Yahoo Autos Dream of earning diploma achievable, even while incarcerated
Thirty-eight men and women incarcerated in the Utah State Correctional Facility graduated from high school Monday. The 25 men and 13 women were the first to graduate from South Park Academy at the new prison complex on the far western edge of Salt Lake County.
Among them was Jose Rios-Mojica, who at age 56 realized his long-time desire to earn a high school diploma.
“It’s like dreaming. It’s a dream that came true,” said Rios-Mojica.
Raised by a single mother in Mexico, he and his brothers and sister experienced frequent moves, which meant the children attended multiple schools and often not for long. He managed to finish junior high but there were multiple barriers to furthering his education, particularly after entering the United States, where he had a limited command of English and after being incarcerated.
In prison, there were many negative influences that discouraged him from taking the next step.
“I feel a lot of people here push you down. Let’s say you try to like going up a ladder and they bring you down because they want you to be part of them, of the same group in here. I just gave up my weakness and I said ‘No. This is enough. I’m not going to be like everybody.’ I don’t compare myself. I don’t judge but I decided I’m not going to go through what everybody does. I want to be different. I want to start a new path. I decided to enroll in school when I saw the opportunity,” he said.
Now that Rios-Mojica has completed high school, his next goal is to enroll in Salt Lake Community College in August.
Like his classmates, earning his high school diploma was not a linear path.
COVID-19 disrupted in-person learning at South Park Academy so many students completed packets to work toward their diplomas. Some of the graduates, who had begun serving their sentences in the Draper prison complex, were among the mass relocation of incarcerated men and women to the new Utah State Correctional Facility in July 2022. The name of the academy will soon be changed to better reflect its new location.
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There are more typical disruptions to programming at the prison such as occasional COVID-19 outbreaks, technology glitches or occasions that units have been temporarily closed due following fights among inmates or assaults on corrections staff.
Rios-Mojica was one of four student speakers — two men, two women— who addressed the audience of friends and family in the prison visitation center just inside the facility’s gates Monday morning.
This was the inaugural year of the academy at the new corrections complex and the first year it was under the auspices of Salt Lake School District. Due to health protocols related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Monday was the first in-person graduation ceremony at the prison since 2019. The graduates ranged in age from 22 to 56.
Fourteen of the 38 graduates are repeat offenders. School district officials hope earning a diploma will help end the cycle of recidivism and enable the other students to be successful upon their release from prison.
Previously, Canyons School District provided instructional services to incarcerated men and women at the former state prison in Draper. Three of the Canyons District educators sought employment in the Salt Lake City School District so they could continue to work with incarcerated students.
The team of seven educators teach in classrooms like no other, with some of their students performing on the level of high school seniors while others start the academy with a third-grade mastery of reading and math.
“You just got to help build them both up at the same time,” said South Park Academy Principal Chris Sullivan, explaining that the academy’s teachers are skilled at differentiating their instruction to meet students’ individual needs.
Teaching high school in a prison setting “requires a huge, huge heart. It’s not like a traditional K-12 situation. We deal mostly with adults. You get a lot of people who come in here who’ve just been traumatized for whatever reason, whether it’s traumatized by the school system, by being incarcerated or just life in general,” said Sullivan.
”So you’ve got to have a forgiving heart and just realize that these people have if not had the best of the world, and they’ve just got to come in and do what they need to do to better themselves. That’s what we’re here to do is just kind of help them pick themselves up and give them some better self-esteem than what they kind of came in here with,” he said.
Students take significant emotional risks when they attempt to complete high school after failing to complete it earlier.
“A lot of our students, they’ve not had success when they’ve come to high school in previous years when they were teenagers and whatnot. ‘They really kind of come into this whole idea of like, ‘Man, I just wasn’t successful in high school. I didn’t like it. It just wasn’t for me,’” Sullivan said. Some had undiagnosed learning disabilities. Others experienced bullying. Many South Park Academy students have experienced homelessness and other instability during their childhoods.
One of South Park Academy’s goals is to “offer something a little bit different here than what they would get at what they probably were used to in a traditional high school. We have a lot smaller class sizes. It is really focused on building up those skills and building up their self esteem to the point of ‘Oh, I’ve got this. Oh my gosh, like I understand this stuff. Hey, oh my gosh, I made a skill gain. This is fantastic. I didn’t think I could ever do this before.’ So it really does boost their self esteem,” Sullivan said.
Even in a locked-down facility, men and women serving time for an array of criminal convictions had a glimpse of normalcy Monday, as they marched to the podium, with “Pomp and Circumstance” softly playing in the background to be awarded their diplomas. Some celebrated in brief receptions afterward, one each for the male and female graduates, although they jointly participated in the graduation program.
Student speaker Victoria Clown said she signed up for high school in 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. She said she worked hard to complete packets on her own but she relished a return to in-person learning and an opportunity to help her fellow students.
“I made sure that my education was one of my biggest priorities, although it has not been easy. I put in a lot of time and effort to be standing here today,” she said, of a goal that was 15 years in the offing.
“We might, as they say, ‘Better late than ever.’ This is a goal I wanted years ago but life happened. I was a single mother working all the time so my education was put on hold time after time,” she said.
After earning her high school diploma, “I’m not stopping here. This is just a start,” Clown said, adding that she plans “to make a difference outside of being in prison.”
She told her fellow graduates that being in prison does not define them.
“We are not bad people. We are just people who made mistakes and we are here to change that. So fellow South Park Academy graduates 2023, life is not easy. You will get what you put in. If you want (to be) well, get well. If you want friends, be one. If you want change, be the change. Live to the fullest. Try harder than you did yesterday and fight harder than you did before. It will not be easy but that’s just life. So hold your head high and all your goals higher. Congratulations Class of 2023,” she said.
