Too cool for (regular) school

By Teylor Young
UC Collaborative School

I’m writing this article to let everyone know — I QUIT SCHOOL!

Just kidding.

I didn’t really quit school. I just quit going to Capital High School.

Now I’m in the collaborative school program at the University of Charleston. The University Collaborative School was said to have started as a drop-out prevention program, but it’s more like a haven for certain kids in the school system — kids who aren’t being challenged enough, who are being bullied or having other problems with peers and kids who just aren’t focused enough at their high school to get their work done. That last one was me.

At the beginning of the 2005-2006 school year, I was a freshman at Capital High coming from Horace Mann Middle School. When school started, I told myself that I was going to stay focused — get my work done first and play later.

Then, I went to my first class.

I had U.S. History 1900. There were 20-25 kids in my class. Instead of doing my work, I was socializing with all the new kids I was meeting. I was putting off all my homework (which I hardly had any of the previous year) and not doing very well with the deadlines that were given to me. I went from having a 3.6 GPA at Horace Mann to having a 2.2 at the end of the first semester at Capital.

Near the end of the year, my mother and I began searching for an alternative to Capital. We were looking for something that didn’t involve me dropping out or my mother home-schooling me. A friend of my mother’s recommended the collaborative school program to us.

She said her own children were benefiting from the program. They were taking college and high school courses and could probably graduate at least a semester earlier than their classmates.

Soon after, I went to my counselor at Capital and got the contact information for the coordinator of the collaborative program. I called her and told her I was interested in her program.

She told me that I needed to have a portfolio ready and prepare for an interview with her. A week later I had an interview in her office at UC and about two weeks later I got the call that I was accepted.

I haven’t looked back since.