Teen Parents In Milwaukee Have A Place To Call Their Own — And They’re Beating The Odds

If things had turned out differently, Danielych Heben admits she’d be using her hands to discipline her daughter.

“I would have raised her the way I was raised,” said Heben, 18, of Milwaukee, whose daughter is now 3 years old. “I just thought that’s how you should just treat children. That’s how you raise children.”

But she credits Lisa Colla, or Mrs. Colla to Heben, with teaching her an alternative to physical discipline.

Colla runs a charter school called Shared Journeys, which is part of the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District, specifically serving expecting mothers and fathers who haven’t yet graduated. She’s also the school’s only teacher, and despite her many responsibilities believes fully in its mission to teach students how to be a parent as well as academics.

Since the school began in 2012, more than 100 students have earned high school diplomas.

As one of those graduates, Heben returned to Shared Journeys this fall to work part-time as an instructional tutor, helping current students stay on track in their academics.

She’s getting good practice for a career in education — a goal she’s working toward as a student at Alverno College in Milwaukee.

“I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was young,” she said. “Being here at Shared Journeys, seeing Mrs. Colla, gave me that hope that I can be that person one day.”

So far this year, 11 students are enrolled at the school. But that will likely fluctuate as the year goes on and more students need assistance from Shared Journeys. The year generally ends with about 30 to 35 students.

“So many of these students come in here, and they’re so lost, and they’ve got this instant family. And I think for many of them, it’s very foreign” Colla said. “They’re all coming from so much trauma.”

Like their traditional high school counterparts, students at Shared Journeys learn math and English and practice speaking in front of their classmates. But their curriculum is adapted for their needs.

Students can take classes on child development and parenting, where they learn how to breastfeed and massage their infants. They learn new research about disciplining children and what toxic relationships look like. They learn to manage their emotions with mindfulness techniques.

Heben said the students also learn about mental health challenges such as post-partum depression and how it might manifest.

Other classes teach students about career options.

And while the students learn, they can feel comfortable that their children are well taken care of.

On the first floor of Shared Journeys, which shares a building with Apostle Presbyterian Church in West Allis, is a day care that services children of any parents who attends school in the school district. The day care opened last year, and is staffed by two day care providers and volunteers.

As her 3-month-old baby plays in a bouncer a floor below her, 18-year-old student Jennifer Cannizzaro talks about how she’s hoping to attend the Milwaukee Area Technical College for cosmetology after high school.

She likes Shared Journeys, she said, because no one judges her here. She has Colla’s cell phone number in case she needs it, but she still feels weird about texting a teacher.

“I gotta get used to it,” she said.

Colla gives her phone number to all of her students, who sometimes text her in the middle of the night for help. And she hears from former students, too.

“I get students in college texting me, ‘Can you edit this paper for me? I’m struggling,’” Colla said. “And I love that. The one thing we promote is that once you’re a part of the family, you’re always part of the family.”

Some students graduate in four years and others take up to seven. In the 2017-18 school year, the most recent data available, 88.9 percent completed high school in four years at Shared Journeys.

Students are grouped according to their graduation year into cohorts. The most recently data from the state Department of Public Instruction shows the 2017 cohort, or those students who were expected to graduate in 2017, took a year longer to complete their coursework.

About 91 percent of students graduated in five years, and all students in the 2016 and 2015 cohorts completed their high school requirements.

Comparatively, in the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District, 84.3 percent graduated in four years at Central High School, and 96.5 percent graduated from Nathan Hale High School.

Colla’s classroom is tight-knit, and she credits building relationships with students as the No. 1 factor in helping them succeed.

“One of the biggest complaints about being at the other schools is that they’re very lonely and isolated,” Colla said. While other students get ready for homecoming or attend football games, students who are parents wonder when they’ll next get a nap, or how they’re going to pay for diapers.

Another part of Colla’s job is outreach to make sure students understand the pitfalls of being pregnant as a teen, sometimes coming up against the myths advanced by shows such as MTV’s “Teen Mom” that glamorize the experience.

“I’m really proud of these students, because they’re taking care of their business, they’re working really hard to do what they can to better their lives and make sure that their child has a really good life,” Colla said.

Shared Journeys is overseen by three entities: a governing board, the West Allis-West Milwaukee School Board and an advisory committee. Most of its operating budget comes from grants, specifically the federal grant InSPIRE, which funds 10 sites in Wisconsin geared toward teaching teen parents.

Helping support Shared Journeys are 44 community partners, Colla said, including Aurora West Allis Hospital, which pays Shared Journeys’ rent and helps Colla teach classes such as breastfeeding and infant massage.

Terese Beauchamp, manager of Women’s Health and Community Education at Aurora, said it’s important to support teen parents particularly because they’re at risk for not finishing high school and lower education levels are tied to negative health outcomes.

“By supporting Shared Journeys, we improve the health of our community by increasing the ability of their students to obtain employment and provide stable homes for children,” she said.

Colla has a close relationship with the West Allis-West Milwaukee School District, which is often where she’ll meet her future students for the first time. Once school administrators or staff find out a student is pregnant or is going to be a father, Colla is connected with that student who’s informed of the option to transfer to Shared Journeys.

Students can also open enroll from other school districts.

Mia Quinones, who is 17 years old and five months pregnant with a boy, was planning to attend James E. Dottke High School in West Allis until an administrator there told her about Shared Journeys.

“I have to go thank that guy because literally, I didn’t know about this,” she said, grateful that she has a quiet and flexible school that allows her enough time to get to work every day by noon.

But with that flexibility and support comes responsibility. Colla has a saying that students hear when they meet her: the students are now in the driver’s seat.

“You have an awesome opportunity to raise a human being,” she tells her students, encouraging them to bring the positive memories from their own childhoods into their parenting, while working to leave behind the negative things that affected them.