by: Steve Giegerich
May 21, 2006
Each September, Meghan Cowling thrived, tantalizing herself, family, friends and teachers with the breadth of her potential.
Then came October, the encroaching darkness a cruel metaphor for what lay ahead.
"It varied from year to year," said Kate Cowling, Meghan's mother. "But by October there was always a sense it was unraveling. By Christmas she was in a full-blown meltdown, and by February she was home."
Out of school, separated from friends, alienated from family, anxious and depressed to the extent that rousing Meghan from her bed became the domestic equivalent of a "world war."
The pattern repeated itself from sixth through 11th grade. School years were finished at home, balancing tutors and correspondence courses with visits to psychiatrists, therapists and assorted others trained in the treatment of chronic depression and anxiety disorder.
Now, days removed from becoming one of thousands of high school seniors across the area to receive a diploma this spring, Meghan listened with studied teenage indifference as her mother related the story in past tense.
A year ago, the story was still unfolding, with no end -- let alone a happy one -- in sight. Meghan was approaching what should have been her final year of high school but lacked the credits to make it so.
Kate Cowling and her husband, John, a lawyer with a practice in St. Louis, found themselves returning time and again to the same question: "Where do we go from here?"
Although no one knew it at the time, the answer turned out to be a former elementary school, tucked on a ridge behind a stretch of shopping centers, banks and fast-food franchises in Creve Coeur.
In education circles, Fern Ridge High School is known as an alternative school. "The best definition came from my first principal here, who told me, 'These are kids who were thrown away,'" said longtime Fern Ridge social studies and English teacher James Stanfield.
"With many of these kids, failure is a learned behavior. They don't know how to succeed. So we set up lessons and activities that can help them succeed."
Since 1992, refugees from schools in one of the state's most prestigious school districts, Parkway, have found their way to Fern Ridge.
It is a school where the classes are small (school enrollment is capped at 110) and the teachers and counselors are only slightly less unorthodox (Stanfield seats his students on discarded, tattered armchairs) than the students.
"If you don't have a personality here, then we'll send you someplace so you can get one," said special education teacher Rob Woerther.
Fern Ridge offers hope to kids who, for the most part, were unable to cut it in traditional schools for reasons ranging from mental disability to behavioral problems to substance abuse to learning disabilities to physical infirmities.
Dissimilar in the adversity that brought them here, Fern Ridge students are united by brutal honesty.
None more so than Meghan Cowling.
The anxiety attacks and panic attacks that prevented Meghan from completing a school year might have surfaced in the sixth grade. But, in retrospect, the signals were there all along. A perfectionist who drew the line of failure at any grade below an A, Meghan turned everything her parents hoped for their daughter's education on its head.
"We wanted her to fail," Kate explained. "We wanted her to just fail a test so she could see that, 'So what? It didn't matter.'"
Instead, she pushed herself toward the unattainable until, finally, she withdrew into herself and, eventually, from the classroom.
Stigma of mental disease
Dr. Joyce Brothers, Dr. Phil and the 150th anniversary of Sigmund Freud's birth notwithstanding, the enigma and stigma of mental disease persist. A child with an ear infection, the flu or a more incapacitating disease attracts sympathy along with a host of suggested remedies from the well-meaning.
The child struck by depression, anxiety or worse becomes a curiosity, an outcast.
"The common perception, even among family members, is, 'Just get over it,'" said Kate Cowling. Not that the family didn't try. But years of faith, prayer, counseling and medication brought only a temporary reprieve destined to fray and ultimately fragment.
The break, as it happened, was precisely that: A broken neck suffered in a fall from a tree when Meghan was 16. During her recovery, Meghan developed a dependency on pain pills. She credits the resulting therapy for helping her turn the corner.
With four children enrolled in Catholic schools, John and Kate Cowling had never heard of Fern Ridge. The family's trepidation about sending their oldest child to a public school evaporated during the pre-admission interview with Principal Desi Kirchhofer. "Right away I knew it was a fit," Kate said. She paused. "But we didn't really have any other options at that point."
It turned out they didn't need any. From the moment she walked through the door of her new school in August, Meghan knew she'd been destined to be a "Fernie."
The Class of 2006, 28 strong, included Jake Diamond, an astute kid who lost his way after a negative elementary school assessment ignored the virtue of being street smart. "It always comes down to that book thing," he said. "If I had my way, I'd be a 4.0 at Harvard, but, unfortunately, it doesn't work out like that."
Meghan met Reuben Seeram, an immigrant from South America who excelled as a student before hitting a wall in the ninth grade.
Missed homework assignments escalated into prolonged absences and, soon, Reuben had fallen so far behind that a counselor advised him to drop out to pursue GED certification. After ascertaining he was suffering from "some sort of depression," Reuben's path to recovery led him to a school he now refers to as "family," a term used liberally by students and staff alike.
'Big picture' outlook
Finally, Meghan brushed shoulders every day with the person responsible for setting the school's tone and tenor -- quite literally in a building where the traditional bell has been replaced by four-minute snippets of music ranging from the Doors to Miles Davis to signal the end of one class period and the beginning of the next.
A onetime English teacher, football and wrestling coach, and assistant high school administrator, Kirchhofer, 35, knew exactly what he was getting into when he moved into the Fern Ridge principal's office in August.
"I'm drawn to 'big picture' things," he said. "Everybody looks at these kids and says, 'Get them away from me.' But if we do that, we'll pay for it later and we'll see it in things like when the prisons start to fill up. I wanted to show that you can teach kids who've had problems in other places without putting fear into them."
True to form, Meghan Cowling flourished during her first weeks at Fern Ridge.
Right away, English teacher Amy Branson saw that Meghan lacked self-confidence and the ability to appreciate the depth of her own intelligence.
At the same time, Branson identified in Meghan the trait that separates Fern Ridge kids from the pack.
"She recognizes her neuroses, the things that make her different, and that's why she fits in here, because here no one cares that she's different," Branson said.
October arrived, darkness approached. Meghan felt a "sense of impending doom." Branson kept close watch when a couple of meltdowns turned into absences. But a strange thing occurred when Meghan stayed home: She missed being in school. In fact, she couldn't wait to return the next day.
Which she did through November and December. Christmas came and went. In January, Meghan continued to double her class load, a necessity if she hoped to graduate on time.
In February, a month that usually found her mired in bed, she reported to Fern Ridge every day. March and April, too.
Suddenly, it was May and a new sense of dread overwhelmed the old.
"This is the first place where I've ever felt comfortable," Meghan said one afternoon in the cafeteria. "Everyone here helped me believe in myself. This is a safe place; we have our own little world here. Saying goodbye, it's going to be hard."
'Unconventional family'
On Friday afternoon, Meghan Cowling stood at a podium before the parents, classmates, faculty and staff assembled for the 2006 Fern Ridge High School commencement ceremony.
Old hands like Stanfield say commencement at Fern Ridge never fails to be equal parts surreal and emotional. After all, no one -- least of all the graduates-- expected the guests of honor to one day walk across a stage, diploma in hand.
When she took her place at the podium, Meghan had already been voted the most intelligent, most helpful and best all-around student in her class. She was cited for having the best sense of humor. And she had received the school's top honor, the spirit award. The citation noted her "perseverance in demonstrating a significant commitment to positive change in her life."
For Meghan, one triumphant coda to her year at Fern Ridge remained -- the delivery of one of the commencement addresses. This is how she said goodbye:
"I began the year nervous and apprehensive, sure that the future held nothing but more failure and uncertainty than I was willing to face. I am leaving today with confidence -- something I'd never experienced until I was adopted into this loud, bizarre, completely unconventional family. I'm going to miss this place and these people more than anything I've ever missed in my life."
After so many years of dreading the future, Kate Cowling and her family are satisfied to luxuriate in the moment. A decision on college can wait for a month or two.
Meghan is weighing several career options, with one floating above the rest.
The young woman who for six years couldn't make it past February envisions a life spent in a classroom, teaching and nurturing, being part of something that will resound forever for other kids, as it will for her.
