June 1, 2009 issue
School marks ‘10 years of a miracle’
By Marita ScholtzPage:
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BALTIMORE — Mount Clare Christian School in Baltimore joined the surrounding neighborhood May 9 to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
“It was a beautiful day,” said Gwen Martin, administrator. “I was thrilled to see children and teenagers playing volleyball on the vacant lot, eating hot dogs and running through the sprinkler. They were playing hard and having such a great time celebrating the school’s anniversary.
“Though crime and violence often fill our streets, this was like an open window of heaven, though we are situated near the gates of hell.”
The school has 47 students, most of whom have faced difficult situations, including violence, abandonment by fathers and parents with drug addiction.
A middle school student was 2 when his father was killed. He often wonders how his life would have been different had his father lived, he said. Another student has both parents in jail. A friend of another student was murdered.
“Through their trials, our students have turned to Jesus,” Martin said. “They have learned that he loves them, and he knows what they have been through.”
A high school teacher, Bekah Peiffer, finds it fulfilling that students at Mount Clare have com-mitted themselves to finishing school.
“Seeing my students become the first high school graduates in their family is very exciting,” she said.
This year there will be four graduating seniors from Mount Clare.
Dwayne Hess and Curt Hoover of Wilkens Avenue Mennonite Church co-founded Mount Clare. As former teachers in the Baltimore City Public Schools, they saw middle school students dropping out, often because public school felt unsafe. Census reports at the time showed that the neighborhood dropout rate exceeded 80 percent.
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Comments
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I have seen the work that this school has done in these children and its a miracle that these children continue to live in the violence everyday that faces them and yet they continue to go to school and strive for a future. There adminstrator has alot to do with it. She is a loving and wonderful person. Most of all the children feel safe while attending the school and the hope that one day they will fill the neighbor hood as we once knew it to be, peaceful and family orented not this act of drugs and violence/ thanks SUe
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