M.E.A.D. support exactly what she needs

Angel Wills would be the first to admit that her behavior hasn’t always been as heavenly as her name implies. By her freshman year she’d failed so many classes that she wasn’t on track to graduate. But now, four years later, not only will she get her diploma on time, but this spirited teen is the M.E.A.D. (Mead Education Alternative Division) Quantum Leap winner. The award is given to a student who has undergone a “quantum leap or change.”

To understand Wills’ transformation it helps to discover its genesis. She moved from Newport to Spokane her freshman year and was overwhelmed by the change from her small to school to one of Spokane’s larger high schools.

“I didn’t know anybody,” she said. “I just decided to hang out with the kids who would talk to me.” Unfortunately, the kids who reached out to her happened to be those who used drugs.

Wills said she’d been an athlete all her life and couldn’t have imagined doing drugs, but soon she was smoking marijuana with her new friends. “Pot led to heavier drugs,” she said. In addition, she had a troubled relationship with her mother and soon left home.

She found her way to M.E.A.D. at the start of her sophomore year. Teacher Craig Taylor said in order to be enrolled in the school students must agree to random drug testing. Those tests were just the first Wills flunked at her new school. “I failed more than half my classes at the time.”

But seeds of hope had begun to emerge, thanks in part to the nurturing interaction she received at M.E.A.D.

“It’s been my home,” she said. At the time she was sleeping on friends’ couches or in a car parked at Wal-Mart, and home was just one of the things she didn’t have.

“Our school became a place where she stored her clothes because she didn’t know where she’d be spending the night,” Taylor said. She completed an outpatient drug-treatment program, and when she turned 16, she got a job.

That job accelerated her transformation. “I stopped doing drugs. I realized my ‘friends’ were bringing me down. I worked 40 hours a week and stayed up and did my homework at night,” Wills said. “I got 16 credits my junior year, alone.”

Taylor has observed Wills through the years and is impressed with her independence and resiliency. “She had no alternative but to take care of herself.” He said her employers rely on her because she’s such a motivated, dependable worker. “She’s turned into a hard worker academically as well.”

On another front, her troubled relationship with her mom is slowly starting to turn around, and Wills once again has a home.

She suffered a debilitating loss when her grandfather died last year. “I didn’t eat for a week. I thought about going back to drugs,” she said. “But I didn’t want to go back to being that crackhead, sleeping on other people’s couches.”

Wills knows her grandfather would be proud of the way she’s turned her life around. “He was such a strong man. I want to be like him.”

Because of her diligence and effort she’ll be graduating on time. “She did it on her own,” Taylor said. “I have high hopes for her.”

Wills plans to attend Spokane Falls Community College this fall and will pursue a degree in speech therapy. “I had a speech problem when I was little, so I want to help kids,” she said.

From a struggling teen in the clutches of substance abuse to a successful, hard-working citizen, Wills has indeed made a quantum leap. She said, “I know that I can make the right choices now.”