Move your tassel from right to left, he told the students sprawled across the bleachers of the school's gym.
Walk with the appropriate cadence — not too fast or too slow.
It's OK to be nervous.
Despite attending some 24 graduations, including his own, Rhine admitted he still gets uneasy at the thought of walking across the stage. "Just follow the person in front of you," he said.
The students did. They took a turn about the gym in an alphabetical line, accompanied by an impromptu version of "Pomp and Circumstance" hummed and whistled by onlooking teachers and family members.
After all, the big day — when Desert Sage Academy's Class of 2024 actually graduates — wasn't until Wednesday.
Desert Sage is perhaps the most unusual public school in Santa Fe: It offers an education to more than 300 students from kindergarten to 12th grade almost entirely online.
It was launched in 2020 amid the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic for students in grades 6-12 as an alternative to traditional classroom learning — a sort of rebranding effort for the former Academy at Larragoite, with a new mission. The school expanded a year later to kids in grades K-5, offering an online-only education as the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus continued to raise concerns.
For the couple of dozen students who will graduate from Desert Sage on Wednesday, the school offered the flexibility they needed. And during their time there, they said, they developed skills — like time management and self-advocacy — that are likely to help them out in the adult world.
The pandemic began as an extended spring break in the eighth grade, recalled Zach Herrera-Atkins, this year's Desert Sage valedictorian. As COVID cases surged, members of the Class of 2024 spent their entire freshman year of high school learning online.
When the 2021-22 school year rolled around — and in-person instruction started to resume — many families weren't ready to send their kids back to large, traditional high schools where they might be in contact with more than 1,000 fellow students per day.
That was the case for Shelsea Delgado and Jasmine Garcia, both of whom will graduate from Desert Sage on Wednesday. Their families, they said, did not want them to return to in-person classes.
The same was true for Herrera-Atkins, who in addition to avoiding COVID-19 needed to recover from a significant surgery.
"At first, I wasn't looking for — or even crossing my mind — joining an online school. But then COVID hit," Delgado said.
"Gratefully so, the district has provided yet another option for students who need something unique," said Marquita Montoya Howland, a teacher at Desert Sage.
Since its founding, the online school has operated out of the former site of Capshaw Middle School on Zia Road. It's set to move to Early College Opportunities High School's newly revamped campus after the Santa Fe school board approved plans to partially demolish old Capshaw structures.
There's a learning curve that comes with the shift from in-person to online courses, said graduate Clementine West. All of the sudden, she found, "you had to be on top of your schedule and your learning."
Learning how to do that can be a challenge for students who are used to more traditional schooling systems.
Garcia said she had to repeat her junior year after falling behind on coursework. She found motivation again in an extracurricular activity — playing electric bass — to finish out her high school career.
As concerns about the pandemic died down, the school remained a good option for students who required an alternative to the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. traditional school schedule, Montoya Howland said.
"This not only is a small school but it gives the flexibility for working students, [for] teen parents and for students who choose to learn online because that works best for them," she said.
For West, attending school online allowed her to pursue theater and the arts outside school — a passion she'll continue to pursue at the University of New Mexico in the fall with a double major in dance and anthropology.
"Having the opportunity to sort of take learning into your own hands was a big thing for me," West said.
Herrera-Atkins, meanwhile, took on an internship — then a job — as a video editor while still in high school. Desert Sage accommodates student workers, he said, allowing them to learn around their work schedules. That's how Herrera-Atkins managed a full-blown mini-career as a high schooler.
He added a job in retail, too, to finance a college education. He plans to pursue coursework at UNM next year in video editing and computer science.
"Here at Desert Sage, it's been incredible with all these teachers," he said. "Being an online school is tough, but they somehow manage to pull it off."
©2024 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
