At-risk youth challenged to excel — and they do
By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer
KALAELOA — Robert Watanabe, a retired teacher and counselor, oversees a unique program that extends the boundaries of school life for students at risk of dropping out.
"It works because we control the environment," the 62-year-old Watanabe says of the Hawai'i Army National Guard's Youth Challenge Academy. "Kids are here 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In regular school, we have them from 8 to 3, then they go back to an (unstructured) environment."
The seven-year-old program, which will graduate its 14th class June 16, will be honored April 3 in the nation's capitol by the United Services Organization of Metropolitan Washington as the best all-around National Guard-sponsored challenge program in the country.
Hawai'i has previously won outstanding performance awards for academic excellence (1975) and physical fitness (2000) but never the top honor.
Besides academics and fitness, programs in 28 states are judged on leadership/followership; community support; life skills; job skills; health, hygiene and sex education; responsible citizenship, and post-residential efforts.
"It tells us we're doing good in every category, which is a credit to our staff (of 44 people)," said Watanabe, a retired Army colonel who served 35 years with the Department of Education before becoming director of the Youth Challenge Academy in 1996.
In Hawai'i, the program offers students the chance to earn a diploma if they complete a highly discipline 22-week session, which gives them six credits toward the four-year total of 22 needed to graduate from a public high school. At the end of the session, graduates must choose one of four options: attend college, join the military, go back to high school or work at a full-time job for three months or part-time for six months.
"You can never go to a high school and find this many people who care about teenagers," said 17-year-old Tiffany Timmerman, the daughter of a Marine first sergeant whose attitude about education and view of herself has changed with the discipline she has experienced at the academy.
"I've never done drugs and did OK in school, but I was just going to school to look pretty," she said. "I used to run away just to be with my boyfriend. But I know now that my parents care about me. I wanted to be on my own, to support myself, but I've learned here that you have to earn your freedom."
Timmerman says students are given three weekend passes. "On my first pass, all I wanted to do was be with my family," she said. "We can't wear makeup here, but I wasn't worried about what my boyfriend would think when he saw me without makeup. I don't worry about what people think because this is me."
Nightly mail call is the most popular activity.
"The biggest thing here is to sit outside with snacks and read mail," she said. "I never appreciated mail before now."
Eighteen-year-old Jon-Jay Sabati is the class president. The program's 1,000th graduate — 992 have made it through the residential phase since 1995 — will be in Sabati's class. "We started with 113 and after the first two weeks, we were down to 75," he said, noting he doesn't anticipate any more drops.
"We'll help each other out," he added. "That's what you learn when you come here, that you have to work with others. It's all teamwork."
There's no shortage of recruits, says Watanabe.
