Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Putnam High security guard Rich Peña catches up with former student Vania Torres, now a college student studying to become a nurse. Peña, a Spanish speaking immigrant, is an important part of a schoolwide culture that works hard to say 'I notice you,' 'I'm on your side' and 'I know you can do it.'

By BETSY HAMMOND

The Oregonian/OregonLive

In the spring of her junior year, Vania Torres’ home life went to pieces.

A close relative who lived with Torres and her parents in Milwaukie went through an ugly divorce and custody battle. Arguments raged. Then for agonizing weeks, it appeared the baby from that marriage would be gone forever from the family’s life.

The importance of high school classes receded and her grades tanked. “The mood in the house was really sad,” Torres recalls.

Adults at Putnam High, particularly her Spanish teacher, noticed and gently offered support, she says. Still, she failed the second semester of algebra.

Across Oregon each year, thousands of teens get derailed while on their path to a diploma. No matter the cause, each student who drops out represents a traumatic blow to that young person’s life opportunities -- and one more tiny knock to the state’s economy.

As recently as 2014, one in three Latino students in Oregon left school without a diploma. But the state’s high schools have managed to begin a promising collective turnaround.

In the final semester of Torres’ senior year, her principal summoned her to the office. Both assistant principals and three counselors were there too.

Their message? She was at high risk of failing to graduate. If she didn’t pass algebra, there would be no diploma. She’d have to pull her grade up from a measly 4 percent to the minimum passing grade of 60.

But here was the takeaway: They believed in her. They knew she could do it. And Kathleen Walsh, principal of the whole school, was going to help her, starting with coming to math class with her a few times.

Instead of cut down or afraid of failure, Torres felt buoyed. “I knew that they wanted me to graduate and I had their support,” she says. “It felt amazing.”

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Putnam High students Gabe Kent, 15, left, Alyssa Frias, 16, and Story Ferrante, 15, study for final exams. As at most Oregon high schools, students need to pass at least 48 semester-long courses, including four years of English and three of math, to earn a diploma.

Oregon stands out

Oregon has a serious graduation problem. As recently as 2014, just 72 percent of high school students earned a diploma in four years -- one of the very worst rates in the nation. And among Latinos, the fastest growing group of students in the state, it was even worse.

And no school seemed to have the solution: Among schools with at least 50 Latino students, only a handful got 80 percent or more to earn diplomas in four years and none reached the 90 percent benchmark.

In the three years since, however, the state's schools have managed a slow, steady march to better results. That culminated with the class of 2017, whose overall graduation rate showed the biggest one-year increase in recent state history -- 2 percentage points to 77 percent, officials announced Thursday.

And schools accomplished greater gains with Latino students. The 3 percentage point gain by the Latino class of 2017 capped an eight-point improvement over the past three graduating classes.

At the peak of the pack? Putnam High. Ninety-three percent of its Latino students walked across the stage last June to accept diplomas from Walsh, their very proud principal.

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive

In a Putnam High college-readiness class, senior Andrea Perales has a college application checklist on her desk. Perales plans to enroll at Clackamas Community College, where she hopes to study to become a nurse.

Applying brains and heart

How did the North Clackamas school, where one in five students is Latino and more than half of all students are low-income, make that happen?

The playbook included a conglomeration of systems, programs and initiatives designed to promote student success and prepare almost all students for college.

Putnam is an International Baccalaureate school and made a concerted effort to help all students develop the stance of an IB scholar -- open-minded, risk-taking, reflective, principled.

It has instituted proven strategies identified by the college-readiness-building AVID program, including helping students get and stay organized and deploying techniques that get students to talk a lot -- including posing high-level questions to each other -- during class. Putnam teachers are not kidding about expecting super-organized binders: One of them might just pick yours up and shake it -- and not one paper should fall out.

Putnam has a Spanish immersion class for the roughly one quarter of its students -- some native English speakers, some Spanish -- who've developed bilingual skills since elementary school. And, like North Clackamas's other high schools, it benefits from having a districtwide career center that provides plentiful career-technical courses and a well-regarded summer school program for students who've fallen behind in credits.

At the heart of Putnam’s graduation success story, however, is an entire staff that loves kids and will go the extra mile for them.

The Spanish-speaking campus security guard whose main goal each day is getting kids to go to class on time. The gay white female teacher who connects with boys of color like few others. The assistant principal who shamelessly uses boys' soft spot for making their moms happy as a lure to get reluctant seniors across the line to a diploma.

The school recruits and hires for employees like those, who bring big skills and bigger hearts to a job in which you’re only effective if students sense you genuinely care about them, says assistant principal Ryan Richardson. “It all goes back to relationships. If you have a relationship with a kid, they will work harder for you.”

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Farit Farias attended North Clackamas schools from kindergarten through high school and he is an outspoken fan of the district's strengths.

More than good

Throughout high school, Farit Farias was dominant in front of his team's soccer net, stopping opponents' balls with what coaches and opponents called incredible saves.

But after freshman year at Putnam High, he didn’t show the same confidence and determination in school. He never skipped class, but he just wasn’t that into academics. He wanted to be seen as a cool kid, he recalls. A lot of the time, “soccer is honestly all I would think about.”

Junior year, his grade-point wasn’t much above a 2.5. His parents, he says, were not happy. Second semester, he failed math.

Senior year, Farias was going to need to step up his confidence as a student and his work ethic in class or the diploma would elude him.

Cue Team Putnam, beginning with Caroline Spear, Farias’ creating writing teacher.

A Mexican-born immigrant who didn’t learn English until he started kindergarten in the North Clackamas school district, Farias had always liked to write. Just putting pencil to paper felt right. He thought he was good, but nothing special.

Spear showed him otherwise. He remembers the first major essay he wrote for her. A photograph showed a bunch of young Latino men gathered around a muscle car at a park. Their outfits and hair styles told Farias it was the 1980s. He thought about what he’d learned in history about discrimination and racism toward Latinos and immigrants decades before he was born.

Was it OK, he asked Spear, if he mixed in some Spanish words with his English? And judiciously added some explicit language, to make the writing “juicy?” Yes, she told him. He channeled the young men in his imagination as he wrote. He thought his piece was pretty good.

Spear told him it was much better than that, enthusiastically praising specific aspects of his work. “She told me I have a gift,” he recalls. “It motivated me so much and made me realize I really did like writing. She made me realize I was good at a school subject, more than good.”

He’d never really thought about a job beyond his regular shifts at the local McDonalds. Now teachers suggested he consider becoming an English teacher, and it resonated.

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Farit Farias wanted to prove wrong all in society who expected him, as a Mexican American, to be a criminal and a drain on society instead of a writer, a hard-working taxpayer and a high school graduate.

On his case

One day a note summoned Farias from class. He was to report, it said, to Richardson, the assistant principal, at a room he knew only as the place where lunchtime detention was held. Uh-oh, he thought.

But behind the door was all good -- and not just because pizza was served. Richardson had assembled a diverse group of Latino and Latina students he noticed were influential in various circles at Putnam. He wanted to hear from them during occasional convenings: What was their experience at the school? What could be done differently to better serve students like them?

Farias hadn’t known most of the students well, but being in the group with them felt really good, he said. “I felt more included, more welcome at Putnam.”

A Latino guest speaker in his 60s told the group how hard he’d worked, in Mexico and in Oregon, to become a college graduate and exceed people’s expectations. Trump had promised to build a wall to keep out people like them, called them criminals. Farias feared deportation might upend his family. Listening to the speaker, “I could relate: I also wanted to prove everybody wrong.”

But he wasn’t going to prove anything of the sort if he didn’t get that diploma, and that meant he had to pass math. That’s where Shannon Woodman -- Miss Shannon to her students -- came in. Woodman was his case manager. Which meant she was now on his case. You need to buckle down and do math assignments and study for tests, she told him time and again.

Her advice meant a lot, because she was like him. She was gay. He was Latino. Both knew what it was like to be judged, to be disliked without even being known, to be other. “Everybody loves Miss Shannon,” Farias said. “But that made me bond with her a little better.” He remembers what she told him: “We believe in you. You can get this credit.”

He needed to pull off a D. He did better. It wasn’t an A, “but it was one of my highest math grades ever. “

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Vania Torres, her principal says, was a high school student who didn't realize how wonderful and capable she was.

Following through



Vania Torres felt relieved when her principal pledged to help her get her math grade up so she could graduate. But she knew Kathleen Walsh had a school of 1,100 students to run.

Sure enough though, Walsh or vice principal Ken Costa sat beside her in the school commons during one of her free periods -- then another, then another -- to help her with math.

“That’s when I knew that she really wanted to help me,” Torres says. “It was a big deal … I appreciate it to this day.”

Walsh made a habit of greeting her brightly -- hugging her even -- each day when she arrived at school. And the math teacher-turned-principal expressed so much confidence in Torres’s math skills that Torres began to feel it herself. Her plans to go to college and become a pediatric nurse felt in reach.

Her math teacher offered a deal. All the quizzes Torres had failed would be cancelled out if she passed the big exams that covered the same material and did well on the final.

“I had to study my butt off for the tests,” Torres said. That was something she hadn’t previously been willing to do, given her lack of confidence at math. Walsh helped.

On the final, she scored a B.

Don't Edit

Mike Zacchino | The Oregonian/OregonLive | 2017

Last June, 243 students from Rex Putman High were awarded diplomas. For many of them, that was a very big deal.

Graduation day



June 13, 2017, was momentous for Farit Farias. His parents, two sisters, his brother and brother’s girlfriend, and a clutch of cousins, aunts and uncles were all there at the University of Portland.

Dressed in a black cap and gown, he crossed the stage. “When I heard my name and received the diploma, that was a memory I will never forget all my life.”

The most emotional moment was still to come, he says: Reuniting with his parents after the ceremony, he saw his mom weeping with joy and even his father, ever macho, had eyes glistening with tears.

Vania Torres, now in her second term study nursing prerequisites at Clackamas Community College, has a favorite moment distilled from that day as well:

She walks across the stage. Walsh presses her diploma into her hand. Costa shakes her hand as well.

“They were the reason why I graduated,” Torres says. “Knowing the support I had from them made that a big moment.”

-- Betsy Hammond

betsyhammond@oregonian.com

@chalkup