"I could never pin down what the problem was there. But for some reason, he would freeze," says his mother, Kathy Vogt. "He was so beaten down by the experience of not succeeding."

And then academic advisor Nina Whitcanack suggested that Jon try out Nova, the Los Gatos­Saratoga Union High School District's alternative education program.

"I got really excited about it because the normal school environment is one in which Jon never seemed to flourish," Kathy says. Jon knew of it, too—"His perception of it was that's where the outcasts go. He said to me, 'That's where they send the screw-ups,' " Kathy says.

A year and a half later, Jon has discovered that Nova is far from what he originally thought. Under the guidance of Nova staff and in a smaller class size setting, he has improved his grades, has given an oral presentation on a paper that he wrote, has asked for help and has become responsible.

"Jon's overcome some major fears and anxieties that he had," his mother says. "He just quietly seems to handle all his school stuff" and is more able to deal with the world. "The school has a pretty profound effect on the kids' perception of themselves," she adds.

Kathy also says her son is smart, creative and perceptive—like many others enrolled in the Nova program—but just does not fit the model of the traditional high school student.

And that's the goal of Nova—to serve the teenagers who learn better in environments other than the standard classroom. "It really meets the needs of the kids who have different intelligences," says former program coordinator L.D. Hirschklau. While schools tend to cater to the math and language "intelligences," Hirschklau says, Nova addresses the students who are intelligent artistically, socially or in other nontraditional ways.

"Nova is the program in the district that focuses on how students learn. And we try to teach to how they learn," says Steve Lopez, the district's director of educational services and Nova coordinator. With 36 students enrolled in the program and two classroom teachers, the young people receive individualized attention and curriculums tailored to their needs.

"They try to do this at any comprehensive high school. But when a teacher sees 100 to 150 students a day, it's really difficult," Lopez says.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Working with the Youth Science Institute at Los Gatos Creek, Nova student Andrew Homeriki (left), a senior from Los Gatos High, tries to find more specimens while Pearl Humphrey, also a Los Gatos High senior, examines what she's already found.

The aim is to help teens succeed in the classroom so that they can eventually return to their home high school and graduate. Often, Wasserman says, the students go back to Saratoga High with increased confidence and a different work ethic.

Beyond improving grades, Nova also focuses on the whole person. Teachers Gary Cramton and Bruce Darling "love the student more than the subject," Hirschklau says.

"It's not that you complete the assignment that we made up. It's that you learn," Cramton says. "School should be fun. You should come because you like it. And learning should be fun. If you understand that learning can be fun, then you have some ownership in that class."

"A lot of kids went unconscious years ago," Darling says. Many of them have, for years, sat in classrooms, unnoticed by teachers, unresponsive to direction and slumped over their desks. "We demand their presence in class," Darling says, which means sitting up, taking off hats and hoods that cover their faces and participating in discussions.

Even "wise-ass" comments are welcomed, Cramton says, because they show that the students are paying attention and can demonstrate playfulness and wit. "There are some brilliant people in here," Darling says. "These kids are bright."

"I like kids who are breathing different air. They're exciting; they're creative; they're open to stuff," Cramton adds.

And along with bringing them to life, Cramton and Darling set expectations for the students in terms of respect and responsibility. "You're not just going to graduate from here; you're going to graduate from integrity," Darling says.

Five days a week, the Nova group meets at 8:40 a.m. in a room inside the district office for morning circle. Similar to a family meeting, circle is when students talk about an interesting activity that they did, teachers make announcements and new Nova participants are introduced. On Tuesdays, one question is raised and students go around the room answering it. Recent questions include "How do you feel about low-income housing in Los Gatos?", "What was the scariest movie that you've seen?" and "What is your favorite Nova moment?"

Photograph by George Sakkestad Every morning at Nova, students and staff gather for circle, which has the quality of a family meeting. Students (from left) Katrina Smith, Jason Fielding and Klara Gyetvai listen attentively as teacher Bruce Darling explains the activities for the week.

After break—during which students usually play volleyball, socialize with each other and munch on snacks sold at Nova's student store—are the elective periods. Depending on where they lack credits, the teenagers will go to math, science. art or PE.

Nova is a closed campus for lunch, and directed study starts after lunch and continues until 2:20 p.m. Directed study offers students time to work on their assignments and look to Darling and Cramton for guidance. "The prime reason many of them are here is because they don't do homework," Darling says. Those who turn in certain assignments on time are excused from directed study on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

The classes do, in some respects, resemble the typical high school classes. There are the students who choose not to participate, who struggle to stay awake during class and on occasion rest their heads on their desks. There are the attentive ones who take notes, raise their hands and ask questions. There are the social ones, who converse with each other during class, sometimes about academic topics. And there are the ones who keep to themselves, working on the computer while listening to music on their headphones. Some struggle with discipline, a handful with substance abuse, others with people in positions of authority. There is detention, occasional classroom "drama" and discipline problems, although Steve says those incidents are "very few—miniscule."

But Nova is definitely not the typical high school experience. It is, in part, due to the curriculum that ties hands-on and unusual activities to academic activities. Last year the group read The Old Man and the Sea; they also built an actual boat that they later launched at Vasona Lake. Just recently, they constructed a geodesic dome that applied geometric principles; the dome will be used as a greenhouse next year. Because Nova does not have chemistry labs or other sophisticated scientific technology, the students often go to the Youth Science Institute for creek-related projects and have visited local water plants. And in November, in the midst of a unit on beat poetry, the class met with U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins and gave him a Nova T-shirt.

"Bruce and I, when we came here, we looked at the needs of the students and tried to develop a curriculum that would meet their needs," Cramton says. "There's a lot of freedom as an educator to go in different directions and be creative."

"This work always involved my learning more and becoming more proficient and more knowledgeable," Darling says. "This is about connection at a level that's fascinating."

The school year is also peppered with field trips that teach life lessons more than academic lessons. Nova students have gone to play basketball with the disabled at the San Francisco Recreation Center for the Handicapped; volunteered to work on a Habitat for Humanity house in Los Gatos; and cleaned up trash from Los Gatos Creek.

Junior Kristina Mares, who is in her second year at Nova, helped build the boat and took it out on the lake. "Not only was it the experience of learning how to build a boat, but it was like teamwork and everything. I think that's what goes wrong in high school most of the time—there's no teamwork," Mares says. "I dread getting up and going to school. But once I'm here, I have fun and I don't want the day to end."

Photograph by George Sakkestad A relatively new aspect of Nova is the art elective. This spring, art teacher Lani Dillon recruited a guest artist to teach students about gourd-making. Saratoga High junior Andrew Silberstein concentrates as he uses a wood burner to etch designs into his gourd.

Winning the championship, says Nova graduate and Los Gatos High junior Dan Song, was one of his favorite memories of the program. "It's just really cool to see the teachers proud of their students like that. I didn't really see that in my freshman year at Los Gatos," Song said.

It's those teachers and Nova staff, say students and parents, that make the program what it is. "They themselves are very calm. They do show respect to the students, so they earn the students' trust," says Steven Song, Dan's father.

"At the high school, it's more like I'm a number. There's a million of us. Here, it's more like one on one," says Jordan Shaffer, a junior from Los Gatos High who raised his grades from failing to all As and Bs.

Jordan's mother, Sherry Shaffer, says she was especially impressed with the teachers, Lopez and administrator Lynne Sims when her son started at the school. "They treated Jordan like an individual. They listened to him. They adjusted the curriculum," Sherry says. "He hated being told what to do, exactly how to do it, with no room for individual choices. Bruce and Gary made it seem like the curriculum was his idea, and they adjusted it to his needs."

Alex Parker, a junior who started to attend Nova because of problems associated with depression, says he hates classwork that involves answering written questions. With that in mind, Darling and Cramton have allowed him to turn in written summaries instead. Their teaching style is like a "body of water instead of a brick wall," Parker says.

Lopez and the teachers have served as mentors for Parker, says his mother, Cindy Villanueva. They have encouraged him, giving him "a confidence that he didn't have a year ago," made him accountable and responsible, and affirmed his own intelligence, giving him the opportunity to take classes at West Valley College during the school year.

Also, Villanueva says, "they've given him a huge leadership role, even in the sports scene." Parker was captain of one of the volleyball teams and was recognized as a leader in and out of the classroom. In March, he was given a leadership award and made a speech before adults and middle-school students on the importance of being nonjudgmental as a leader.

District Superintendent Cindy Ranii says when she thinks about Darling and Cramton, "the word that comes to mind is 'respect.' " She adds, "Here are caring people to whom students can really relate, who really listen to them and who give them a voice. If you've got 150 kids a day, you can't really expect to maintain that same level of personal relationship." But the trust that exists between Darling and Cramton and the students "allows students to take personal risks," she says. "It's a very sacred thing."

Photograph by George Sakkestad Volleyball is a favorite activity of Nova students, both in and out of school. Los Gatos High junior Nick Guedenet (left) and senior Jason Fielding play during lunch break on a particularly hot day.

The two had worked together at alternative schools in Santa Cruz County and jumped at the opportunity to reinvent Nova, "to come into a place where you could create your picture of a school," Darling says. They focused on "building a positive identification of this as a positive school community rather than an external damnation in hell."

"This was incarceration. This was where the bad kids went," Cramton says. Darling and Cramton wanted to give the students a sense of pride in going to Nova and did that through establishing a volleyball team and physical changes such as making the Nova site more like a school. Instead of the original cement flooring and plain buildings, Nova now has a volleyball court, grass and landscaping, picnic benches and a student-painted "Nova" mural that covers the back of the district office.

"Part of what's happening is the kids like being here. There's some real pride in their school," Cramton says. "This is their place. This is where they want to be."

Dan Song had heard about Nova as a freshman. "We always thought of Nova as disciplinary. We always had a bad perception of Nova," he says. When he was referred to the program, "in my mind, it was, 'Get over it and get back to school.' But it was totally the opposite of what I had in mind," Song says.

"A lot of people are like, 'Nova—you must be stupid.' But a lot of people come here and see that it's not all coloring books and couches," Mares says. "We do work."

"Oh great, this is going to be one of those programs where there are going to be drug kids, gang kids—they'll just give you a passing grade if you have a heartbeat," Villanueva thought to herself when Nova was brought up as an option for her son. "I could barely get Alex out of bed in the morning. He was so severely depressed," she says.

She was reluctant about sending her son to a place where she thought he would not be challenged intellectually.

After interacting with staff and seeing the students, however, she changed her mind. "These kids were every bit as polished and intelligent as every kid I went to high school with," Villanueva says. "And Nova, I really think, should be held up as a model."

"It's very clear that Nova has evolved from rejects, the mentally ill and the drug addicts to a very special program," Sherry Shaffer says. "I think if the community had any idea what Nova was, they'd be fighting tooth and nail to get their kid in there."

Next year Nova will expand, raising its maximum enrollment to 40 students. Along with that increase comes a demand for more funding, from private donations, for "expensive things we believe in," Darling says. Those things include ropes courses and a Nova van to transport students to volleyball tournaments and other off-site events.

Although Nova will take funding cuts like any education program in the area, Darling says the district has unhesitatingly supported the program financially, purchasing computer stations for each student and spending money on aesthetic improvements.

"The commitment of this district to alternative education is fantastic," Darling says.

Ranii says the district's board members try to attend Nova events and are "champions of student individuality," supporting Nova, middle college and other educational alternatives. "It's unfair for us to say that one size fits all," she says.

Nova "reflects the board's thinking that every student will graduate," the superintendent says. And Ranii has personally experienced alternative education as a positive option—she was the principal of a school that had an alternative education program on her campus and was a parent in such a program—her daughter experienced two alternative schools that were "essential to her success," she says.

"This district refuses to leave kids like this behind," Hirschklau says.

On June 10, 11 and 12, Nova has its exhibitions, where students will share reflections and thoughts about their year in the program. On June 12 the school will hold its awards presentations and graduation ceremony. Those events will no doubt be emotional, not only for students, but also for parents and Nova staff.

According to Sherry Shaffer, however, another emotional day was Nova's annual Back to School Night. Parents shared about their students' experiences in the program, eliciting tears and genuine joy.

"Every parent there said Nova saved their kid, emotionally and academically. In my mind, as a parent, that's magical," she says. "Nova really is a lifeline for Jordan."

"People were so grateful to find this place. There weren't any dissenting voices," Kathy Vogt says.

"To go through that horribly dark time when my son wasn't Alex—that was terrifying to me," says Villanueva. "To get my son back is something I could never express in words."