Every November for the past nine years, the Dearborn Academy gymnasium at the old Crosby School is transformed into a banquet hall where students become wait staff in the requisite black and white attire, and guests are invited to learn about the extraordinary program and services provided by Dearborn Academy, and to meet students who attend the school.

Celebrating their students’ successes and raising funds for future successes is what the Annual Dearborn Luncheon is all about. “We are here today” said the 9th Annual Luncheon Keynote Speaker Dr. Nancy Rappaport, “because Dearborn makes a difference in kid’s lives.” An Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of School Based Programs at Cambridge Health Alliance, Child Psychologist Dr. Rappaport identified several key elements necessary to reach students at risk. Ensuring safety, showcasing strengths, listening, understanding, empowering them with the tools to succeed, helping them to find their own voice, and most of all, caring. Children, Rappaport reminded the audience, don’t read resumes, but they know when someone cares.

These key elements were echoed in the stories of both of the other speakers at the Luncheon - Dr. Cheryl Presley, who credits her grandson’s current success to Dearborn Academy, and Clayton Mejia, a 2006 graduate of the School.
“ Dearborn,” Dr. Presley said of her grandson’s experience, “was the first place he felt at home.” Presley’s grandson is now on route to graduate from his local public high school in Michigan. When asked what to say about the school, he told his grandmother “They taught me to think before I act, and they cared about me.”

Clayton Mejia knew when he chose to attend Dearborn Academy that he wanted to turn his life around. After a difficult transition emigrating from the Dominic Republic at age seven, Clayton said he had fallen in with some bad influences, did what he wanted to do, was suspended from school ‘a billion times’ and thought that he could not be successful. Still he wanted to graduate, and although dubious that a small school like Dearborn would be helpful, he decided it might be the best thing for him.

What he found at Dearborn was acceptance, and caring. “Every student here has a problem” he said, “but the staff is willing to help you all the time.” Staff helped Mejia study for his citizenship exam, encouraged him to play basketball, hired him during the summer, and continues to welcomes him back as a graduate. “I haven’t left yet,” Mejia says of Dearborn, “I’m always here, and the staff is always interested in what I have to say and what I am doing.”

“ Intensive, sustained support,” Rappaport concluded, “is what is urgently needed. For students who are experiencing overwhelming frustration due to a learning disability, who are in mental anguish because of life circumstances, or mental health issues, and who have failed over and over again. Intensive, sustained support and ‘holding on to hope’ is what is needed and what Dearborn is all about.

Located on Winter Street in Arlington, Dearborn Academy, a program of Schools for Children, Inc., is one of New England’s leading state-approved therapeutic day schools for children and adolescents with learning, emotional and behavioral challenges. The school currently enrolls over 100 students from over 45 communities.