LIFE AT LAKE VIEW ACADEMY 2011-12

Highlights From Lake View Academy's Summer 2011 Newsletter

Excerpts from speeches of 2011 graduates:  

My first year at Steinmetz was a challenge.  I was nervous because I was a quiet and reserved person.  But I soon started to make friends and passed all my classes with decent grades. 

 Once sophomore year began, I changed the way I dressed and talked.  My attitude changed too.  I began to be loud.  I had more friends than I did the year before.  It wasn’t long before I began cutting school to go to daytime parties.  At one of those parties, I was drunk when the cops came.  I got lucky, and they let me go.  When I got home, I was still drunk and started throwing up.  At this point my parents noticed my change, and got worried and mad.  I had never been a person who liked to drink.

When junior year came, my attitude got even worse.  I started fighting and didn’t attend school at all.  Marijuana  helped me relax and let my mind wander; it let me forget the problems with my parents and with school.

When senior year began, I found out I hadn’t passed junior year and had been demoted.  That aggravated me, so I stopped going to school completely.  I started to chill with a group of friends who liked to cause trouble.  I started to care less about my life and about everyone else’s life as well.

One day I received a call telling me that a very close friend of mine had been shot and killed.  He was like a brother to me.  I cried like never before because it wasn’t fair that his life had been taken.  He had always been a good person.  I had never before experienced a loss so personal.  It hurt deeply – like a wound that would never heal.

My parents never left my side.  They struggled through the pain with me and then convinced me to return to school.  I was starting my fifth year of high school, and I felt behind and confused.  I didn’t have enough credits to graduate unless I went to both summer school AND night school.   I was working part-time at a grocery store, but then my dad got sick so I switched to full-time.  I took charge and helped the family economically.  The stress got to me, so I dropped out of school again.

A friend from work told me about LVA where he had earned his diploma.  I still wasn’t crazy about going to school, but he convinced me to go visit.  Right away it bothered me that everyone was so cheerful and friendly.  It made me feel uneasy.  I wasn’t used to it.

Finally I applied to the school and was accepted.  Once classes began, I set my mind to focus on my goal – and nothing else.  Thanks to LVA, I gained self-confidence and learned about the Lord and His teachings.  Now, here I am reading this speech to my family and friends.  This diploma is not only for me, but it is for all the friends I lost in my four years of high school.   You are forever in my heart and mind.  

   I attended Senn High School.  My freshman year I went to school prepared, got my work done, and made friends.  My sophomore year, I fell behind by coming late and not doing all my work.  I made poor choices: smoking, drinking, and coming to school just to socialize.  Junior year, I tried my best to pick up my grades.  But again, I made poor choices such as ditching school to go smoke marijuana with friends and coming back high.  It’s strange how none of us got caught – we would leave the building, put a book between the doors, smoke, come back, and the book would still be there.

I went to summer school.  One day my poor choices got me in trouble.  After classes, my friends came to school so we could shoot baskets.  Across from us was a security guard who was also a cop.  One of my friends sparked up a Black & Mild cigar, which we shared.  Then I hopped on one of my friend’s skateboard.  The cop said, “Come over here.  You guys can’t be here now.”  “We’re going to hoop,” we said.

We started walking over to the basketball court, but I got pulled to the side by the cop.  She asked me, “Why were you guys smoking a blunt?”  I answered, “It wasn’t a blunt.”

She called in another unit and the guy searched me, found weed and, said, “Thought you had no weed.”  Man, I’m stupid, I thought.  The cop arrested me and said, “So, it was a Black & Mild, huh?  That’s your defense?”  He put me in the back of the car while the security guard took my temporary school ID, tore it apart, and told me to find another school.

My mother and I looked at alternative schools because no public high school would take an 18-year-old.  I chose LVA.  My first year was great: new friends, teachers, and neighborhood.  The second year was great too, until November when I got into a fight.  I got kicked out but was permitted to come back in the fall of 2010 to finish my senior year.

People have told me I would be a drug dealer, get shot or put in jail, and that I wasn’t going to make it through high school.  I’m here before you to say that I made it!  I proved them all wrong.

Second chances are hard to come by.  I got one at Lake View Academy.  When I first came to Chicago from Connecticut, all I could think about was going home to see my friends and enjoy all the things my senior year had to offer.  Unfortunately, in Connecticut, being the class clown and life of the party interfered with graduating.  A month into my senior year, my teachers and principal decided that I would not be graduating this year.

Last November, after being torn away from my friends and everything else I had known for seventeen years, I didn’t have motivation to do anything – not to go to school, not even to get out of bed.  But my mom told me that we were going to visit a high school which was smaller than I was used to; I didn’t expect it to be this small!

When I first visited the Academy, it felt like a day care center rather than a high school, but after my interview with Anita I realized it was much more than that.  The difference between the Academy and traditional high schools is that here there is no room to fall through the cracks and become a lost cause.  The teachers at Lake View Academy get to know us before they teach us, not teach us and then get to know us, making achievement more personal and fulfilling.  The teachers also prepare us for the difficulties of life and how to cope with them constructively.

As the late Martin Luther King Jr. said, “ The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” 

"You must be the change you want to see in the world." -  Gandhi.

I chose to open my speech with this quote because I feel that change has played a big role in my life.  Understanding and embracing change provides opportunity for growth, and as the quote states, I need to be the change that I am hoping to see in the world.

Throughout my life, I have been faced with the challenge of change – a lot of it.  It was a change for me to move from state to state, but with each move I met a few friends who will be friends for life; I gained an understanding about different areas of the United States that we lived in; and I grew in my self-confidence.  The changes taught me that I am a better student in a smaller learning environment such as Lake View Academy. 

My Lake View Academy education has allowed me to achieve the first of my life goals – gaining acceptance to the University of Alabama, where I will start this fall.  I am focusing on a criminal justice major that I plan to use to become a member of the FBI.

I am excited by the future that is in front of me and am ready to face the new challenges that I know I will encounter as my life moves forward.  I have many great memories of my time at Lake View Academy, experiences in the city of Chicago and my personal growth.  These will provide me with a strong foundation to help me overcome the challenges that my future will put in front of me.

This student did not participate in the ceremony, but he also graduated in June.  Following is an excerpt from his “exit essay”.

I used to be a bad person.  After I had my son, my life changed and I thanked God for blessing me with a child and began following Him.  School got hard for me, but I didn’t give up even when I had ups and downs.  I kept working at it and didn’t change my beliefs.  Now God has opened so many positive roads for me.  If I keep on following and believing in God, I am going to be somebody big and wealthy one day.  For example, I’m going to own my own business and give jobs to those who are in need.  I am also going to teach everyone I can about what I know about the Lord.

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