Mountain View Alternative School: Robert Terry put in the work to get what he needed

Whatever Mountain View Alternative High School senior Robert Terry does in the future, there’s a good chance that he’ll be an exceptional teammate because he has had plenty of real-life experience.

When Terry was 12 years old, his father died and he has lived with his grandmother for the past six years. With his mother not in the picture, Terry had already spent much of his time with his grandmother, so that part wasn’t much of an adjustment, but now it was permanent.

“It was a lot to go through,” he said. “I lost my dad, but it was her son that died, and that made it hard for her, too. But we helped each other through everything and spent lots of quality time together. She has always been my most consistent source of stability.”

Stability was something that was lacking in Terry’s academic experience as well. After three years at Timberlake High School, he found himself far enough behind in credits that he would not be able to graduate there, so he transferred to Mountain View at the beginning of his senior year.

“I have dyslexia and it’s hard for me to do reading assignments,” he said. “At Timberlake, I would get behind, and I was working so I didn’t have time to come in after school to finish them. I didn’t really feel that my teachers had the time to help me the way that I needed.”

He wasn’t initially excited about the transfer. “I wanted to graduate with my friends at Timberlake, and I hadn’t heard the best things about Mountain View. But I found a few people who I knew there and we stuck with each other, and I’ve made the best of my senior year.

“It’s been a completely different learning environment there for me. Teachers have gone out of their way to help me, and it was everything that I needed. My dyslexia hasn’t really been an issue there, because my teachers have explained things in a way that I was able to understand. At Timberlake, I felt that many of my teachers didn’t understand what I was going through personally.”

Terry said that he has been working since he started doing yard work at 11 years old, and he is now working at McDonald’s and Silverwood. He’ll continue until next month, when he ships out to Army basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia.

“I’ve worked out of necessity, to help get the things I needed,” he said. “During high school, I worked to save money for my driver’s license, a car, and insurance. I haven’t really had much of a social life because I was focused on work, but that’s been a little better this year.”

And just to show that Terry isn’t all work and no play, he plays the trumpet as a member of the school Color Guard he helped to create, honoring the flag as it is raised and lowered each day. That sense of patriotism is something that Mountain View paraeducator Jimmy Benson admires most about Terry, along with his commitment to graduating on time.

“I told Robert that the only thing that would hold him back from recovering the credits he needed was himself,” Benson said, “and that if he was willing to work hard there would be nothing to stop him from crossing the stage at graduation. He often sought assistance from MVHS teachers and he has succeeded where previously he was lost.”