By Nan Cooper / Staff

What happens to a public school student who gets caught carrying a pocketknife in his backpack, or who gets arrested for vandalism, uses drugs, starts fights or is chronically truant? Is this the end of the road for his education?

Is it the beginning of life as a drop out, with only prison or poorly paying jobs on the horizon?

For those students and parents who are willing to recommit to education, they have a second chance in the Fulton County School System: Crossroads Second Chance North Alternative School Program in Roswell or Crossroads Second Chance South Alternative School Program in East Point.

AT A CROSSROADS

Crossroads North, founded in 2005, is located adjacent to the Teaching Museum in historic Roswell. At any given time, they serve about 100-200 six through twelve graders who have been expelled from their district school. Students attending Crossroads North have either received a waiver of their expulsion from a Tribunal Hearing or are attending because of a court order.

The teachers at Crossroads North have been trained in Positive Discipline Management strategies. The school focuses on social and academic life skills development and helping students to learn acceptable behavior norms that allow them to transition back to their home schools. Students are able to continue their core academic studies in a small, non-traditional setting. The student to teacher ratio is about 12:1, so the kids are truly able to get individualized and differentiated instruction.

With such difficult students, one would expect a strict and dreary prison-like atmosphere, but just the opposite is true. To be sure, principal Dr. Alicia Borishade runs a tight ship. Disruptive behavior is not tolerated and students must wear their uniforms correctly or they are sent home. Ironically, because of the concern and dedication of the teachers and staff, many of the students say they wish they could stay on after completing the program. About 70 percent of the schools’ students successfully complete their program and then either graduate or return to their normal school—with a completion rate of better than 80 percent.

LEARNING WITH A PURPOSE

A big reason for this turn-around is the students’ mandatory participation in the Learn and Serve program. Crossroads North’s service learning curriculum involves its students in volunteer work, community projects and writing assignments by immersing students in projects a full day every week. The curriculum, based on Georgia’s Learn and Serve model, has been fully implemented over the past three years with an initial funding grant of $50,000.

With over 30 active projects right here in North Fulton, Crossroads North has developed the most highly respected Learn and Serve program in the country. More than 100 teachers from all over the U.S. come every year to Roswell to observe the students and teachers and take home some best practices.

ACTION JACK AND THE B-SHADE

The man behind the scenes in all this is Jack Burris. Burris is more than just a teacher at Crossroads North, he is also the Community Relations Liaison for the faculty, working with the teachers to find solutions for local problems that their students’ can address. Burris stresses that the school “wants to be viewed as an asset in the community, not just a place where the bad kids go.”

Of course, every winning team needs a great leader. Of Borishade, Burris says, “She is the conductor of this orchestra of community service projects, the one who inspires us to hit higher and higher notes in every performance and to never settle for less than our very best effort.” Borishade has been with Crossroads North since it separated from Independence High school in 2005 and it would be hard to imagine this vibrant center of learning without her.

 Of all his projects, Burris is most excited about the River Farm, and with good reason. Crossroads is working with Mayor Jere Wood to secure access to a 10- acre parcel of land along the Chattahoochee that the students will use to build a working organic farm. Tasks that the kids will be working on include prepping the land for spring planting, erecting a 100 x 100 yard deer fence, building a walking trail around the entire property, setting up an irrigation system, building mulching bins for horse manure curing, assessing community charities’ needs and local organic gardener’s needs, and identifying the best money crops for the garden to meet those needs.

WHAT ABOUT THE “THREE RS”?

One may ask just how these at-risk kids can take time away from their traditional schoolwork and still be able to make acceptable progress in their core subjects? The answer is that there is a lot of practical knowledge and workplace skills to be gained in these projects. For instance, you can’t build a trail if you don’t know geometry. You have to be able to apply the knowledge from the classroom to use and understand surveying equipment. If a trail can’t have more than a 30- degree drop for erosion control, then the students need to know enough about angles to work that out.

Learn and Serve is not an episodic volunteer program where students log hours. Nor is it a form of punishment. It is a program that offers opportunities for these students to engage in problem-solving by requiring them to gain knowledge of the specific context of their service learning project and community challenges, rather than only to draw upon generalized or abstract knowledge such as might come from a textbook. As a result, service learning offers powerful opportunities to acquire the habits of critical thinking; i.e. the ability to identify the most important questions or issues within a real-world situation. Service learning promotes deeper learning because the results are immediate and uncontrived. There are no “right answers” in the back of the book.

Borishade, the leader and motivator of this team, says, “The standards of focused, project-based curriculum helps our students understand their roles in society, and helps them to realize the cause and effect of their actions and the decisions they make.” Borishade continues, “We will have them give back to the community and constantly reflect on their experiences.”

Burris added, “Each one of these kids is here because they messed up. They’ve lost the respect of their parents, their peers, their teachers and the community. While they’re here, they learn that when you work together to help others and solve problems in the community, you can be pretty great. They get back confidence and respect, and they learn how to work with others. Ultimately, they’ll take what they’ve learned in class and apply it to a problem in their own neighborhood.”

And the best thing about it is: they graduate.