Childhood abuse survivor finds path to graduation through Des Moines schools' Flex Academy

The list of Keiana Smith's childhood experiences is a parade of horribles.

She endured verbal, emotional and physical abuse from a family member, sexual abuse from an adult man, a nearly non-stop shuttle between family homes, foster care and living on her own in both Connecticut and the Des Moines metro.

The series of repeated traumas spawned psychological problems, including diagnoses of schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, anxiety and depression.

She attempted suicide twice; she nearly succeeded once, after overdosing on a medication and downing it with alcohol.

A close friend rescued her after some cryptic texts saying "goodbye."

In the turbulence, Keiana fell behind in school. She learned to cope with her mental health challenges through behavioral therapy and medication.

But the traditional classroom model wasn't working for her. She lived in a youth shelter in Johnston but attended North High School.

"It's a 20-minute drive and transportation isn't always easy," Keiana said.

Finally, she found a home in North's Flex Academy.

All five Des Moines district high schools and Scavo, the alternative school, have a Flex Academy.

They are areas where students such as Keiana, who've struggled with many traumas and fallen behind, can work with specially trained teachers to get on track for graduation and a healthier life.

The student must earn the same number of credits as their peers outside the academy, but they do so at their own pace.

"We don't give credits away," said Mimi Willoughby, Flex Academy district coordinator. "The difference is the students set their own pace for learning and earning those credits."

For example, some days Keiana can't make it to North because of transportation or health issues.

In a traditional classroom, she would fall behind a mountain of make-up work and likely fail the course.

Through Flex Academy, she can work remotely with a laptop. Her progress is marked by benchmarks and achievements set out in the course goals, and she's not penalized for absences.

"If she misses a day, she picks up where she left off," Willoughby said.

In Flex, Keiana has developed close, trusting relationships with her teachers and social workers. She sometimes refers to Alyssa Mortier, her case manager, as "mom."

"She's like a second mom to me," Keiana said. "She really creates a nice environment. She brings in doughnuts sometimes, too."

Little touches, like doughnuts or a coffeemaker in the room, may seem like unnecessary niceties, but they're the kind of touches that help students such as Keiana relax and feel safe.

The litany of traumas that Keiana has endured coupled with the associated mental health struggles mean she needs a different kind of classroom — one that moves her steadily toward graduation while accommodating her individual needs.

I can hear the grousers in the comments section complain that they never needed coffee and doughnuts in school. Society is quick to condemn kindnesses offered people as coddling.

I would ask the quick-to-anger portion of our population, which these days seems to be almost everyone, to consider this: If you had been through all Keiana's been through, how safe would you feel in school — or anywhere else, for that matter?

Learning and growth cannot occur when a person feels threatened. Des Moines schools are providing a place where students such as Keiana can, for a few hours a day, pause the constant sense of being threatened and feel safe.

Yes, the so-called "real world," or life after school, has rough edges and is hard.

Nobody knows how hard that world is better than Keiana, who has endured cruelties unimaginable to most of us.

Flex Academy provides the path Keiana and other students in the district need to get their diploma and prepare for the next steps in their lives.

Also, Flex Academy works. Students working in the program have seen a 125 percent increase in credits earned between January 2016 and this month.

About 60 percent of students who attempt to earn credits earn them in the Flex Academy, up from 19 percent a year ago.

Students also work on skills for life after school, including touring the Iowa School of Beauty, working with Habitat for Humanity and looking at possible colleges.

And the classroom model offered in Flex Academy may represent the evolving modern workplace more than one might think.

Scores of companies from tech giants Apple and Dell to insurance providers Aneta and Humana allow employees to work remotely.

I live with acute anxiety and chronic depression. The Register lets me work from home in part to help me cope with an often-overwhelming sense of uneasiness around other people.

And even if I didn't have those problems, the news organization encourages employees to be mobile, providing us with laptops and smartphones so that we can perform all the duties of our work requires from almost anywhere.

One could make a case that Flex Academy's alternative model for education should be the mainstream model for every classroom.

We Iowans claim to support education, but we don't want to pay for it, lobbying the legislature for property tax relief at every turn.

We are also notoriously unwilling to adapt our concept of what a classroom looks like. We are stuck in the ancient model of a teacher at the front of the room and students in rows of desks dutifully taking notes and reading along in textbooks.

We think, "It worked fine for us, why shouldn't it work for our children?"

We ignore the reams of research that show the diverse ways in which our children learn and the seismic changes technology has made in how we learn and grow in this country.

If Iowans truly cared about education, they would look closer at Flex Academy and similar programs as a way not to coddle students but to help them gain a better sense of themselves, their passions and their abilities.

Keiana could have easily been lost — a high school dropout with minimal employment prospects and dismal self-esteem.

Today, she's thinking about attending Drake University to study journalism — or maybe enrolling cosmetology school.

For a teenager who once felt life was so bleak that she'd given up, Keiana Smith is looking forward to the future for once.

And that is a victory not only for Keiana and Des Moines schools but for all of society.

Daniel P. Finney, Register Metro Voice columnist, is a Drake University alumnus who grew up in Winterset and east Des Moines. Reach him at dafinney@dmreg.com. More from Finney:DesMoinesRegister.com/Finney.