Not every student is prepared to deal with the challenges of high school life. A district program is helping those that fail early on to graduate.
Lindbergh senior Kendra Duncan was one such student. She held on her freshman year, but life’s circumstances allowed her to pass only one of her classes sophomore year. With a credit-retrieval program, Kendra left Lindbergh, enrolled in the district’s non-traditional school and was able to earn credits and salvage her grade point average enough to prepare for graduation.
She returned to Lindbergh High School this year as a senior in time to walk with her 2013 graduating class.
“I always heard, ‘You have so much potential,’”Kendra said. “I was tired of hearing that, ‘potential.’ I wanted to reach that potential; I wanted to see what my teachers see and I wanted to be that.”
Kendra had definite unlocked potential, but a rocky family life and approach to school that made it difficult for her to maintain her grades in high school. Previous to Lindbergh, Duncan’s mom, who was a single parent, had a two-year bout with drugs. Kendra’s dad was in and out of her life. She had been in at least eight schools before coming to the Renton School District in eighth grade. Prior, Kendra and her brothers, moved with her mom to a rehabilitation center so her mom could get help.
Bully to ‘saved’
For Kendra, it was embarrassing to go from the rehab center to school every day. She didn’t invite friends over to hang out or share where she lived.
During this turmoil, Kendra developed a bad attitude, becoming a bully and class clown, cussing often, she said.
This was the result of the uneasiness she felt about her family life and her weight, which she was teased about. Such was Kendra’s elementary and middle school life. She was mean to people and would steal sometimes, she said.
By the end of Kendra’s fifth-grade year, her mother freed herself from her addictions. But Kendra’s repressed and ignored emotions around the family’s upheaval would later haunt her in high school.
When Kendra arrived in Renton in eighth grade, she decided to make a change, starting with something simple. She decided to stop cussing.
“I feel like God delivered me from cussing,” Kendra said.
After becoming “saved” at church, Kendra decided to seek a different path. The change proved to be a good one, but not enough to focus her on her studies. Freshman year, Kendra was still a class clown.
“Humor was how I got out of my life,” she said.
Teachers recognized Kendra’s potential and creativity, but did not see those attributes reflected in her grades. Kari Hollandsworth was Kendra’s science teacher at Lindbergh. Hollandsworth called Kendra “very spirited and independent” and remembers her most for making up a rap about photosynthesis, which Kendra performed, in class, on the spot, after the lesson.
“So she could engage with the material, knew the material, wanted to entertain, but unfortunately in school you have to have a product,” Hollandsworth said.
Hollandsworth couldn’t grade Kendra’s rap and she failed all of her classes at Lindbergh sophomore year, but one: journalism.
A fresh start
Kendra’s mom, her main supporter, pushed her to try the credit-retrieval program at Sartori, one of the district’s non-traditional schools at the time. Kendra didn’t want to go, saying she thought that’s “where the bad kids go.”
The first month she didn’t like it, but then discovered the staff was supportive, “like a family,” with teachers who invested extra time in students. With new found success, Kendra passed all of her classes junior year, making up additional credits.
When the district opened the Secondary Learning Center last fall, the non-traditional programs moved there and so did Kendra. The first part of her senior year she completed 11 classes, in four months to get caught up. Typically, it takes a month and a half to finish one class. At the Secondary Learning Center, students can work at their own pace.
Even in this format, teachers regarded what Kendra did as remarkable. Some teachers questioned whether she was taking on too much to return to Lindbergh to graduate with her class, Kendra said.
Kendra wondered too if she could do it and if going back to Lindbergh, without the readily available support of SLC teachers, was a good idea.
A possible task
Kendra felt defeated at the outset, but remembers a teacher telling her that the task was “not impossible.”
“I took that it’s ‘not impossible’ and I kind of ran with it,” she said. “And I come from a Christian family and it’s not just religion to me; it’s like a lifestyle to me. And I – I have to tell you my story the way it is – I prayed. I said, ‘God, I really need help. I need this impossible situation to be possible.’”
Kendra’s workload was overwhelming at times, but taking one class at a time and involving her teachers in her goal made the difference, she said.
“You have your moments when you’re like, ‘Forget this, I’m walking out and I’m going to get me some ice cream,” Kendra said, chuckling.
Instead, she held on and completed three classes her first month of senior year at the SLC. She knocked the rest down one by one, working at home too, day and night to get them done.
There were tears. There were doubts abound too, with a lot of people in Kendra’s circle, wondering how she could complete about two years’ worth of classes in one semester.
“So, I did it and now I’m back at Lindbergh,” said the senior in May, sitting pretty with all As and Bs now.
“I wish I could have learned this a long time ago, but I have learned how to be a student: how to do my work and get it done and take responsibility for my actions.”
Seeking support
Kendra advises other students to not deny their challenges and barriers to success.
“If you’re in a struggle, let somebody know,” she said. “Don’t say, ‘I’m in a struggle, but I don’t want to tell nobody because I don’t want to look like I’m in the struggle that I’m in. Tell somebody if you’re in a struggle because you never know what help you can get if you don’t ask for it.”
Recently at Lindbergh, Kendra returned to former teacher Hollandsworth’s classroom. The teacher, on the verge of tears, beamed a big smile and chatted with Kendra about her transformation.
“It wasn’t her genre, at all,” said Hollandsworth, noting the all-business, sometimes boring diligence needed for the credit-retrieval program. “It didn’t play to any of your strengths, at all,” the teacher said, recognizing again Kendra’s creativity. “And yet, she decided she could get that hard part done, so she could come back and graduate. And I’m so proud of you.”
Looking back on the credit retrieval program and Sartori and then the Secondary Learning Center, Kendra said, “I’m so glad that I went; I’ve changed so much.”
Kendra Duncan will be one of the many seniors graduating in the Renton School District’s commencement exercises June 13 at ShoWare Center in Kent.
RETRIEVING CREDITS TO GRADUATE
This year, the credit retrieval program at Renton’s Secondary Learning Center has served 420 students. Principal Ron Mahan estimates that 40 students will graduate from the center and about six students have returned to their former high schools to graduate. About 90 percent of students at the non-traditional school come with credit retrieval needs. The district had pre-existing strategies at Black River High School and Sartori, before the Secondary Learning Center opened last fall.
This is the program’s first year at the center, but Mahan said that it is successful.
Aside from this program, students, who are just one to five classes behind, can retrieve credits at the three comprehensive high schools: Renton, Lindbergh and Hazen. Other options for getting on track after a bad year of high school include completing high school credits at a community college or getting a general equivalency degree (GED). Also Mahan said that several community agencies offer low to no cost options that help students with both education and “wrap” services for social and emotional assistance.
SALUTING THE CLASS OF 2013
The senior class photos and commencement schedule
