Jeremy Gibson will look you straight in the eyes and tell you his education and future were rapidly going down the tubes about a year ago.

As he flunked assignments and tests in English, U.S. history and other classes at Jackson County High School, he began thinking that dropping out was the unavoidable next step in that string of failures.

“I saw that I was going to have to go an extra year of school, but I didn’t want to do that, so I wanted to drop out,” Jeremy said. “I just didn’t feel like I fit in, and didn’t know what else to do.”

Look at Jeremy these days, though, and you won’t see a quitter. You’ll see a confident 18-year-old who fought back from the brink to earn his high school diploma. That achievement was made possible by the “Transition Unit,” an innovative youth-related initiative created through a partnership between the Jackson County Board of Education, the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP), and the Daniel Boone Development Council (Daniel Boone DC).

“It helped me find out that I can do whatever I set my mind to do,”
Jeremy said. “After I got into this program, I saw that there was a better life out there for me that I wanted to get into.”

Jeremy is not the only at-risk student to reclaim the potential for a bright future through the Transition Unit. This past school year, 17 Jackson County High School students received diplomas at the school’s graduation ceremony who otherwise would have never graduated on time—or at all—without having participated in the program.

Talking about the successes of those students gets Jackson County Superintendent Ralph Hoskins a bit choked up.

“These kids just don’t have the roadmap to success, so we give them that map—but they do the work,” said Hoskins, who serves on EKCEP’s Workforce Investment Board (WIB) and also is committee chairman of EKCEP’s WIB Youth Council.

“They would have done the same amount of work if they were at the high school, but they don’t always get that roadmap there,” he added. “The unit gives them an opportunity to see with a clear vision, and then the opportunity to actualize it. We want them to see things a whole new way.”

Hoskins helped guide the Transition Unit into existence by working with EKCEP and officials at Daniel Boone DC to secure funding needed to start the program up about a year ago. It became a facet of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Year-Round Youth Program delivered there by the Jackson County Board of Education, and administered by Daniel Boone DC under contract with EKCEP.

Utilizing that partnership, Hoskins and other officials set out to create a program to allow 14- to 18-year-old students who have dropped out to return to a classroom setting. Once there, they can immediately work on earning credits toward graduation.

That’s extremely significant, Hoskins said, because prior to the Transition Unit, that wasn’t an option. Guidelines stipulated that students who had dropped out for several weeks during any given semester had to sit out the remaining months of the semester before being able to come back to school and take classes for credit. They could come back and observe classes for their academic benefit, but not for credit until the next semester began.

That offer obviously doesn’t get many takers, Hoskins said.

“That’s like asking someone to come and work for you but telling them they’re not going to get paid,” he said. “Even if they truly want to come back, once you tell them they’re going to have to wait that long to get credits in class, most of the time you’ve lost them.”

The Transition Unit solves that dilemma by allowing those students to come back to work full-time there on as many as four credit-earning academic subject areas. They also get personal tutoring and counseling from unit Director Lucille Robinson, and one-on-one teaching and attention from teacher Sherry Robinson at a pace that meets their individual needs. Teacher Freddie McQueen taught classes during this past summer’s component.

Having developed a way to bring dropouts back into an academic setting, Hoskins next moved to ways to keep students who are having serious problems in their classes from leaving school in the first place. Students running at a high risk of failure or dropping out—like Jeremy—can be brought into the Transition Unit to make up or earn credits in classes where they’re struggling.

While former dropouts work full-time in the unit, struggling students might only work in there two classes per day and then return to the high school for their remaining classes. The Transition Unit classes are held at the school system’s vocational school complex away from the high school campus for a reason.

“Instead of students being embarrassed by going into a ‘transition room’ at the high school, it’s off campus,” Hoskins said. “This becomes like another ‘shop’ up there that people are just working in, so there’s no stigma attached.

“Plus, people who dropped out of school don’t want to go back to the high school right off to take classes because that’s where the failure was. This is a way for them to start over and work their confidence back up.”

No matter which category students fit into, all subjects taken are based on a curriculum developed in the Jefferson County school system, Hoskins said. Each subject is set up to carry the same academic value and weight the same classes would have in the regular high school setting.

“If they get a 12th grade English credit in the Transition Unit, it has the same quality, is taught under the same expectations and is measured by the same criteria as the class would be in the regular high school,” Hoskins said. There also is no distinction between diplomas earned by students who finish their requirements for graduation in the unit, and those earned by students who finish entirely at the high school.

The big difference between the Transition Unit and the more traditional classroom is the way classes are taught. Rather than having a teacher in front of a classroom delivering instruction to 25-30 students at once—reaching most but inevitably being ignored or not understood by others—the unit provides individualized attention and instruction. Students there can spend several hours working on assignments one-on-one with teacher Sherry Robinson or being tutored by Lucille Robinson.

That approach was exactly what Jeremy needed to get back on track.

“It just seemed like I had a mental block on some of that stuff, and sitting down with them like that helped me get over it,” he said. Jeremy’s newfound work ethic surprised everyone in the unit when he was able to finish his entire senior portfolio in only three weeks.

“Usually it takes most of the kids 18 weeks, but I did it in three,” he says with a smile. “When I needed help, they were there to help me, and it all worked because this program is based on individuals, not a whole class of students.”

The personal attention also made the difference for Ursula Allen, who had to overcome an altogether different set of obstacles in order to graduate on time this past school year. Already married with a two-year-old son, Ursula had no choice but to drop out of her classes back in April following the birth of her second child.

In too many instances, that kind of event signals the end of a student’s high school education. It didn’t for Ursula. After she had been out of school for several weeks, a friend told her about the Transition Unit and she chose to enroll.

“I knew I wasn’t going to make it through my senior year without it,” she said. As she worked in the unit both semesters of that school year, Ursula was able to bring her son with her to class when necessary. Lucille Robinson made sure her needs were met.

“There are so many things we can do that a traditional class can’t do—and that’s one of them,” Robinson said.

With that help and instruction, Ursula was able to graduate despite the layoff. She’s now working as a Certified Nursing Assistant at Berea Hospital, and wants to begin her studies at Eastern Kentucky University next fall toward becoming a registered nurse.

Whether dealing with students like Ursula who actually dropped out, or others like Jeremy who are still in school but dangerously close to dropping out, Robinson and other unit administrators evaluate those students at the end of each semester to see how they can proceed. Some remain in the unit full-time and others continue to take subjects both there and at the high school. Students having trouble only in one academic area might seek to return to the high school full-time and continue only the counseling element through the unit. Although there is no formal cap, the longest a student can be enrolled in the Transition Unit typically is one full school year.

“The main thing is that they can have a clean flowing in and out of the program based on their needs, wants, desires and performance,” Hoskins said. “But they can’t make a decision to leave the unit unless we give them the option.”

The Transition Unit concept has caught fire within the school system, hitting a peak of about 70 students participating at one time. Robinson said early estimates showed about 30 students already interested in enrolling this August with the start of the 2003-04 school year.

Hoskins said his goal is to soon have two additional all-new Transition Units created in the school system to meet the growing demand if additional resources can be secured by working again with EKCEP and Daniel Boone DC.

Hoskins takes care to point out that demand is not a commentary on the effectiveness of the teaching in the county’s high school. Rather, society has changed to the point where traditional approaches to education no longer can effectively reach each student. Leaving just one of those children behind because of that shift, he said, is not acceptable.

“What people have to understand is that there is no traditional child anymore, and there’s no such thing as a traditional classroom,” Hoskins said. “There are differences out there in each and every student that we as educators must recognize now, and we have to meet their individual needs.”

Hoskins also knows that for every student like Jeremy and Ursula, there are plenty of others who haven’t gotten to the point of seeking help in their academic struggles. As successful as the Transition Unit has been so far, he said he won’t be satisfied until the program reaches out to those students as well and helps them achieve what they might have convinced themselves they can’t.

“Perception is reality for these kids until you change their perception,” Hoskins said. “If they feel like school is not for them, that’s the way they’re going to see it no matter what.

“When they come out of the Transition Unit, their eyes are opened, they know where they want to go and they have a clear vision on how to get there. They see that they have a future, and it can be full of success rather than failure.”