Yesterday: Addicts and Misfits. Today: Graduates
Forty-two young adults pull their lives together and prepare for the future.
Photos
If the walk across the Elks Lodge stage Wednesday seemed to take a little longer, it was because the path to get there was longer still.
If the hugs seemed a little warmer and the applause a little crisper, it was to celebrate making up for lost time.
For 42 graduates of NewBridge 70001, an alternative education program run by the Pequannock-based social-service non-profit organization, Wednesday was the night that all the hard work to overcome scholastic and personal troubles paid off.
NewBridge 70001 Jobs Plus is 27 years old and serves students in Warren, Sussex and Morris counties. The students are between 16 and 21, and have dropped out of school. NewBridge 70001 includes a GED program and career preparation, skill-building and job placement. The staff provides motivation and support.
Educational coordinator Jason LaPaglia said 90 percent of this year’s class passed the GED exam the first try, and all class members passed on their second try.
This year graduates came from Butler, Boonton, Dover, Lake Hopatcong, Mine Hill, Morristown, Mount Olive, Parsippany, Rockaway, Roxbury, Stanhope and other towns.
For Elvis Reyes, 17, of Paterson, who attended Dover High School, the seven months in the program turned him from someone who “was lost in high school” into a person with plans to get qualified to work in a hospital.
Reyes said he will be attending County College of Morris in the fall working toward a degree in radiography.
"It’ll get [me] a job," he said. "I’ll go back to Paterson and work at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and if I can’t get a job there, I’ll be able to work at any hospital. This is a big, huge step.”
Without the program, he said, the problems he had in life and school could have stopped him.
On the side, Reyes said he is a musician, and at the ceremony performed a rap song. He said he was grateful to the staff for giving him the chance and letting him perform his music.
Haley Hathaway, 17, of Stanhope was a heroin addict before she went into a recovery program. On June 15, she will have been clean for a year, she said.
She left Lenape Valley High School after “kind of” getting kicked out, she said. She ended up in a recovery program and decided NewBridge 70001 was the place for her to start again.
“The place changed me,” she said.
She’ll be heading to County College of Morris in the fall with the goal of getting into possibly Rutgers University to earn a degree in recovery health. She wants to work with people in recovery programs.
Keynote speaker Edward Wilson, social worker at the Cicely Tyson School for the Performing and Fine Arts in East Orange, was a former education coordinator at NewBridge.
His message was simple: “Keep moving forward.”
He said when he was growing up, he was told that life was going to be hard. But, he said, for people his age growing up, “an issue was an issue, and a student was a student.”
Students today deal with the same things, he said, but the levels are intensified.
The key, he said, is to answer the question, “What are you afraid of?”
He said, “you’re going to fail, but if you fall on your back, then get back up.”
He said he had a saying on the wall of his office, which says in part, “It is the lights, not the darkness, that frighten us.”
Graduate Megan Kleinschmidt summed up the attitude expressed in the cheers of her classmates: “I can and I will be okay.”
NewBridge 70001 is supported by the Workforce Investment Board of Morris/Sussex/Warren counties, the Morris County freeholders, the United Way of Northern New Jersey, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., Verizon, the NewBridge Fund and community members.
Karen
2:45 pm on Thursday, June 9, 2011
What a Great program! Congratulations to all.
judi
7:19 am on Friday, June 10, 2011
Congratulations to all the students--Keep up the good work--seems like a wonderful program-
Amy
10:04 am on Saturday, June 11, 2011
Thank you for covering this story, it is a wonderful program and the young people are amazing. Unfortunately, the title of the article shows a deep ignorance and insensitivity in regard to stigmatizing these young men and women who have worked so hard to remove the negative labels from their backs. I understand what your intent was, in illustrating the "transformation" that some of these kids underwent, but the use of negative labels to describe them (past or present) is never o.k.
Roseanne Marie S.
6:57 pm on Sunday, August 21, 2011
Thank you Amy!!! I thought the title was a disgusting way to bring attention to this beautiful program. I believe I learned in Kindergarten that a label can follow you through the rest of your life. I think these young adults have enough on their plates right now and they don't need to be called addicts and misfits. I hate to say this but way to ruin a great article with ignorance.
Francis McEnerney
12:14 pm on Saturday, June 11, 2011
What a terrible choice of words for your headline. I hope none of the graduates have an opportunity to see your article. What were you thinking?
Amy
7:30 pm on Sunday, June 12, 2011
Not everyone in the program feels they are misfits or addicts, that was part of the reason they came to NewBridge. Other people made them feel as though they didn't "fit in." But in the right environment, they were no longer "misfits" but individuals with unique talents and insight about who they are in the world. The negative stigma attached to those labels are what we are trying to shed at NewBridge. We teach them to embrace individuality and reject the negative labels that others have put upon them.
Linda
10:15 pm on Sunday, June 12, 2011
OH, come on...REALLY? Of course they were labelled, they resisted the norm! And if, as you say, you "teach them to embrace individuality and reject the negative" then this insensitive headline shouldn't bother them...shrug it off and show everyone how much was achieved.
Mary Vineis
9:03 am on Monday, June 13, 2011
Just wanted to get back on track and say CONGRATULATIONS! to the young individuals this article is celebrating for their accomplishment. Their acheivement may be more poignant for the obstacles many of them may have had to overcome to earn this, but this is their moment. They earned this, it wasn't just given to them. So once again, congratulations and good luck in wherever you choose for your future to lead.
Amy
10:11 am on Monday, June 13, 2011
This is not a drug rehab program - this is not a program for juvenile delinquents - this is a program for young people from all walks of life to empower themselves to move forward. Not all of these young people "resisted the norm" (whatever the "norm" is?), there are many different reasons for someone to leave the traditional high school, and in many cases the schools were negligent in their lack of support. To lump them together in the category of "misfits and addicts" was unfair and unnecessary. There are "misfits" and "addicts" at any public High School, but that title would never have been used to describe their graduation. Jennifer and Linda's comments only prove my point - the title of the article led them to believe something that wasn't accurate.
Linda
7:03 am on Thursday, June 16, 2011
The title of the article did not lead me to believe anything...my own experience with adolescents who drop out to school or who are forced to drop out of school informs me. I don't close my eyes to the diversity of youth and I help them to battle the stigma. I agree that the title should have been better, and it should have been about the turn in their lives that got them through the program and to such an accomplishment. I just don't think the title was inaccurate, only insensitive. Since when was did your program change from working with high risk youth to "young people from all walks of life"?
genesko
11:01 am on Monday, June 13, 2011
My daughter graduated last year from Newbridge. Thank God for Newbridge. She couldn't seem to last even 1 full day in Hopatcong HS, various other program, etc. Without Newbridge, she would never have gotten her high school diploma (which btw, thru Newbridge is an actual diploma, in addition to utilizing the GED test.) Though she would never experience prom, at least she had a real cap & gown graduation. She still has enormous struggles but Newbridge was a real accomplishment that continues to bouy confindence when the going gets tough.
Linda
6:59 am on Thursday, June 16, 2011
Congratulations on that really great accomplishment, hopefully all of you continue to build on the experience to bring better things into her life.
Bob
8:39 am on Thursday, June 16, 2011
A great program that my daughter graduated from. I wouldn't classify her as a misfit or an addict but she was going through difficult times and that made her a miss-fit for the JT school system. She was able to get her GED and begin college classes at the age of 16 !
Amy
9:38 am on Thursday, June 16, 2011
Our program has always been open to young people from "all walks of life." Many of our students don't fit into the "misfit" or the "addict" category.
(sorry R.P. :)
Bob
12:51 pm on Thursday, June 16, 2011
Linda, you don't have to be "high risk" to go to Newbridge. If the current system doesn't work for you it's an option. Sure many high risk people turn it around there, but so do others. Maybe miss fit would closer to appropriate because their path didn't match or "fit" what others expected.
Mr.Clark
10:46 am on Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Jennifer, it's my understanding that NewBridge Services, Inc. is a large organization, and the 70001 program is just one small (but important) part of the agency. The website seems to describe ALL of NewBridge's services, and not specifically the 70001 program. Again, as others have tried to explain, people who drop out of traditional schools, are not necessarily misfits and addicts - it's that simple. It didn't seem to me that anyone was trying to make anyone look like uneducated fools, maybe that was your own doing...? Check out this long list of people who have left traditional school settings -I'm sure many of them (not all of them) wouldn't characterize themselves as "misfits" or "addicts" :)
http://www.school-survival.net/successful_dropouts.php