Youth academy gives Moses Lake teen second chance

MOSES LAKE — Gavin Mann is glad to be back in Moses Lake.

Mann, 17 and a senior at Moses Lake High School, was making some poor choices and lagging in his school work.

“I was very behind,” he said quietly. “I had trouble controlling myself.”

Mann was so behind in his schoolwork, and so eager to do something about it, that he was willing to take a risk — to follow a special military program at the Washington Youth Academy in Bremerton that would not only allow him to catch up, but maybe teach him a little discipline and self control as well.

“Gavin always had a lot of potential, but he was quiet in classes and not noticed. That’s part of how he disappeared, and he slipped through the cracks. His own choices helped him slip through those cracks,” said Moses Lake High School teacher Amador Castro.

Castro recommended Mann for the program. Beginning last summer, Mann was one of two Moses Lake High School students, along with Monica Cruz-Maciel, to spend five months last year at the youth academy.

“Our mission is to take kids who have dropped out or are at risk of dropping out, turn them around, and make them productive citizens,” according to Larry Pierce, director of the Youth Academy.

The Youth Academy, which is funded and managed as part of the National Guard’s Youth Challenge program, is a completely voluntary program that takes kids from high schools across the country who are having trouble in school and provide them with a disciplined, structured, military environment so they can not only catch up and be ready to graduate on time, but learn some other life skills as well.

But, as Mann noted, the kids in the program have to want to be there.

“No one is forced to be there,” Castro said. “These kids need to want it.”

The Youth Academy is that one place in Washington, Pierce said, where “all the most difficult behavioral cases have been placed into one school.”

“Some of these kids are behind because they are lazy, some do drugs, some are in gangs, some moved around a lot,” Pierce said. “We help them recover credits, and they can do the equivalent of 1.3 years of school in 22 weeks.”

However, it isn’t all about discipline. The Youth Academy also makes sure its students have counseling and proper medical care so “they can deal with things when they get back into the world,” he said.

According to Pierce, the Youth Academy enrolls about 300 students a year, about 150 in a 22-week session that begins in January and another which begins in July.

For Mann, the hardest part of his 22 weeks in Bremerton was learning how to live cheek-by-jowl with 54 other people.

“Controlling myself was the biggest challenge,” he said. “No fighting was allowed. I got better at self-control. There were also no distraction, so I was focused on work there.”

Pierce said that many of the skills the Youth Academy teaches are “soft skills” — grit, determination, self-discipline — that affect academic work indirectly but are important for success in life.

However, the Youth Academy is not a substitute for high school. It is merely a supplement, to help motivated kids get back to where they should be so they can graduate on time.

Like Mann, who is set to graduate this June. Because “college is not an option,” Mann said he is looking seriously at enlisting in the military and considering a career as some kind of electrical technician. In fact, he said, he is taking some courses in electricity and mechanics on his own with the Khan Academy online.

And he is thankful for the weeks he spend catching up at the Youth Academy.

“They are very encouraging there, very beneficial, and really good at what they do,” Mann said. “Discipline gave me a different view of the world. I really recommend it.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com