June, 2010
The road to graduation:
‘Somehow, some way’
When he walked across the stage at the graduation of Alternative School students in June, Joey Martinez proved—to everyone there, including himself—that you can complete even the toughest journey if you don’t give up.
Joey Martinez with APA counselor Angela Aguilar at graduation
It was the highly structured environment at APA—the Alternative Placement Academy—that “put the icing on the cake,” he says, and enabled him to graduate high school and enroll in college classes.
“Somehow, some way, I pulled it off.”
But getting there was a tortuous route. He first attended a high school in the East Side Union district, but got kicked out. “I got into a fight,” he explains.
After that, with behavior issues continuing to dog him, he did a stint of entering and exiting the COE alternative schools, including the program at Juvenile Hall. He ended up at Novo, which formerly was known as The Foundry. There he met teacher Mark Shadduck.
“I kinda got real close to Mark. He’s a cool teacher.”
It took a while to get to that point, though. In the beginning, “He was a struggle,” Shadduck says. “He’s obviously an incredibly bright kid, but his behavior ….”
Shadduck is relatively new to teaching in Alternative Schools, and found it sometimes requires more patience than a position in a mainstream school. “As the year progressed, I really saw improvement in Joey—not only in his behavior, but also in his schoolwork. He grew on me, and I grew on him.”
The growth accelerated in the last year of school. Although Joey ended up at APA, that program is right next to Novo, so he was able to stay in contact with Shadduck. “He turned from a pretty immature kid,” Shadduck says, “into a very mature 17-year-old.”
The transformation culminated in the graduation ceremony on June 17, when Joey joined 70 other Alternative Education students in walking across the stage at the Cathedral of Faith's Horton Youth Center Auditorium in San Jose. He now is enrolled at Evergreen Community College and studying to be a registered nurse.
“He certainly has more than enough potential to do well,” Shadduck says. “I hope, being outside the structure of alternative education, he’ll do OK. I think he will. I really think he will.”
Date last updated: June 30, 2010
