Black Habits - Getting back on track

(By Moira MacDonald) Rose is a prep school with a difference -- its specialty is helping kids in trouble

How do you find success when you've seen failure a lot more? How do you make others believe in you when you don't even believe in yourself? How do you embrace life -- let alone school -- when the hippest things around are drugs, guns and death?

The people behind Malvern's Rose Program might not put it that way, but those are the themes that drift out when you talk to them about this unique, weeks-old grassroots alternative school. Started up for local teens who seem more familiar with the criminal justice system than books, the program hopes to get them ready for regular school by next September.

It started last fall when Malvern resident Brian Henry wanted to do something for local students who were getting suspended from school, only to get into even more trouble. He contacted the principal at the nearby Catholic high school, Mother Teresa. The Catholic school board offered to provide a principal and teacher, while the Toronto public board provided support staff.

Space was found in a donated townhouse in a Toronto Housing complex called Empringham. The Toronto Police Services Board came up with $30,000 in start-up money. Henry's friend, community worker Jam Johnson, joined him to help lead the program. School started Dec. 21.

"It's a school run by the community," confirms Oliver Carroll, chair of the Toronto Catholic District School Board. "Our part as educators is to provide the education."

The program is named after popular local youth worker Shawn "Blu" Rose, who died last November from a brain aneurysm.

Nine Grade 9 students, all of whom have had run-ins with the law, including several on probation, attend the school between 8:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. to get the behavioural and study skills, attitude shifts and high school credits -- two courses at a time -- that will allow them to return to their regular high schools and stay there. Henry even places wakeup calls to any student who needs them.

"I want to see you here at 8:30 tomorrow," he emphasizes to one student as class ends. "That's 8:30. Not 8:35, not 8:31.

"The police cleaned up Malvern," says Henry, adding that the day of a big takedown, following months of gun violence in 2004, the cops actually ran out of handcuffs. "Where we play a prime role is in prevention and intervention."

Both Henry, 27, and Johnson, 41, have criminal records. Johnson, who grew up in Montreal, decided to quit that life while he was still a teenager: "It was either kill or be killed, so I packed up and left for Toronto."

Henry -- a model student in Mississauga until he was nearly finished high school -- faced his first charges a week after he turned 18, for armed robbery of a bank. A series of miraculous connections led to a summer-long stint on a Cree Indian reserve in northern Quebec where he began to turn his life around.

"I was allowed to rediscover myself," he says. "I was just Brian. No pants, no 'walk,' no bling." It's that experience that has earned them the students' trust -- and trust is a huge piece of the program, principal Peter Barrans says. Henry also makes sure to tell them what it's like to have your heat turned off, because you can't get a job with a criminal record and sometimes the bill doesn't get paid.

He figures he must be the only house-husband in Malvern, looking after two small girls while his wife works. "I couldn't be doing what I'm doing now without the 'expertise' I've had," he tells me, laughing. "It is so hard to get back into the mainstream."

No one knows for sure whether Rose will work. But Henry and Johnson say the fact the community is taking charge of it -- instead of well-meaning bureaucrats who don't live there -- will work in their favour.

"If you're not in the kitchen cooking the food, how are you going to know what's in the pot?" Johnson says. "If there were one of me and (Henry) in every neighbourhood, there wouldn't be the huge problems we have." moiramac@canoemail.com