The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Exceptional triumph
Grad: Adult ed ‘changed how I thought I was going to live my life’
MIDDLETOWN — Poised to graduate Tuesday night, members of the Middletown Adult Education Class of 2018 were told each of them faces a world of untold possibilities.
Clad in shining royal blue caps and gowns in the high school auditorium, the 50 students sat on stage during the school’s 73rd commencement exercises.
Class speaker Enzo D’Amico, 17, went from having a D+ average in high school when he left Vinal Technical High School to making high honors in his first trimester at adult ed — for the first time in his life.
“That was pretty mind-blowing. (Teachers) couldn’t believe I was such a bad student” and found such success, he said before the ceremony.
D’Amico was asked a month and a half ago to deliver the address to his class. In an effort to make it perfect, he revised and edited his speech until four days before the ceremony.
“I was really sweating bullets ahead of time. It’s hard to say everything you want to say in three minutes. To cover 10 years of your life in school into a couple pages is not too easy,” said D’Amico, who dropped out between 10th and 11th
grades because of behavioral problems.
He used to have difficulty in class and felt he was not very bright.
“Teachers keep putting a lot of stress on you, that’s what they want to do,” he said. “They want you to build skills for the real world, but unfortunately, if you can’t do it, you can’t do it.”
During a MAE alumni day panel discussion in January, graduate Bobby Edwards told students a similar story. Edwards, who earned his credit diploma in 2009 from the 398 Main St. facility, failed in conventional high school. “It was awful,” he said.
But his second chance at an education “totally changed how I thought I was going to live my life. For the first time in my life, I had a teacher that wasn’t chasing me or hounding me down,” Edwards said. “It started to become clear that it really was up to me what I was going to do.”
Similarly, D’Amico credits adult-ed teachers for his success.
“It’s just like going to a regular school, but far, far — I wouldn’t say easier, but if they see you struggling, they’re going to work with you. In traditional high school, when you’re not doing well, they don’t assist you very well. They just keep letting you fail and fail and fail. That’s the rut I fell into. I couldn’t get above a D+ in most of my classes,” D’Amico said.
Brionna T. Garry also attended Vinal for a time, but, like D’Amico, didn’t find success there. She eventually enrolled in adult ed with the support of her friends, family and teachers.
MAE hosts one of three Even Start Family Literacy programs in the state, Director of Adult Education James G. Misenti said. Students with children ages 6 weeks to 3 years who attend classes can send their kids to the program. Both “graduate” at the same time.
On Tuesday night, those student-parents made their way across the stage beaming, hand-in-hand with their children, who were dressed for the occasion in brightly colored formal dresses and suits.
Associate Superintendent of Schools Enza Macri took the stage to tell the students a story about her older brother, who had trouble completing high school.
She and her older sister went on to higher education, but “he hit a few obstacles along the way.”
Her brother got his degree through adult ed after many years.
“You earned your doctorate. Getting a high school diploma is nothing compared to what you have,” he told Macri, then asked why she was so proud of him.
Good grades were easy for her, but her brother found it too difficult to juggle school with work, social activities and other responsibilities, said Macri, who said she always knew her brother was the smartest of the three siblings.
“It was the circumstances, not his ability to think … that got in the way. All that stands between the graduate and the top of the ladder is the ladder. You decide what success looks like to you and which ladder to climb,” Macri told the soonto-be grads.
The number of students in a large technical school overshadow those following a nontraditional path, D’Amico said, noting a typical adult-ed class could have as few as five students. D’Amico was the only student in one.
“Like many here tonight, I was sentenced to 12 years of school — at least that’s what it felt like,” D’Amico said, beginning his speech. He called himself a “professional troublemaker.”
“There was always a constant flow of letters in the mailbox from the principal,” he said.
But now, D’Amico was accepted into the General Dynamics Electric Boat Technical Education Training Program as a welder. He starts training in September.
Macri listed the superlatives adult education students use to describe their instructors: “Helpful, supportive, never lets me down, always there for me, understands me, takes the time to listen, and valued who I am as a human being.”
“I’ve never read that from students,” said Macri, acknowledging that “exceptional circumstances” got in their way.
After seeing Common Councilor Sebastian N. Giuliano in the audience, Misenti called out the former mayor for attending every graduation in the past 14 years.
“This is the best one,” Giuliano said of commencements of other city schools and colleges. “This one means more to these students than the others. “I’m not saying the others are not important. But there’s always the sense that it’s a rite of passage. This is an accomplishment. These are people who, at one point probably, stared failure in the face, disappointment, self-doubt, and, instead of that being the end of the line for them, they figured out another way to get it done.”
The Middletown Adult Education Class of 2018:
Michael A. DiMauro, Robin A. Dorbuck, Jesse Manemeit and Crystal Morin earned their National External Diplomas.
Jerry Addo, Spogmai Z. Akberzai, Jadna Doko, Cody P. Dorazio, Rhoze M. Faraci, Damien J. Graichen, Matthew Kosky, Marc E. Maxi, Kevin M. McCarthy, James E. Ricker Jr., Robert M. Russell, Robert D. Stakey, Walter P. Tixi-Vasquez, Ewa Tyszkiewicz and Nancy Varela received their GEDs.
Ariana M. Brown, D’Amico, Daniel G. Demelis, Tyler J. DePaolis, Jovanni M. Diaz, Garry, Jessica A. Goossens, Chad M. Harley, Ardejah T. Hayes, Sarah LaPlant, Thomas J. LeBlanc Jr., Tiffany M. Lopez, Jonathan M. Lord, Dylan C. Ous, Summer S. Pichardo, Hallie M. Pollard, Meghan T. Randazzo, Michaela Rubino, George L. Sanchez, Savannah O. Sheaffer, Jack T. Sienna, Daniel W. Stewart, Traymeshia L. Story and Jennifer R. Thomas accepted their adult high school credit diplomas.