Success Story
Life Learning Academy Speaks on Bringing At-Risk Youth Back to School

The Delancey Street Foundation’s Life Learning Academy presented a workshop on “Bringing At-Risk Youth Back to School” at the recent CANEC annual conference to a standing-room only audience—and with very good reason.

With the ever-rising incident of teen violence, delinquency and substance abuse, many parents are looking to charter schools for relief from traditional schools. The Life Learning Academy has a phenomenal success rate with youths who are involved in the juvenile justice system, or at risk of becoming involved.

This charter school’s specialty is turning around the lives of adolescents who have coped with high-risk life issues like school failure, serious family problems, poverty, abuse and substance use.

The CANEC workshop provided charter school professionals with an intimate talk on the Academy, which follows the Delancey Street Foundation’s modus operandi of self-sufficiency, tough-love and pay-it-forward thinking.

Delancey Street has a 32-year track record for turning around the lives of hardcore addicts and felons, and chartered the Academy through the San Francisco Unified School District in 1998, on the strength of that outstanding record.

The Delancey Street sentiments came through loudly and clearly from panelists Teri Lynch Delane and Lt. Mike Delane, both Delancey Street graduates who overcame drug addiction to become Academy principal and junior fire cadet teacher respectively. The third panelist, Nora Juarez, is a recent Academy graduate who now works as the Academy’s executive assistant.

Nora’s goal is to earn a degree taking night classes, so she can counsel youths battling the debilitating depression she suffered when she entered the Academy as a delinquent ninth grader.

All were quite candid about how their troubled backgrounds help them serve troubled youths. Teri told of her former heroin addiction from the time she was a young teen; Mike, of his functional drug addiction during the course of his 20-year fire-fighting career. Nora expounded on the issues that led her to withdraw from home and family when she should have been blossoming into young womanhood.

All three credit ‘the Delancey Street spirit’ for bringing them around.

“I was fortunate enough to have someone who saw something in me that I didn’t, and stayed on me. When I was in the hospital from my third heroin overdose, she helped me recognize my potential and clean up my act,” said Teri.

That special someone was Dr. Mimi Silbert, the renowned leader of the Delancey Street Foundation. And Teri did much more than ‘clean up her act.’ Although she had never been a natural student, her newfound support system gave her the emotional strength to earn two Master’s Degrees and a Doctorate in clinical psychology. The combination of academic horsepower, street smarts and empathy make Teri a natural role model for troubled students.

“Getting clean through Delancey showed me the value of surrounding myself with the right support—with people who believe in me and make me believe in myself,” she says.

Teri actively guided Nora from a withdrawn and academically failing ninth-grader, to class valedictorian when she graduated in 2002.

“There were days when I didn’t even want to get out of the bed, but Teri didn’t want to hear it. She’d just tell me, ‘Yes, you will get up. You will come to school. You get up now, we’re coming to get you,’” Nora said. “She was always there for me. She’d just tell me ‘You’re a good person. You’re a smart person. You can do it.’ And pretty soon, I could.”

Nora now employs the same methods when she interacts with Academy students. “When they have problems, I just tell them how I handle mine,” she says. “They learn that if I could do it, they could do it, too.”

The Academy’s workshop began with a brief, lively video about the school, which was produced by the students themselves. A typical school day runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and includes transportation to the Treasure Island campus by school-operated van, morning meeting, family-style lunch in the dinning room, tutoring and group counseling—plus lunchtime or after-school clean-up if you break any policies and procedures.

Students on the video freely expressed praise for the Academy's strict policies and high standards—sometimes in earthier language than is sanctioned by the school, but always with a lot of heart. Every eligible senior has graduated and moved on to college, vocational training or full employment since the school was chartered.

Following the Academy’s presentation was a question-and-answer session that covered issues ranging from how to get students to turn their lives around, to how to teach students the skills to overcome dangerous home environments. The audience was eager to hear more about the Academy’s innovative student-based governance, project-based curriculum and Delancey Street guiding principals.

The Academy will offer even more guidance to charter school professionals and others dedicated to working with at-risk-for-failure students, through the Life Learning Academy Institute, six no-cost training sessions on its curriculum and governance.

Through the sessions, charter school professionals will get a rare opportunity to observe Academy students and classes, and talk one-on-one with Academy staff—paramount to those who want to offer alternatives to expensive private school, traditional public schools or over-crowded neighborhood schools.

The Academy Institute’s monthly training sessions will be held at the Academy’s Treasure Island campus, beginning on October 9, 2003 and ending on May 3, 2004. The Institute is made possible through a grant from the California Department of Education, in recognition of the Academy’s success with at-risk students.

Charter school operators and professionals who want to enroll in the Life Learning Academy Institute sessions should contact Academy Administrator Toni Alexander at tonialexander@llacademy.net or by calling 415-397-8975.