Bay Cove Seniors Meet Challenge

 

By Katie Nelson, Globe Correspondent, 6/18/2004

 

BROOKLINE -- Every parent is proud on graduation day. But for Anna Wians, watching her son get his diploma yesterday at Bay Cove Academy meant more.

 

"I didn't think he would do it, but he did," Wians said softly from her seat in the front of the room. "He could have given up, but he didn't."

 

As a high school freshman, her son David was reading at a fifth-grade level. Yesterday, at age 20, David Wians became the first person in his family to get a high school diploma.

 

He was one of six Bay Cove Academy graduates and among the five who took part in the intimate graduation ceremony in front of about 50 people. Getting to graduation day was a personal victory for each of the graduates of the alternative high school in Brookline.

 

Wians spoke up during her son's graduation as a part of the school's "open toast" tradition. For 23 years, during each Bay Cove graduation, family, friends, and former teachers have taken turns to say how proud they are of the young people and pay homage to the school that helped them.

 

"If it wasn't for Bay Cove, he wouldn't have made it this far," Anna Wians said.

 

David Wians struggled in public schools. Before his four years at Bay Cove Academy, he spent two years at Ashland High School. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder made concentrating nearly impossible, and private tutoring didn't help.

 

Bay Cove is a tiny refuge for teens who had trouble succeeding in other places, with about 35 students and 22 staff members. Social workers conduct weekly therapy sessions, and teachers help students complete the required course work for Bay Cove and their original high school. Yesterday's graduates, all of whom had passed the required state exams, received diplomas from Bay Cove and their original school.

 

All six of the seniors overcame challenges: One of the graduates had leukemia as a child. Another spent the last four years at four different schools. Most had records of bad behavior on their school records, for problems like fighting and threatening teachers.

 

Yet yesterday, when the seniors put on their gowns and fiddled with their caps before the ceremony began, their biggest worry was which side of the cap their blue and yellow tassel was supposed to rest.

 

"Does it even matter?" 20-year-old Kim LaForge asked one of the school's staff.

 

"I don't think I can even get this to stay on my head," she said, while having her mortarboard bobby-pinned into her dark curls.

 

"Sure it does," said Todd Smith, the school's clinical director. "It's your day."

 

LaForge is the only graduate who will go on to college. She'll go to Curry College in Milton, where she plans to study nursing. The others are going to go to beauty school, work in restaurants, and work at an auto-body shop.

 

Kelly Louis-Jean, 17, was sharply dressed for the occasion in a crisp button-down shirt and a flashy, maroon and gold tie under his black graduation gown.

 

"These people helped me stick with school," he said.

 

When he was in sixth grade, Louis-Jean missed an entire year of school because of chemotherapy. Although he kept up by doing classwork in his hospital bed, it put him behind. When he got involved in an altercation with a teacher at Cambridge High school years later, he got kicked out.

 

"It's different here," he said. "People have time for me. I'm going to miss my friends, my teachers, my therapist."

 

At Bay Cove, Louis-Jean was student council president for the last six months. After he turns 18 next week, he will start a job at a T.G.I. Friday's restaurant in Boston. He plans to buy a car and eventually enter trade school to become an auto mechanic.

 

When he and the others filed into the school's common room, the people in the audience cheered. Some mothers started to cry before the ceremony began.

 

Handing out diplomas took only minutes, but Principal Judy Gelfand tried to make the moment last.

 

"This graduation is nothing short of an act of courage," she said.

 

 

This story ran on page B4 of the Boston Globe on 6/18/2004.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.