(Photo Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)
Tyneisha Crooks’ late father didn’t want his children “stuck on stupid,” she said. It was his way of telling her and her 10 siblings that to get anywhere in life they needed an education.
“Education was a big thing to him. You have to get a high school diploma to support yourself,” was part of his mantra, she said. “Without it you can’t do anything.”
Crooks admits it took her awhile to heed his wisdom. At Antioch High School her senior year, “I wasn’t feeling it. I would leave for school and not even go to school almost every day.”
But she came to appreciate her father’s words as a 23-year-old struggling dropout and single mother. She needed help. In 2013 she sought it at Civicorps, an Oakland-based nonprofit that runs job training programs and a charter high school that allows young adults to earn diplomas.