Before Rebecka Eakin moved the tassel on her graduation cap Friday, she praised Crossroads, an alternative high school in Anchorage for pregnant and parenting students. Without the school, the 17-year-old mother said, she likely would have dropped out -- never receiving a high school diploma.
"I am graduating and that is probably the best thing I've ever done in my life," Eakin said, standing on stage in the Bartlett High School auditorium. She thanked the school's staff, her family and her boyfriend. But first, she thanked her daughter, Maddison, "for always just keeping me going when I felt like I couldn't do it."
Eakin graduated from Crossroads that night alongside four of her peers -- Dashay, Jacynne, Linzee and Jill. Before the ceremony, they all sat backstage. Some fixed their hair or put on eye shadow as they awaited the beginning of the night that would mark the end of their high school careers.
Meanwhile, in the auditorium, the graduates' family and friends filled the seats. Some brought leis made with candy, ribbon and cellophane. Others had flowers and cards for their graduates. A large portrait of one woman leaned against a railing. In nearly every way, it looked like an average, scaled-down high school graduation.
Then a montage of photos splashed across a projection screen. They showed the Crossroads graduates with friends and they showed them pregnant. They showed them with sports teams and they showed them with their children -- Maddison, Kayson, Preston, Charlotte and Hannah.
"Each and every one of them have faced challenges and beaten the odds," Angela Marshall, a teacher at Crossroads, said of the graduates. "Today we are here to celebrate the accomplishments of all of these women who have chosen to carry on."
Students have attended classes at Crossroads since the 1970s. The program lived in half of a portable classroom in Midtown, recalled Nichelle Mauk, who taught at the school from 1992 through 2011. It had a different name then, she said. The Anchorage School District launched the program to address the needs of pregnant students in an effort to combat dropout rates.
In the past four decades, the program has moved twice. It first transitioned from one portable to another. Both lacked a toilet. Students had to travel across a parking lot to use the bathroom at the Whaley School, which did not always go well for expectant mothers.
"We had a rule that if you had to barf, you had to do it off the porch," Mauk said.
In the mid-'90s, the program became an accredited school named Crossroads. It is now housed in a building on Commercial Drive in Mountain View. It shares the space with a number of nonprofits including Kids' Corp., a Head Start agency that provides early childhood education; Best Beginnings, an early education partnership; and thread, a network that works with families and early educators.
Some of the women's children attend pre-K within the building. The mothers can also keep their babies in the classroom until they are 4 months old.
"One of our goals is to have them bond really well with their babies and learn how to take care of them," Mauk said.
Marshall, one of the two full-time teachers at Crossroads, remembered a time this year when the school had 22 students sitting at desks with eight babies also in the classroom.
"A couple of them love to talk when I'm talking," Cycelia McMorris quipped about the infants. McMorris also teaches at Crossroads and doubles as the school's counselor.
McMorris estimated that at any given time Crossroads has a revolving door of at least 25 students enrolled. Many students join in September after becoming pregnant over the summer. In January, another group typically enrolls when their bellies have grown or their parents find out, she said.
Each day at Crossroads, students get breakfast and lunch. There is time for direct classroom instruction and independent study. The teachers bring in guest speakers to talk about subjects from family law to health to paying rent. Classes on child development and maternity health are mandatory, McMorris said.
"I think one of the biggest changes I've seen over the years is that it is no longer, 'OK, you've become pregnant, your academics end,'" Mauk said.
After giving birth, some students choose to leave Crossroads and return to their former high schools. Others stay. A total of 10 current and former Crossroads students will graduate this year. Half got diplomas at other high school ceremonies, Marshall said.
"We're very proud," she said of the graduates. "To see some of these students when they first walk in the door -- it's a long road for some of them. And based on what they've already experienced, pregnancy is just a drop in the bucket."
Eakin said she was throwing up for a week as a sophomore at Benny Benson Secondary School before she took a pregnancy test. The result was positive. She didn't tell anyone for another week.
"It's a shame to be a teen mom. I didn't want to go prancing around Benny Benson with a stomach and people to say, 'Oh my gosh, she's the one who got knocked up,'" Eakin said.
At that point, Eakin said, she wasn't doing well in school. She regularly drank alcohol and smoked marijuana.
"I was involved with guys I really didn't know a lot about," she said.
"I don't know why I ever thought those things were OK," she said. "Now I like to explore and I love to adventure and I love to go hiking and camping and I'm seeing the world with a new perspective."
Eakin eventually told her mother she was pregnant and wanted to leave Benny Benson. They decided she would transfer to Crossroads.
There, Eakin said, she found herself surrounded by other women who were either going through pregnancy or already had. She had more flexibility with her schedule. She could keep her daughter in the classroom at first and then send her to Kids' Corp. in the same building, she said.
"There's a lot of screaming and crying babies but you push through and you work your hardest," she said. After graduation, she chased an energetic Maddison around Bartlett High as family took photographs and cake was served.
With high school complete, Eakin said she is looking for a summer job so she can continue to pay for her daughter's child care. She plans to plot steps toward college and hopes to one day become a registered nurse.
Eakin's mother, Luanna, said Friday night that she was proud of her daughter.
"Every obstacle she has taken head on," she said.