Anything but uniform

Alex Coolman

The cake was cut in neat rectangles. Each piece had its own paper serving

basket and was skewered, dead center, with a single plastic fork.

But if dessert at the Back Bay and Monte Vista High School graduation

looked uniform Wednesday, the people munching on it were anything but.

The schools (both are under one roof) and the students who attend them

are unconventional. Back Bay is considered a continuation program for

students whose experiences in ordinary high schools haven’t always been

the best, and Monte Vista features independent study for kids whose lives

are complex enough to require a flexible approach to education.

And in the brief, spirited ceremony that marked their graduation, the

students’ enthusiasm for the idiosyncratic and unconventional was

evident.

In front of an overflowing crowd of parents, friends and supporters, a

few students were recognized for their extraordinary achievements.

But one of them, Monte Vista’s Stephanie Skidmore, used her time on stage

to raise a philosophical question.”What is success?” Skidmore asked the

audience. “Is success to make the most money?”

She thought differently.

“Success is to win the respect of intelligent people and to win the

laughter of children,” she determined. “It’s to leave the world a bit

better.”

Many of Skidmore’s classmates -- judging by the skateboarding shoes that

poked out from beneath red graduation gowns and the spiky haircuts

peeking out from under mortar boards -- had their own, somewhat inventive

philosophies of life.

The willingness of the schools to tolerate and even encourage the

diversity of students’ approaches to learning, parents suggested, was

essential to their success.

Teri Layman, mother of Back Bay grad Stephanie Womack, came outside the

crowded auditorium toward the end of the graduation ceremonies. Sitting

at a table covered in red construction paper and fringed with Mylar

balloons, Womack discussed the changes Back Bay had made in her

daughter’s feelings about education. The school’s flexibility, she

thought, had made a big difference.

“It really gives young people a lot of hope,” she said. “The teachers

here really try to meet the needs of the individual students.”

Erick Maldonado, who cruised through Monte Vista in only three years

while taking computer courses at Orange Coast College, said the small

class sizes and personal attention he received from teachers had made it

easier to get where he wanted to go.

“I plan to transfer to UC Berkeley for engineering,” he said. “And then,

if I’ve got anything left over afterward, I’m thinking about MIT.”

As for Jesseca Mendoza, who had been home-schooled through one of Monte

Vista’s programs, she was just happy to be done.

“I’ve been waiting for this for four years,” she said.