At an age when planning for the future usually means deciding how to spend their allowance money, a group of 13 seventh and eighth graders from Woodland's Lee Middle School looked a lot farther down the road Thursday: Toward college and their future careers.
The students, young men ranging in age from 12 to 15, were part of a field trip organized by a group of Lee teachers and staff in an effort to target at-risk youth and guide them away from dangerous, destructive behaviors.
On Wednesday, another group of 15 young men took the same trip, first visiting the Universal Technical Institute, or UTI, in Sacramento, and then taking a guided tour of Woodland Community College.
"We targeted the kids we felt were most at risk," said Sue Massey, head of Lee's in-school suspension program and one of the people who helped make the field trips a reality after more than a year of planning. "Most of these kids are gang-affiliated, getting failing grades or doing drugs, and they're at high risk of dropping out (of school)."
Massey was one of three chaperones Thursday, along with school security officer Luis Zendejas and school counselor Maria Plantilla.
At Woodland Community College, the second stop of the day, the students saw everything from the student lounge to the library to high-tech multimedia rooms where professors use video screens to teach classes at two different locations simultaneously.
Though they were mainly shy about asking questions - and showed the most visible enthusiasm for the fancy, adjustable chairs in the lecture rooms - the young men were clearly impressed by the campus, and outbursts of boyish giggling and roughhousing were few.
"When people see kids like this out in the community in these numbers, they freak out," said Massey, looking fondly at the students, with whom she has developed close ties. "But just look how well-behaved they are."
Asked what they each wanted to do later in life, most of the young men said they didn't know. Others named various law enforcement positions, and one said he hoped to become a chef.
"There are all kinds of opportunities for all of you, if you want them," Art Pimentel, the college's public information officer and a Woodland City Council member, told the group.
At one point, Pimentel, who led the tour, addressed the predominantly Latino group in Spanish, stressing the importance of education and telling them they were "the future" of Woodland.
Zendejas, whose 14-year-old son Luis was part of the group, noted that for some of the students, the best option might be a trade school like UTI, rather than a more traditional college setting.
Nearly all of the young men agreed that seeing the fancy paint jobs on the cars in UTI's workshop Thursday morning was a major highlight of the day.
Seeing "real people working" was something many of them could relate to more easily than seeing students studying in a college library, one young man said.
The campus tours were a stark contrast to the first field trip the Lee students took this year, to San Quentin State Prison in Marin County.
Those trips marked the start of Lee's participating in Squires, a juvenile crime-deterrent program that introduces young men to inmates serving life sentences for murder or attempted murder. Unlike the "Scared Straight" programs of the 1970s, the 44-year-old Squires program stresses the importance of education and self-examination as ways to break free of destructive patterns.
So far, 29 Lee students have traveled to San Quentin, and one more trip is planned for April 12, said Massey, a former San Quentin correctional sergeant.
The prison visits were a jolt of reality for the students, a glimpse of the all-too-common consequence of drug use and gang participation. But Massey and her fellow Squires chaperones also wanted to show the kids what could be waiting for them if they chose a different path.
She said she also hopes to take them to Sacramento State University before the year is out, and possibly to the University of California at Berkeley.
"We want these kids to be educated, have good jobs and be proud members of society," Massey said. "And there are different ways to do that."
By the end of their busy day Thursday, the young men were noticeably tired, hungry and ready to slip back into typical, raucous "middle-school boy" mode.
But for most, the trip seemed to have made an impression - an impression the adults looking out for them hope will last.
"It's a crossroad," Juan Salcedo, 12, said of the path in front of him and his fellow students. "You can go the good way or the bad way; it's your choice."
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