing the bicycles by getting to ride bikes on the bosque, they were required to learn the bus route and schedule that would get them there, as well as how long they could ride before they needed to leave to return to school.

A sister program at Sandia High, he said, is not seeing the same levels of success but is solely focusing on academics.

Grades are up

Joe Flores, 17, is a senior who entered the West Mesa program in the last year. It wasn't clear why he was there, but he said his grades have improved from C's to A's and B's since he came over from Cibola High, where said he had been in two fights last year. "It's more secluded," he said of the classes. "I can concentrate a lot in school. There's not too much fighting." Flores also had been hired by Peter Piper Pizza after learning the required skills. He plans to work at the new Peter Piper restaurant on Golf Course near his Taylor Ranch home after school and on weekends. "I'm saving for a stereo system," he said. The program also has lined up jobs for students at the other two Peter Piper Pizzas in Albuquerque, so students who live elsewhere can be closer to their jobs.

Peter Piper general manager Alma Alvarez used to run the ENLACE program at West Mesa, where she advocated for Hispanic students.

Most of her student employees at the West Central franchise come from West Mesa. Alvarez checks with teachers on their grades and cuts their hours if they are failing. When they graduate, she tells them they have to leave and find a better job.

And when the teachers in the Life-Centered Career Education -- including her sister, who is an assistant there -- asked for her help in training students for jobs, she agreed.

The kids can get credit, if they are not taking away someone else's job, Witt said. So they started coming in on Thursdays -- when the lady who cleans the restaurant had her day off.

They spend a half day at work and a half day in class, with time in between to ride the bus.

Possible relocation

Witt fears change already is coming for these routine-minded students next year with a possible relocation to Valley High.

West Mesa needs the classrooms to make room for 28 severely disabled children who are moving back to their neighborhood school from other programs in the district, said assistant principal Andrea Felts, who oversees special education at West Mesa.

She said space is a "challenge" at the school, which has 2,700 students.

"... They have more room and their enrollment is a little less," Felts said of Valley, "because we're busting at the seams."

Source: Albuquerque Journal

More News in this Category