Not without a fight: One man's journey from homeless teen to high school principal

I suppose the dropout initiative we initiated at West Bladen High School in Bladenboro, N.C., began a long time ago.

I just hadn’t realized it yet.

Recently, we spearheaded a campaign to encourage students who had dropped out of high school to drop back in. Our Bladen County Superintendent, Greg Killingsworth, charged the high school principals with improving our graduation rate while reducing the dropout rate. At West Bladen, a school that experienced a shooting on campus last year, the dropout rate was at about 30 percent and growing.

As the new, first-year principal, I took this challenge personally. The reason for this is simple: before I became an adult and an eventual high school principal, I stood on the verge of being one of those kids we know simply as “dropouts”. Each time I see a withdrawal form handed to me by a student who wants to leave high school, I think of freezing rain, a jungle, a desert, canned peas, newspapers, and basketball. Then I hand the paper back, unsigned.

For this to make sense, we must go back to 1988. I was a junior at a large high school in Milford, Mass. I was the seventh of 10 children growing up in a working class home. Things were often unstable and tumultuous for us, as alcoholism and physical abuse became more commonplace with each passing year. Having gotten into a bit of trouble at the end of my junior year in high school, my parents had enough. They decided to pull me out of high school and have me enlist in the US Army. The plan was for me to take a GED test, sign the papers, and ship out for good. The problem was that I liked school. I had been nominated to be senior class president. I was a varsity basketball player. I had friends. My grades were decent. I wanted to stay.

When the recruiter came to the house, he was confused. Certainly he had dealt with students who had dropped out and joined up. However, this recruiter had never been in a position to enlist a kid with decent grades who wanted to graduate. Despite not making his recruitment quota for June of 1988, he refused to enlist me unless my parents agreed to allow me to stay in high school for another year. This was bittersweet news for me: I was going to have another year of youth and a chance to earn a diploma, but I was also going to have to stay in a home where my presence was more of a burden and most certainly resented. Nonetheless, the recruiter put me on a delayed entry contract, preventing me from being withdrawn from high school by my parents. But the deal was sealed: I belonged to the U.S. Army in 365 days.

It was a difficult senior year. I worked after school, managed to play on that varsity basketball team, and stayed out of the house as much as I could. That was the whole point – if I wasn’t there, things would be OK. However, on March 7, 1989,  the morning of my 18th birthday, I woke up to find my clothes and belongings in trash bags on the front driveway. I was told that I was a legal adult and no longer welcome in the home I grew up in because of an argument I had with my father a few days prior. With three months to go before graduation, I was essentially homeless.

I almost dropped out within a week. I still had my job, basketball season was over, and I was able to land a room in a cheap motel outside of town. I could pay rent, but had little money for anything more than a can of peas every now and then. I lost a lot of weight. I bummed rides from friends who would pick me up and bring me to class. I had no energy, and often slept through class after working all night. Going to school was beginning to be a hassle. Despite hiding it out of embarrassment from most, my classmates knew I had no real home, my teachers did as well, and I began to feel like a bit of an outcast. One of my journalism teachers knew my situation, and she gave me a box of pots and pans and a few other things she thought I might need. She did not want to see me drop out so close to graduation. Between the cheap hotel and the eventual  floors of a few friends, I made it to that special day. Despite the fact that nobody was there to see it from my family, I walked across that stage on Saturday, and was walking to the recruiting station on Monday morning. I was a skinny high school graduate, the year was up, and I was on my way to the Army with a diploma.

Four years later, my enlistment was up, too. I was a veteran of Operation Just Cause in the jungles of Panama, as well as Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East. I used the G.I. Bill to help pay for college, and was able to get into a state college back in Fitchburg, Mass. College life was not easy – I hadn’t done much school work in four years. I rented an old apartment just a mile from campus. Books were too expensive, so I spent all night on the third floor of the student library reading encyclopedias and taking copious notes so that I could follow the lectures the next day. I worked hard, making sandwiches, cutting meat in a deli, waiting tables, delivering the Boston Globe, pouring coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts, mucking out horse stalls, and even pulling security in a clock museum – you name it, I probably did it. Albeit a struggle, I managed to obtain a degree in History and Secondary Education, and was immediately hired to teach and coach high school basketball in 1998. A few years of successful basketball coaching combined with a stroke of good luck landed me a job as a college basketball coach at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I. It was a part time, Division III job, but it was a step up.

As a college head coach, I found myself recruiting kids who struggled as much as I did. I liked that type of kid. The poor kid. The hungry kid. The driven kid.  Many were on the verge of dropping out, but a phone call from an enthusiastic coach kept them in school and eventually landed a handful of hungry players with that hungry coach. We played for two collegiate championships which included the school’s first NCAA tournament bid in 2004. However, the fact that the job was only part time led to my eventual resignation, and my reintroduction to the real world: teaching and coaching in high school.

After two more years of coaching and teaching, I was offered and accepted a position as an assistant principal at E.E. Smith High School, a historically black high school in Fayetteville, N.C. They were going to shut the school down due to low test scores and a heap of bad publicity. However, we were able to take the school from a position of 49 percent proficient in 2006 to 82 percent proficient in 2010. High expectations and an emphasis on taking responsibility for one’s own education led to the cultural shift. Dropping out was not an option for anyone who had a dream to succeed. As the three years went on, I was able to identify with many of our kids’ struggles despite the fact that I may have been one of the only white adults they interacted with on a regular basis. We were able to connect, communicate, and share success because we shared a bond that was formed out of a mutual respect. Because of those kids, and that school, I was offered the principalship at West Bladen High School in June of 2010.

It has been over 20 years since I waited for that ride at the end of my parents’ driveway in the freezing Massachusetts rain on my 18th birthday. The kid I was could easily be any kid I see today. I hid it from most people, so why wouldn’t they? Some of the students who drop out today have it far worse than I did. I know this. That is why it is personal for me to give every kid a shot. Maybe I can be like that teacher, the angel who gave me pots and pans. But maybe, as a principal, I can offer more: I can offer a child a second chance at that diploma.  I can be like that recruiter who refused to allow me to be pulled out of school by refusing to sign a student’s request to withdraw tomorrow. I’d rather give them options, like the one I had.

In Bladen County, we can provide students with a new laptop to take home and do online work for credit. There are several ways to get a student to come back or stay in school. But we don’t allow them to give up without a fight. We can offer a specialized schedule to get only those courses a student needs to graduate, even if he has to work in the fields or at the store for some of the day. And that recruiting I did as a college basketball coach…I use those skills to get students into my office, convincing them to come “play” for me at West Bladen High. Many do. I believe my calling is to seek out those who are what we call PHDs: Poor, Hungry, Driven students who need that little lifeline to make it. Kids like I was. Kids who just need a chance.

Equally as important to getting dropouts to drop in is the task of preventing current students from dropping out. This is the second head of the dragon. We created a true Freshman Academy in our building which allows students to be a part of a small school within a school. We went on to create five other small schools within the school. We play classical music as the students arrive. On Fridays we play the Monday Night Football Theme instead of ringing bells. We encourage students to decorate the hallways with class spirit posters and signs. We made a school store and filled it with tee shirts, sweatshirts and hats. We are constantly trying new ideas to create a school that is just this side of typical. And this school — you know, the one that had the shooting last year? — the kids love it. Our disciplinary problems are down. Our enrollment has never been higher. We have a long way to go, but we are becoming the place to be.

And it is because we refused to give up. We offered kids a chance to take their school back. Then we offered other kids the chance to come back to school.

I firmly believe that we all have experiences in life that often make no sense in and of themselves. However, as part of a bigger picture, they seem to interweave and form a story that defines us all.

I am a principal. I am the principal at West Bladen High School, in Bladen County, N.C.

I won’t let a kid give up. Not without a fight.

Because life would not let me.

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Todd Finn is principal at West Bladen High School in North Carolina. Last month, he wrote an open letter to those who had previously dropped out of his school asking them to come back. Since then, at least 49 former dropouts have taken Finn up on his challenge — and people across the country are taking notice.