Wasatch Alternative High School graduation celebrates students who overcame adversity

During the Wasatch Alternative High School graduation, educators and families celebrated 48 students who received their diplomas despite the personal and academic challenges they had faced.

Among the students Friday was Alistair VanRoosendaal, an aspiring musician who looked the part with his flowing brown hair, pink velvet suit jacket and wealth of jewelry pieces, each with a special meaning — even the necklace of strung-together Goldfish cracker bags, which his siblings made for him. 

VanRoosendaal has been at the Alternative High School for one year. He said he’s learned more in that year than in his first three years at Wasatch High School.

“I never felt like a curriculum was being shoved down my throat. It felt like I was learning what I needed to learn in order to be who I needed to be. … I think every teacher is incredible. I don’t like calling them teachers because they’re friends,” he said. “I don’t feel like it’s just a school, and I don’t feel like it’s just a place to go hang out and goof off, because it’s the perfect marriage of the two.”

The Alternative High School, held at west campus, provides intervention for students in need of extra attention and guidance outside of a traditional classroom environment. 

“A lot of kids obviously come for different reasons, but we have some that are just so credit deficient that recovering credits at main (campus) while earning credits gets to be super daunting,” explained Administrator Amanda Edwards. “Kids will also come with family trauma or anxiety, depression, reasons that keep them out of main campus right now. It’s 2,700 kids (at main campus). It’s overwhelming, busy, daunting. The classes there are 80 to 90 minutes, and we run on a much shorter, 50-minute class schedule.”

During the ceremony, each graduate was introduced by a teacher who had tracked their progress to ensure they made it to graduation. Unlike a traditional graduation, each of the nine teachers also shared thoughts about each student after reading their name.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, though many tried to hold back their tears. 

Teacher Lindsey Jacobsen, for example, began announcing names in an even tone, but the steely-faced facade didn’t last as she spoke about students like Anthony Gonzalo Rodriguez Batalla, a budding barber who calls Jacobsen his “school mom.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, choking up, to which a graduate shouted from onstage, “You’ve got this, Ms. Jacobsen!”

Teacher Paul Smith was also emotional as he addressed Sandybel Reyes Dominguez.

“Sandy, when I first met you, you wanted nothing to do with school or with me. However, over the last few years, I’ve seen miraculous change, like the caterpillar and the butterfly,” he said. “It’s been one of the great blessings of my life to see this transition.”

He took a more jocular tone with Antonio Saucedo Tapia.

“Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony,” Smith sighed after reading his name. “I’ve lost a lot of sleep over getting you to graduation. We went back and forth so many times about what work you needed to do and the time you needed to get everything done. Every time, you’d say you’d do it, and you did.”

He used the same routine on the following graduate, Collin Coomes.

“I’ve never lost more sleep over anybody but you. I’ve also lost six pounds,” he jested.

Smith wasn’t the only one with jokes. 

“I’m going to be honest. In a way, Caston (Spear) was a disappointment,” teacher Derek Brooks said. “Because he’s such a hard worker, he ended up finishing many of his credits earlier than expected, and this meant that I got to experience less of our meaningful conversations before, during or after class this past year.”

One of the 48 graduates was given special recognition by school board President Kim Dickerson.

Dickerson began by telling the story of Cory Hanks, a Charleston resident who died in 1955. Hanks lost both hands and became blind after a box of blasting caps exploded while he was working the gold mines in Nephi to pay for his tuition to Stanford University. After the accident, he pursued his education anyways, becoming an author who gave 6,670 lectures throughout his life.

Dickerson quoted a passage from Hanks’ autobiography, “Up From the Hills”: “Tears shed through trials should be tears of joy, for scars grow together stronger than before.”

Dickerson then awarded a surprise $5,000 scholarship in Hanks’ name to Josie Perez, who will be studying nursing at Utah Valley University in the fall. 

Perez had been one of five graduate speakers and told the story of her parents’ immigration to the United States over three decades ago.

“Their sacrifice became the foundation for my opportunities,” she said. “All my life, my parents told us the importance of school. ‘We have no choice but to work with our hands for the rest of our lives. You have an opportunity to work with your brain.’”

Education was the “job” Perez and her siblings were tasked with, but her first three years of high school were “rough.”

“Transferring to Alternative may be seen to many as a setback, but for me, it was a turning point. It gave me a chance to reflect and to rebuild,” she said. “It gifted me with teachers who saw me, who believed in me and who pushed me to believe in myself again. … Anyone can handle assignments and show up to teach a class, but it takes something much deeper to truly change a student’s life. It takes a person with a genuine and compassionate heart to look beyond the grades, the struggles and the setbacks, (and) continue to see potential, to choose encouragement over judgment, patience over frustration, belief over doubt.”

Using Perez as an example, Dickerson said that each Alternative High School graduate’s story is not defined by strife. Rather, each story is defined by “resilience, determination and hope” — qualities that will guide the graduates as they write the next chapters of their lives.