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Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009

Former student left ‘wrong crowd’ for path to success instead

WARNER ROBINS — Pete Kelly made a lasting impression on his teachers 20 years ago at Houston County’s Pearl Stephens alternative school. The favor was returned.

Kelly, 38, is the environmental controller at Frito-Lay, but back then his future wasn’t in such crisp focus.

“I was a student at Warner Robins High School, but I fell in with the wrong crowd and made some not-too-smart choices. Among them was quitting school,” Kelly said. Back in the late 1980s, students who wanted to return to school after quitting had to spend at least their first semester at the alternative school. Kelly stayed for two years.

“I had already decided I wanted to graduate,” he said. “I did better at Pearl Stephens because I was away from certain elements.”

Those “certain elements” were students he once hung around with, he said, but he already knew his future depended on him sticking with a plan to first graduate and earn more money.

Kelly said he was already working in low-paying jobs such as mowing lawns, washing dishes or cleaning tables at a restaurant, and he had had enough.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I just knew that I didn’t want to be a bum,” he said. “I knew I didn’t want to be slinging dishes or slinging everybody’s slop for a living.”

The “short story,” as he calls it, is that Principal Danny Carpenter and teachers Jean McDonald and Martha McKenzie “helped me, encouraged me, and punished me when I needed it.” They helped him get a temporary job at Eddie Wiggins Ford and helped him write a resume for Frito-Lay.

“I finally graduated, got the job at Frito-Lay and have been there nearly 20 years,” he said. In the past two decades he’s gone on to earn a bachelor’s degree in business management, get married, have three children and move up to his current position. He just wants to say a thank-you to his teachers.

“I want to recognize my teachers whose assistance helped sustain me and my family so much over the years,” Kelly said. “The teachers at Pearl Stephens saw that I was striving, but I was not the model student. I got to know them.”

Even with the passage of time, Kelly was easily recalled by Carpenter and McDonald.

“Oh yes, I remember him,” said Carpenter, now retired as Houston County school superintendent. “He was a nice kid.”

Carpenter helped start the work-study program at Pearl Stephens, which in turn helped start Kelly on his way to success.

McDonald, who said she was “thrilled” to hear about Kelly, recalled him in a way perhaps not too many alternative students would like to be described.

“I think it’s just fantastic,” she said. “He was a troubled but sweet boy.”

That Kelly was able to turn his life around and be an asset to the community is reward enough for teachers, she said.

“Those are the ones who make it worthwhile,” she said. “It’s great to have students who remember you and thank you.”

McDonald, a retired 30-year educator, taught at the alternative school for nine years. Teaching troubled youths requires more than just covering material in textbooks, she said.

“It’s a big job, not just an 8-to-4 job,” she said. “You have to be available to them at all times.”

In a regular classroom a teacher might have one bad egg, she said, but at an alternative school you’re dealing with a classroom of bad eggs.

“You have to have patience, try to understand their problems and go on from there,” she said. “You have to do your job with a lot of love, let them know you love them despite the mistakes they’ve made.”

It’s sort of a “tough love” approach.

“You have to be firm and realize their self-worth is in the pits,” McDonald said. “You reach the child first, then teach the material. And you’re not going to get there overnight.”

Carpenter, who had been football coach and athletic director at Northside High, said he applied to be principal at the alternative school in the 1980s because it was a route to holding administrative jobs, which at that time did not come very often. The experience changed him, he said, and he helped change the experience of going to an alternative school.

“I first had the attitude ‘I’m a tough guy and I’m going to straighten them up,’ ” Carpenter said, “but I quickly came to the realization that they’re just kids who’ve got a lot going on in their lives. So I asked if I could make the school more into a help, not a punishment, for them.”

He helped develop an open campus environment for the school that became a model for the state, he said.

With the help of fellow educator Charles “Toby” Hill, who is now the school board vice chairman, Carpenter was able to secure a grant for a community service program. Students volunteered for tasks such as reading to residents of a nursing home, among other things.

“I found out that all of us, adults or kids, want to do a good deed,” Carpenter said. “All we did was provide an opportunity for them.”

MESSAGE TO STUDENTS

As part of his job at Frito-Lay, Kelly speaks to various community groups about the company’s record and current policies concerning the environment. He also talks directly with troubled students.

On a recent Friday, Kelly was trying to make an impression on the 100 or so middle school students at the Houston County Crossroads Center, the school system’s current alternative school.

He has spoken there before, has given talks at youth detention centers and even at the state prison at Reidsville.

“It’s a sense of wanting to give back, to give encouragement to these kids, show them there’s a reason and a purpose they can strive for,” he said.

The young students seated in the cafeteria wore various expressions of disinterest, curiosity or boredom. But Kelly’s message was compelling.

“Look around the table at each other — you’re not going to see them in four years. If you want to make something of yourself, stop playing up to each other,” he said. “I was at a YDC talking with this one kid who was playing up to his buddies, playing the fool. I asked him why was he doing that. ‘Why are you trying to impress him? How is he going to help you out?’ ”

Kelly said he was once where they are now, and emphasized it was crucial to have goals.

“I remember some of the kids I went to school with — one was shot and killed by a shotgun, another stole a car, went too fast around a curve and wrecked and died, another committed suicide, and a girl became a stripper,” he said. “These are people I was sitting at the table with. This is real, this is not crap.”

He said he tends to get worked up at these talks, because he knows the students are coming from difficult situations, such as not having a father or having a father doing the wrong thing like substance abuse or physical abuse.

Some don’t make the change, such as the students he mentioned above, while others come through.

Kelly said he found a Web site for Pearl Stephens alumni and discovered there were success stories such as police officers, an Internet technology worker, a longshoreman in Galveston, Texas, and an Air Force mechanic.

The decisions students make today will affect their future, he stressed, and their behavior will either haunt them as they seek employment or boost their chances.

“If you’re aiming at nothing, you’ll achieve it every time,” he said.

Along with having a goal in mind, another factor that contributes to success is belief in a higher power, he told students.

“How do you find meaning without a creator?” he asked them. “He gives you a reason to carry on; there is a purpose, there is meaning to life.”

Contact reporter Jake Jacobs at 923-6199, extension 305.