Nine Alternative Education Center Students receive diplomas at graduation ceremony

Cedric Moore was causing trouble, heading for trouble.

He was in seventh grade and on his way out the door.

Moore was sent to the Cape Girardeau Alternative Education Center, a move that changed his life.

On Friday evening, Moore joined eight classmates on stage at the Cape Girardeau Central Junior High School auditorium, all at-risk students who had just earned their high school diplomas.

Carla Fee, alternative center director, told a crowd of some 75 people -- family, friends, teachers -- that among the young graduates before them were several who have taken their ACTs, some who already are employed and at least one pursuing a military career.

"We are so, so proud of them and what they've accomplished and where they are going," Fee said. "At this time, I'd like to present to you the graduating class of 2011."

It was a graduation of sorts for Fee, too. In July, she begins her new role as principal of Central Junior High.

"I've gotten to know so many of these students and their families," she said. "We've created a lot of good relationships and met a lot of good people, people trying to do the right thing and who want their kids to have an opportunity they didn't have."

Assistant superintendent Pat Fanger handled the honors, reading the names of the nine graduates as they walked up the steps and onto the stage. Fanger thanked the families and teachers who have stood by the students through good times and bad.

A total of 24 students have earned their diplomas this month through the center, a tad under the typical 25 to 30 spring graduates.

Moore said it felt wonderful on that stage, just knowing he was finishing. His life spreads out in front of him in fields of opportunity. He's got a job lined up at Southeast Hospital, scheduled to start May 23. It's only the beginning. Moore wants to pursue a career in health care as a respiratory therapist, a dream stoked at the education center. Not bad for a young man who admits he once "caused a lot of trouble" in "regular public school." The Alternative Education Center, he said, felt right, from the beginning.

"It's like a family," he said.

In the audience was Moore's role model -- his big sister Candace Grant, an alumna of the center. She, too, struggled in the regular school environment, and found success in the smaller classroom setting. Fee calls Grant one of the school's greatest success stories. She's a wife, a mother and a nurse's aide at Southeast Hospital.

"I work full time all the time," Grant said, adding that she is thinking about going to college to get her nursing degree. Now she and her brother are the role models for four younger siblings, all, Grant said, moving on the right track to graduation.

Martia Lewis, 17, didn't just graduate, she is a proud member of the high school honor roll. She said she struggled at Central High School, for many of the same reasons as many of her classmates -- bigger classes, distractions and the feeling that she didn't belong there.

"I felt like they cared here," Lewis, 17, said of the center.

She's hoping to join the Air Force. If that doesn't pan out, she wants to be an X-ray technician.

Lewis offered some advice to students who struggle, students deemed "at-risk."

"You can do it," she said. "Don't ever give up."

mkittle@semissourian.com

388-3627

Pertinent address:

1900 Thilenius St., Cape Girardeau, MO