John Degarmo - Helping Foster Children In School: A Guide for Foster Parents, Social Workers and Teachers

HELPING FOSTER
CHILDREN IN SCHOOL

by the same author

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HELPING

FOSTER CHILDREN

IN SCHOOL

A Guide for Foster Parents, Social Workers and Teachers

JOHN DEGARMO

FOREWORD BY HAROLD SLOKE

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
London and Philadelphia

First published in 2015

by Jessica Kingsley Publishers

73 Collier Street

London N1 9BE, UK

and

400 Market Street, Suite 400

Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA

www.jkp.com

Copyright John DeGarmo 2015

Foreword copyright Harold Sloke 2015

Front cover image source: iStockphoto. The cover image is for illustrative purposes only, and any person featuring is a model.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying any of the pages other than those marked with a , or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 610 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owners written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

Warning: The doing of an unauthorized act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.

All pages marked may be photocopied for personal use, but may not be reproduced for any other purpose without the permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

DeGarmo, John, 1969

Helping foster children in school : a guide for foster parents, social workers and teachers / John

DeGarmo.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84905-745-5 (alk. paper)

1. Foster children--Education--United States. 2. Children with social disabilities--Education--United

States. 3. Youth with social disabilities--Education--United States. 4. Foster children--Services for-

United States. I. Title.

LC4091.D44 2015

371.82694--dc23

2015002889

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84905 745 5

eISBN 978 1 78450 162 4

For Brandon, Garret, and Preston; three brothers who came to live with me, and reminded me of the importance of education for all children in foster care.

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Proverbs 22:6

CONTENTS

Foreword

Harold Sloke

I wake up in the middle of the night to a smack across my face. I then feel my eight-year-old body flying across the room. My mother is screaming and pleading with my stepfather to stop. He picks me up by my throat and proceeds to tell me I will turn out to be a failure just like my father. Shut up, woman! he yells as he slaps her across the face. You want a reason to cry??? Ill give you a reason to cry! He then goes into the other room to grab his 12 gauge shotgun. He tells me to get on my knees and he puts the gun to my head. Heres your reason to cry. Hes better off dead anyway, he tells my mother. The only question I can ask myself is what can save me? Will it be like this forever?

My early childhood was the scariest time of my life. Not necessarily because of the abuse, but because of the uncertainty of my future. My mother and stepfather would often tell me about their own childhood horror stories, as they were both abused and neglected also. All I knew was that I didnt want to repeat that cycle. But what could save me? I did not have that answer during that time. Instead, I read whole sets of encyclopedias and my Bible over and over again as I was nailed shut into my room. My meals were given to me underneath my door. I missed many days of school because they did not want others to see the bruises. I hoped that better days would come. What could possibly save me?

When I entered the foster care system at the age of 13, I was already involved with the juvenile justice system. I joined a gang for protection and for a sense of family. I was certainly aware that I was not heading down the right road, but at the moment I did not care. I was free from the abuse of my mother and stepdad. Instead, I found myself in a new type of hell. Before I aged out of the foster care system at the age of 18, I had been in over 30 foster homes, group homes, and juvenile placements. This resulted in me attending 12 high schools. With each school move, my credits failed to transfer. I found myself repeating ninth grade for the third time. On my second day in my eleventh high school, I laid my head on my desk in my keyboarding class. I was feeling quite depressed that day and my teacher, Karen Parker, noticed it. She asked me what was wrong and I told her a little about my situation. She genuinely seemed to care, so I slowly told her more. She was shocked that I was still in the ninth grade and that none of my credits had transferred. She advocated on my behalf until I received enough credits to almost be in the eleventh grade. I eventually graduated high school at the age of 19 with a 1.8 GPA. The Grade Point Average ranges from 0.0 to 4.0, so a 1.8 GPA is considered pretty low.

I joined the Army Reserves after graduation and went off to active duty for about a year. When I returned, I enrolled into a community college since I could not get into a university with such a low high school GPA. In 2012, I applied and was accepted to the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute Foster Youth Internship. As a part of the internship, I had to write a policy report on how I would change the foster care system. I wrote about my educational experience in high school where my credits were not transferring over. My policy report transformed into the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, which amended the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to allow social workers to access foster childrens educational records with each school transition in a timely manner. My story was featured nationally in the media. I worked on Capitol Hill for a while as a legislative aide. I never imagined during my childhood that I would make such a profound difference in others lives.