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Renee School
Based Social Work Programs May 2002
“It helped me a lot just talking to Mr. Moreno. He would explain things to me. When I wouldn’t go to classes, he would come to talk to me and tell me, you need to do this, you need to do that. And it wasn’t lecturing to me. I saw him more as a friend than a teacher. “We would have meetings with my parents and Jess would get my side and my parents’ side, and then he would explain to me their point of view to work things out between us. Things have changed a lot. Even my mom tells me, ‘You have to keep in touch with him.’ She knows that because of Jess, things have changed at home. They believe in me more. They know that if I say something, that I am capable of doing it.” Social worker Moreno remembers the days before Renee’s graduation. “We weren’t sure if he was going to graduate. The last day, he walked into the office looking sad, and I asked him, ‘Renee, what is wrong?’ And then he just let off a big grin and said, ‘Mr Moreno, I made it.’ I’ll never forget that. I told him, ‘I’m really proud of you.’” Renee is attending college and hopes to become a Spanish teacher. He volunteer coaches soccer in a middle school and wants to be a mentor to other kids the way Moreno was a mentor to him. Renee is about to fulfill one of his dreams. He is going to watch the World Cup in Japan.
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Renee
was in danger of not graduating. He was missing classes and not doing
his homework. “I was not lost. I just needed the guidance to make it.”
Renee explains, “I was so fed up with problems at home I wanted to move
out. My motivation to come to school was to play soccer, to get the grades
to play on the team and in college. I needed the encouragement from family,
but most of the time it was, ‘Why are you wasting your time? Soccer is
going to get you nowhere.’