D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June 2008
Making the Grade
Deming Cesar Chavez Charter High School is turning dropouts
into graduates.
Story and photos by Marjorie Lilly
The Cesar Chavez School is housed in what used to be City Drug Store in Deming, near the Post Office. It's divided up by partitions that the principal, a teacher and a few students put up themselves, and it's kind of cramped. Teens hang around casually in the study hall and computer room area as if they're trying to win the "coolest student" contest.
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History teacher Manuel Giron, in
front of a mural painted by student Ray Ortiz. |
The school's full name is the Deming Cesar Chavez Charter High School, with the impressively long initials DCCCHS, printed on the rug just inside the front door. It's basically a school to rescue dropouts, and at the end of its second year it's showing some gratifying results.
Eighteen DCCHS students, out of the total of 110 in four grades, graduated on May 16 at the Learning Center. Just four students graduated last year. And the school is still expanding. "We're trying to get daycare," says Principal Arlene Trujillo. "We need to get a bigger building."
The school has the pilot program in New Mexico for combining AmeriCorps (the teen employment project) with an academic program. Students in this program have worked 300 hours this year for a stipend and credit. They could be seen outside a couple months ago painting the school building yellow with green trim. They've cleaned up trash on Camp Furlong Day in March and at the Cinco de Mayo festival, and have worked at the Mayor's Dinner in Deming.
There aren't any comparable schools for dropouts in either Las Cruces or Silver City, although there are similar schools planned for Anthony and Roswell.
Ninety percent of Chavez students are from low-income backgrounds, and 40 percent are already parents themselves. Most of them — 75 percent — dropped out of regular school for economic reasons. They range in age from 12 to 21. Many have after-school jobs working until late at night at Wal-Mart or at local restaurants; some clean motels, a couple of them have office jobs, and one is a cashier at an auto-parts store. Some Chavez students work during the day and come to special evening courses.
It's hard for these kids to stay in the Chavez School. "If a child gets sick, they have to miss class to take him to the doctor," says Trujillo. "Many have daycare but can't pay for it." But the school helps students by keeping them wrapped up as much as possible in a safety net of social services. "We do lot of case management for them to help them get income," Trujillo says.
"Most of these kids are hands-on learners," she adds. The principal takes advantage of every opportunity for field trips. Students have gone to White Sands, the New Mexico legislature and the Holocaust Museum in El Paso. Students in GRADS (Graduation, Reality and Dual-Role Skills, the national program for teen parents) have visited the maternity ward at Mountain View Hospital as part of their studies.
English teacher Lourdes Huerta has brought her poetry students to slams at Joe Perk coffeehouse in Deming and Javalina in Silver City, where some of her students have performed and won monetary awards. She has taught them to do haiku, "reflective poems," and poems in conjunction with historical periods they're studying. "I had to tell them what a verse was, and a stanza," Huerta says.
Sophomore Samira Ortega says she likes the hands-on activities in Huerta's classes. "We're going to write recipes, but we have to make them first," Ortega says. Her special dish was chocolate-covered strawberries.
Huerta's students often write about family members or moods. A poem by 20-year-old Lupe, which expresses the seriousness of some of these students, reads in part:
"The most beautiful reflection of me,
Is my daughter Aaliyah,
Because she says things I say
She likes things I like.
She likes butterflies and lilies
Just like me."
Probably the most important element of the Chavez Charter High School's educational philosophy is the small class size, averaging 10 to 12 students, which gives the teachers more time to care for each student. Principal Arlene Trujillo, born in Mesilla but with most of her teaching and administrative experience in Questa, NM, north of Taos, says, "Public high school is not for them because of the larger classrooms. Small classroom settings are best for them."
Samira Ortega, who used to be enrolled at Deming High School, says, "Yes, we're happier here. I get As and Bs every report card. I have more one-on-one times with the teacher."
Another Chavez student, Mago Enciso, sits at a table in the central lunch/study hall area with a few other kids. He likes DCCCHS, too. "There's not as much distractions," he says very courteously. At the high school, you see all kinds of people in the patio when you're changing classes. You get a better focus here."
Enciso has been planning for a while to become a Border Patrol agent. That's why he came back to Deming after working at a construction company in Carlsbad, sometimes for 80 hours a week. He's 18 and has a three-year-old child at the daycare center near the National Guard headquarters. Enciso has a kind of glow as he talks about his future job.
Besides all the support and guidance and the pushing and pulling the school administrators do to help their kids get into post-secondary education, they also are trying to set up a program in conjunction with Doa Ana Branch Community College in Las Cruces. Possible subjects that would be taught are culinary arts, truck driving, graphic design and nursing.
The great majority of Chavez School students — 99 — are Hispanic, as is the case in the entire Deming school system. There are also three black students, eight Caucasian and two Native American. In an effort to have teachers most of the students can relate to, most of the teachers speak Spanish.
History teacher Manuel Giron really excels in his "relatability." He was born and raised in Deming, and even had a baby when he was 16 and his present wife was 15. He says his parents "were heartbroken, but they didn't turn their back on us." They told him, "We want you to finish school." He and his wife, after raising three kids, are still together after 30 years.
"I know what the kids are going through," Giron says. "I was like them — their being loud and talking a lot and giving a lot of excuses." His mother came to the US in the Bracero Program, Giron says, and he himself worked in the fields when he was 13 and 14.
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