Pushout by Monique W. Morris

Author:Monique W. Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620971208
Publisher: The New Press

5

REPAIRING RELATIONSHIPS, REBUILDING CONNECTIONS

If you’re more confident, then you’ve got more hope.

—Leila, eighteen years old, Chicago

Heaven had the kind of piercing, attentive stare that responded to your every word. If only she’d been able to focus on school the same way. When we met, it was her first time in juvenile hall—but she hadn’t been to school in five months. She was seventeen years old and was supposed to be in twelfth grade, but as a runaway, she had been more concerned with surviving than with attending school. It was still her intention to join a Job Corps program and then complete her high school diploma, but getting that diploma would prove more of a challenge than she thought.

“I don’t want a GED,” she said. “I feel like it shows that you can’t complete something, or you can’t finish something, so it’s going to be very hard to get a job or a career. [They’ll] say, ‘Well, you couldn’t complete high school . . . so why should we accept you here?’ So that’s why I really want my high school diploma because the GED still shows that you didn’t complete high school . . . I still want to get my high school diploma.”

Heaven had been running away from home for years, staying with friends, other family members, and mainly her boyfriend, who was two years older than she was and renting his own apartment. She claimed to have never liked school and said, “It’s boring . . . and I feel like . . . I don’t know, it’s too many hours. The work schedule and school . . . certain classes you’re not going to use them in real life.”

Like the majority of her counterparts, she knew that school was an important part of her life, even though she did not enjoy going.

“I’m willing to push through that to start my future,” Heaven said. “You can’t get nothing without [an education]. . . . That’s one thing they can’t take from you . . . your knowledge. . . . I’m very smart, and I know, like, through all the schools, I didn’t pass because I didn’t stay long enough to complete them, not because I didn’t know [how to do the work].”

Heaven’s favorite subjects were English and history, and she felt confident about her ability to learn.

“My teachers always told me that I was smart and capable. . . . They always said that when I came, I always did my work and it was good, but I was the type of student that didn’t always come [to school]. Or I came to school and didn’t go to class. . . . Sometimes I would come, like, in the morning and then I’ll leave for the rest of the day. Or I’ll come and then I’ll leave . . . I’ll probably leave at lunch and not come back. . . . It really didn’t matter. Certain periods, like if I really didn’t like the period, I wouldn’t go to that period.

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