THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 17, 1996 TAG: 9606170035
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 164 lines
It doesn't really matter what grade the students in Cassandra Brooks' class at Oscar Smith High School earned on their final exams. By the last week of school, they'd already met Brooks' primary criterion for passing the class: None became pregnant.
That warrants an A-plus in Brooks' grade book. Because each of the 18 girls in her class - ranging in age from 16 to 19 - already has at least one child.
In Brooks' eyes, that's one child too many.
Disturbed by the pregnant teenagers she teaches at Oscar Smith, concerned about the future of their babies, this 33-year-old home-economics teacher persuaded Chesapeake school officials last year to let her start a special class for teenage mothers.
The goal: Keep teenage mothers in school through graduation, teach them good parenting skills, and help them learn how to balance job and family.
Brooks had her own goal: Ensure there would be no more babies until the moms became women, with careers, husbands and bank accounts.
On Friday, 18 of the original 19 girls who started in Chesapeake's first GRADS program - Graduation, Reality and Dual-role Skills - finished the class. One girl moved away. All of the class' 12 seniors graduated and eight have been accepted to college.
The GRADS program isn't new in Hampton Roads. Suffolk has offered GRADS classes for two years, Portsmouth since 1989. Virginia Beach and Norfolk don't offer it, but have special schools for pregnant teenagers.
The program is new for Chesapeake, which had 479 teenage pregnancies in 1994. Also unusual is the way Brooks teaches it - emphasizing college and career as well as parenting skills.
As she reflects on her success with the students she calls ``young ladies,'' Brooks allows herself a smile. For just a few minutes she feels she's made a difference in the grim realm of teen pregnancy.
Then she thinks about another group of mothers at Oscar Smith. Eighteen girls who, because of space limitations, didn't get into the GRADS program.
Of the 12 seniors in that group, only five are graduating. Overall, they had a grade-point average of 1.2, compared to the 2.02 average in Brooks' class. They missed an average of 28 school days, compared to the GRADS group's 12 days.
Most discouraging: Four girls are pregnant again.
Brooks thinks about the 69 girls up for the 15 spots available in her class next year. About the continual march of pregnant girls into her classroom, saying, ``Miss Brooks, can you help?''
And her smile fades.
Oscar Smith High School had 55 teenage pregnancies this year, one of the highest among Chesapeake schools.
Overall, about four out of every 100 teenage girls in Chesapeake became pregnant during 1994, the latest year for which figures are available. Regionally, about five out of every 100 girls became pregnant that year.
Brooks has heard all the excuses. ``I forgot to use birth control.'' ``I didn't think it could happen the first time.'' ``I was in love.''
The reasons don't matter. Brooks knows she can't change what's already happened. But she can change what's going to happen.
Her job is to show these girls options beyond McDonald's and welfare.
To challenge the statistics that say teen mothers are less likely to complete high school and are disproportionately poor. That their babies generally score lower on tests and are more likely to become teen mothers themselves.
To destroy these stereotypes, Brooks tries to provide her girls with weapons: education, high self-esteem, and concrete, achievable goals.
She also gives them her energy and her heart.
The slim, tall woman with burnished black hair and gold-rimmed glasses is more than a teacher to these girls.
She is their mother, their friend, their counselor.
She drives her gray van to their homes if they miss school. Plays interpreter with hurried doctors when their babies get sick. Meets them in the emergency room.
She helps them complete the crushing paperwork of college applications and financial-aid forms. Makes sure they take their SATs. Coordinates with the bureaucracy - Medicaid, Social Services, the Health Department - to get them the benefits they need.
``She is with them 24 hours a day,'' said Darcy Cromer, a GRADS board member and coordinator of the women's health center at Chesapeake General Hospital.
``She is the program.''
The young mothers say she is a beacon of hope. They joke with her, show off their prom pictures, call her ``Brooks.''
``She makes us feel special,'' says 17-year-old Samantha Jones, who has a 6-month-old daughter. ``Not like a statistic.''
To Mandy Johnson, 16, whose 11-month-old daughter was born with severe birth defects, Brooks has been a lifesaver.
Johnson says she probably wouldn't have stayed in school without Brooks' support because the stress of a sick baby was so overwhelming. When she was dropped from school rolls, after missing nearly 50 days of school because of her daughter's hospitalizations, Brooks helped her get re-admitted.
Brooks stumbled onto the GRADS program last year while researching her thesis for her master's degree. The topic: the relevancy of work and family studies programs - commonly known as home economics - in the public schools.
Amid the profusion of classes on cooking, sewing and nutrition, she discovered GRADS, part of a national effort developed and administered by the U.S. Department of Education.
Supported by then-principal Glenn L. Koonce, she took her proposal to the administration.
The need quickly became obvious: More than 200 students applied for the class' 15 slots.
The students - boys and girls - completed a questionnaire, underwent a rigorous interview and brought teacher references. Brooks limited the class to females, since they were the babies' primary caregivers, but even then she was hard-pressed to narrow the list.
``I just couldn't say `no' to some of these girls,'' she said, explaining the extra four who were accepted.
The class has a curriculum with specific goals. But this is not a course of multiple-choice tests and right-and-wrong answers.
It is a class of concepts.
To teach those concepts, Brooks relies on a freewheeling conversational style delivered in her drawling, honeyed accent.
``Write this down,'' she instructed her class one day late in the school year.
``Economic independence means you are employed and you have enough earnings to provide the necessities of life.''
It means you don't get welfare. Or food stamps. Or WIC.
It means you go after your baby's daddy for child support. That you have a career, a substantial paycheck and benefits.
No topic is off limits in this class, and the discussions Brooks leads skim over the deep waters of sex, birth control and even abortion.
She uses her own family - which includes a husband, three kids and two foster children - as examples, and herself as a role model.
``I want them to see that the person they see me to be today is something that's reachable for them,'' she says, explaining her non-traditional teaching style.
So she tells them that she didn't go to college until she was 25.
That she was married and had three kids by the time she was 22. That she didn't ``do all the right things.''
She wants them to see that she set her own goals and improved - and that she expects they can, too.
Brooks will teach another 15-slot GRADS class in the fall. She wanted to add an advanced GRADS class next year for juniors like Johnson, but the school administration said no.
Although he praised the success of the GRADS program, James Rayfield, Chesapeake's director of secondary curriculum and instruction, said the girls' needs can be met just as well with an existing vocational class instead of an advanced GRADS class.
However, if the demand is there, he says, the school system could add another first-level GRADS course.
Brooks is disappointed that her efforts for another class have stalled, but she's not discouraged.
More GRADS classes will come, she says. They have to.
By giving these young mothers goals, says Brooks, she helps them knit together the pieces of their lives and envision a future.
And then, she says, ``They can feel good about themselves for something other than being in some man's arms.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Student Samantha Jones, with her daughter, Kaitlyn, and her
boyfriend, Drew Sellers.
Cassandra Brooks
Photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
``I want them to see that the person they see me to be today is
something that's reachable for them,'' says Cassandra Brooks, who
teaches a class for teen mothers at Oscar Smith High. Brooks tries
to provide her girls with education, high self-esteem, and concrete,
achievable goals.
KEYWORDS: TEENAGE PREGNANCY by CNB