TRAINING

Work becomes classroom,
students see application

The job shows the need for such things as math and English and their importance in life.

The two aging houses along Dayton's Frank Street are getting a facelift by students trying to breath new life into their educational careers.

At the Builders' Academy, 225 youths are learning a trade and picking up some of the instruction they missed out on in school. Some are former drop-outs; others have struggled to remain in school.

"We are particularly interested in youths out of the educational mainstream," said Ann Higdon, president of Improved Solutions for Urban Systems. "Youths that have failed a year or more, that may be behavior problems in school, not challenged by the school curriculum, truant. Students that if something is not done differently they are probably not going to graduate."

The program is a partnership between the Dayton City Schools, local building trades associations and ISUS, a non-profit group that buys and renovates old houses for resale to low-income buyers. Ten of the students are from the Longfellow Center's school-age GED program and the rest come from Dayton's Grace A. Greene JROTC Academy.

JIM WITMER DAYTON DAILY NEWS Scott Lunce (left) and Jimmey Prather cut siding for the house under renovation in the background as part of the ISUS building project.

"We get a lot of kids through school who wouldn't ordinarily make it," said Steve Cotterman, one of the teachers who offers school lessons and GED preparation in a garage on site.

Inside one peeling house, Jimmey Prather takes a break amid the sound of sanders swooshing back and forth, smoothing aged wood.

Prather quit ninth grade at Colonel White High School when he turned 18.

"It started in elementary," he explained. "The teachers I had seemed like they didn't want to teach me. So I quit asking questions."

A friend told him about the Builder's Academy and the GED program. Now, he is proud of the $3,000 in AmeriCorps college grant credits he's earned on the job and he wants to study zoology one day.

The students here can see the results of their work by simply stepping outside and looking at a now-transformed neighborhood. Formerly dilapidated rentals are beautifully restored homes owned by low-income buyers.

"They are so proud of themselves. They can see success. A lot of these kids have failed, failed, failed," said Higdon.

The hands-on work and the practicality of learning a trade engages the teens where sitting at a school desk never did. At the Builders' Academy, abstract math becomes very real to students measuring siding or calculating how much concrete they'll need for a walkway.

"Sage on a stage doesn't work for a lot of kids. But get them active. Then they're listening and they're learning," Higdon said.

That theory definitely works for Sean Dudley, a former dropout who is now anxiously but confidently awaiting the results of his recent GED test.

"Sitting down, reading books, I didn't like. I got bored," said Dudley, 17. "I didn't really pay much attention in school. I figure I'd come here, learn a trade."

Higdon estimates that nearly 60 percent of the school-aged GED students will pass the test. She said 84 percent of the students from Greene Academy will earn a high school diploma. The rest of the students will at least leave the program with job skills they can use to earn a living.

And Higdon sees other, less tangible, changes in youths who come to her program just out of drug rehab, perhaps on probation or with criminal records and troubled histories of truancy, homelessness or even prostitution. They seem to thrive on the personal attention they get from teachers who don't intend to let these students slip easily away.

"There's a gentling that happens," she said. "I think what attracts them more than anything is we're like a family.