SAN ANTONIO — This week’s EXCEL Award winner comes from Southwest ISD – the sixth-largest school district in Bexar County with 18 school campuses – but where he teaches is different from all the rest.
Crossroads Center is designed for at-risk kids and those with behavioral issues.
Regardless of their status, Mr. Carpenter believes every student is reachable and teachable. KENS 5 Anchor Sarah Forgany presented him with the award.
"We have a lot of gang members. We have a lot of people that have been involved in crime," he said.
Ronald Carpenter was embarking on a whole new journey at the age of 51.
"I thought, 'Teaching can't be that hard,'" he said.
But boy was he wrong.
“When I got in the classroom, I realized teaching is very hard," he admitted.
Teaching sixth through twelfth-grade classes at Crossroads Center, an alternative placement school, isn’t exactly your everyday run of the mill.
"A lot of them have tough things in their lives. You know, parents have abandoned them things like that," he said.
With 24 years under his belt in the Air Force – stationed in places like Korea and Japan, working in intelligence and with explosives – this 67-year-old is in it for the long haul.
"At one point I said, 'I'm not afraid of these kids,'" Carpenter added. “I had one kid say, 'What if we take you in the bathroom and beat the hell out of you?' I looked him in the eye and said, 'Try it.' After a second, he took it back. He said, 'I'm just kidding.'"
Maybe his military experience has prepared him, but there is more to Carpenter. His resilience and compassion have helped hundreds of troubled kids.
"Most challenging are the ones that give up and you can't get to them. My first year I had one of them," he said. "I've had over 6,000 kids and that's the one I gave up on in the beginning. After that, I said no more."
Giving up turned into giving his all. Carpenter recalls the time when one of his students wanted to write a letter to his imprisoned uncle.
“He said as his uncle had been locked up for a long time, and no one has heard from him and he wants to write a letter, so I just helped him write the letter, showed him how to stamp an envelope and he sent it,“ Carpenter added. “A month later, he came back to show me a letter he got from his uncle. His uncle was so glad to get that letter. When you make a little difference, it means more than that – it means more than a little.”
In his classes, Carpenter is not afraid to show his vulnerabilities.
“Sometimes school is the only place to feel safe for a kid. Sometimes the teacher is the only one that can give them hope,” he said.
He opened up about his personal struggles to his students – slowly gaining their trust.
"You share. You let them know you screwed up. They know I lost my wife. They know my kid had cancer. They know I've had to do some military things. So they start to ask questions and they start reciprocating," he said.
And one by one, he could see the spark, a change he hopes they will take outside the school walls.
“They drop their gang affiliations but when they're here, they all become part of a new group. Part of the classroom. They'll show each other their handshakes and their signs and they kind of bond and when they go back we're hoping that'll transfer, too."
Southwest ISD Superintendent Dr. Lloyd Verstuyft said the world needs more Mr. Carpenters.
“He provides a path for so many students to kind of turn on a dime and make better decisions and really lean into their schoolwork so they can have really great quality of life,“ he said.
And his students know how much they mean to Carpenter.
“They know how much he cares,” Principal JJ Perez said. “And that's why he does so well with our students. He's just a great guy, and I'm really proud of him.”
Mr. Carpenter couldn’t stop talking about his wife and said she was his biggest inspiration and partly to thank for his amazing work with kids.
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