Participant Success Stories 2010
Nekisha, West Brooklyn Community High School
Nekisha is a busy young woman-a full-time student in her junior year at New York City Technical College with a 3.5 GPA while holding down a job as a paralegal at a Brooklyn law firm. Today, she is actively pursuing her dream of becoming a lawyer, but just five years ago, she wasn't sure if she would even graduate from high school.
"I was going to school," Nekisha remembers, "I just wasn't going to class." Concerned about how far she had fallen behind, the Dean of her high school suggested a night program. A counselor at that program noticed that she was not being challenged enough and convinced her to transfer to Good Shepherd's West Brooklyn Community High School (WBCHS).
WBCHS is a small school, with a tightly knit school community of teachers, advocate counselors and students. Adapting to this kind of a school community was a challenge for Nekisha, who wasn't used to such individualized attention. "It was annoying how the counselors were always on you...but it helped me out in the end!" she says.
With strong support from her teachers and advocate counselor, Nekisha fully reengaged in school and gained valuable job skills and work experience by participating in the Learning to Work (LTW) program. She was placed in a paid internship at the Boys and Girls Club where she was hired after her internship ended. "LTW opened up a lot of opportunities for me," she says.
Though at first the personal attention was difficult for Nekisha, she eventually developed strong and meaningful relationships with the school staff and has since discovered that their support doesn't end on graduation day. She still regularly keeps in touch and reaches out with questions she has about college. "Three years later, they're still there for me," she says.
