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I dropped out for a while but finally enrolled in Austin Can! Academy. It was a big change to have smaller classes and uniform but when I am in the classroom the teachers actually teach! If you do not understand something, they take the time to explain things and encourage me to go to tutoring. 

In the past, I never knew what I scored on TAKS but since I’ve been at Austin Can! my math score has increased a lot and my score has gone up 200 scale points. I never took my academics seriously in the past, but the staff helped me to believe in myself! I will be graduating this June and then will attend college.

My home life was a wreck. I never knew a time in my childhood that I didn’t see my mother drinking or having different men at my home after my parents divorced.

I was so young that I felt that I may have been the cause of the split.

Later, I was thrown out of my mother’s house when I was in the 6th grade. I felt horrible about leaving my younger sister behind, but I was just a child myself and went to live with my dad.

My father had to drop out of college to support me.

Overtime, anger issues began to plague my life. I would become frustrated which often times led to getting in trouble both at school and in the community. I was a stubborn student and did not have a true sense of purpose.

After only a month of being a freshman, I dropped out of school for a year. Somehow I found San Antonio Can High School. Later I would come to realize it must have been my fate to land at San Antonio Can, especially being that I can’t remember how I heard about it in the first place.

My first days at San Antonio Can were filled with anger and resentment towards life itself. I did not understand why we did Marquez Reading or FIE let alone why school was so important.

On my 18th birthday my birthday present to myself was to leave high school for good. So I did.

I spent the next year at home, playing video games, smoking marijuana, and not being productive. I wasn’t going to school and I wasn’t working. However, that being said, something good did come from this bad if you will.

During this time I started to become self-aware. I started to realize that I was fighting a battle with my alter ego.

See, part of me didn’t care if I finished school and didn’t see the point in graduating. Yet another part of me wanted to BE someone, wanted to DO something with my life. I wanted to accomplish things and have purpose in life.

After about one year of this, I decided the only way I was going to get there was by finishing high school. That was going to be the first step in my journey to success and living a life with real value and true purpose.

This year, I returned to San Antonio Can with hope, but couldn’t get past my bad behavior. Until Mr. Tribett, the principal, and Ms. Franklin, my advisor gave me an intervention. I was able to not only hear their side, but also take it into full consideration. I was able to reflect on this and better understand my own position in life and where I wanted to go.

Mr. Tribett was the only person that believed I could change. I thank him for giving me that chance.

The next school day the renaissance began, this rebirth was enlightening. To this day I am forever grateful. It didn’t take too long before the staff and faculty of San Antonio Can High School started to witness the change in me.

Since my return I’ve experienced things I never would have imagined. For example attending the Broadway Musical Jersey Boys, participating in Learning from Leaders, Job Shadow San Antonio, and becoming actively engaged in student activities.

Along with all the support the school provides, such as eye glasses, immunizations, mental health services, and a great college readiness program at no-cost to me, I know I will be ready for what’s next. I’ll be able to walk through the doors that lead to the next set of challenges and accomplishments in my life through education.

After graduating from San Antonio Can High School I plan on obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and returning to Texas Can Academies to teach. I believe that the mission and vision of our CEO, Richard Marquez and Chief of Schools, Dr. James Ponce, can reach even more students across our great state, and I’m proud to be a part of this movement.

All my life I have had to overcome problems that I thought would never happen to me. I was born with asthma, and my little brother was born with Downs Syndrome. We are both black males, poor, and grew up in a bad neighborhood; we were born into problems. To top it off, a problem that I am still trying to overcome is the hard fight my mother put up against cancer for ten years leading to her ultimate death. She died on May 17, 2009. It still affects me every day of my life. 

That next year was one of the hardest years of my life. We were poorer than poor, living in Mason Manor trying to make it while my mama worked two jobs. She was then laid off because her employer felt she was supposed to enjoy her last days with her kids. No one could say the words “yo mama” without catching my fist in their teeth. That caused us to do a lot of moving. It seemed every school I went to there was always that one person who would always say it and make me mad. 

By 8th grade my mom thought it would be a good idea to move us to Pflugerville. It was a rough year, but I barely made it through. That summer my mama spent a lot of time in and out the hospital with medical procedures. It was now the first day of school at Pflugerville High. I made it through, went to football practice and ended up fighting with this guy. Luckily, I wasn’t suspended. The next day at school his homeboy approached me and said, “Let me see you do me like that…!” I didn’t say anything. I just started throwing a flurry of punches until he hit the floor. Then the whole football team jumped me in the main hallway. I injured three guys, so they expelled me and from the school district. The school called my mother out of bed to come get me. This only frazzled her more. 

I had to learn to control myself a little more. We ended up moving to some apartments. I transferred to another high school. The first year and a half there went alright, aside from the fact I was still slowly losing my mother. It was starting to be clearer that she would not be around for as long as I had thought. But I was going to school and taking care of business, the most important thing. Soon enough, the second semester of my sophomore year I was kicked out of high school for being an alleged gang member. 

That brought me to Austin Can! for a little while. It helped me out at the time by attending the PM session. In the morning I would take care of my mom, go to school from 12 to 4 and go straight back home to take care of her some more. That gave us alot of time to make memories. I finished the school year at Austin Can! with no problem. The following school year I decided to go back to my home high school, worst idea of my life. One day I had noone to call because I had just checked my mom into Seton hospital for her chemotherapy. That was the day I was expelled from AISD for gang relation and failure to ID. 

For two weeks I was out of school and in the hospital with my mother, watching her fade away slowly. Soon after she was shipped to San Antonio to a hospital specializing in cancer. She died in that hospital May 17, 2009. I made a promise to my mother that I would graduate and attend college so I could be rich and take care of her. I graduated from Austin Can! this past spring and kept my promise to my Mom, now I have to work on the second half of the promise.

His original plan was to take the credits he lacked and transfer back to graduate with his peers; however, once he completed his credits, he decided to stay and graduate. "It was so much easier to focus because the class sizes are so much smaller and teachers have the time to help you one-on-one and I was tired of all the drama" said Gabino. He is on target to graduate 1 year from now.

Giving up should never be used in anyone's vocabulary because giving up should never be an option. I've had lots of struggles in my life and I almost let giving up control me but when you look back on all the passide opportunities in the life it makes you think twice. School has never been really hard for me but its just the way I chose to act, but that all changed when I started my school years here at Can Academy River Oaks.

I have attended this school for three years now and its been some of the most challenging years of my life. The teachers here want to see you be successful as long as you are willing to try. Furthermore there's just one person who always kept me in line, Mr. Tucker; he has made me look at things much more different. When I felt like giving up on school he kept me going. Even though we've had our ups and downs he has always been there for me helping, encouraging me to be a better person. I want to thank him for that.

Ravyn W.