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Jonathan Sahlin laughs during band practice at Courtland High School earlier this month. Sahlin will graduate from Courtland next month, but he'll earn an associate degree from Germanna Community College today. |
ONATHAN SAHLIN is graduating from Germanna Community College this weekend, a month before he gets his diploma from Courtland High School and five weeks before he reaches legal voting age.
But don't get the wrong idea.
"I'm not brainy," he said.
His grades at both Germanna and Courtland are solid Bs. His only extracurricular activity is playing trumpet in the marching band. His high school transcript won't show him enrolled in the most prestigious classes because he opted for the standard high school diploma instead of the more challenging advanced diploma many of his college-bound classmates earned.
And he initially enrolled at Germanna at the urging of his mother, who feared he had nothing productive planned for the summer after his sophomore year.
That summer, he took a world history class, and he got a C.
Nevertheless, he was hooked on college before he was able to drive a car unchaperoned.
"I was the youngest one in that class by far," he said. "But it was like I was their age. During a class debate, I would say something and they would debate right back."
Maggie Van Zandt, Jonathan's guidance counselor at Germanna, said she wasn't surprised that he fit right in with the college crowd.
"He was what I would consider a mature student," she said. "He was always very motivated and well prepared. He had thought a lot about what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go to school and what courses he wanted to take."
By the time the spring of his junior year rolled around, Jonathan realized that getting an associate's degree from Germanna before he got his high school diploma would be possible. So he began taking full loads every term at Germanna--including summer school. During his senior year, he cut back to just two classes at Courtland.
Getting approval to do that required special permission from the superintendent of schools in Spotsylvania, something that made no sense to Jonathan.
"You can break a window and get thrown out of school if a teacher recommends it," he said. "But the superintendent has to allow me out to take more classes?"
Luckily, Jonathan had his Courtland guidance counselor, Mary Nelson, on his side.
"Our school system's goal is to meet individual needs, but public education is set up to deal with masses of students," she said. "When people such as Jonathan want to do something that the system doesn't provide for, that's why the counselor is there, to advocate for the individual."
Courtland does have dual enrollment and advanced placement, which both allow high schoolers to earn college credit. And this year a Washington Post survey put Courtland in the top 5 percent of all high schools nationwide for its participation rates in the Advanced Placement program.
But those programs typically attract the top students. Jonathan's mother, Julie Sahlin, rates her son as above-average, but said never tested well enough to enter the school's gifted and talented programs.
She made sure he knew that didn't have to be a barrier.
"You don't have to be the best to be successful," she said.
Nelson told Jonathan the same thing.
"It's not sheer intellectual ability that makes people successful," she said. "It is other things like work ethic, positive outlook, ability to work with people, ability to locate and use resources."
At Germanna, Jonathan's accomplishment is unusual but not unheard of.
The college has about 620 high school students enrolled through its dual-enrollment program, where students get both college and high school credit for courses taught mostly at the high schools. But that's not what Jonathan did.
He got double credit for only one course, in English, and that was by special arrangement with Courtland.
Germanna enrolls just 36 high school students like Jonathan, who are taking classes that earn them only college credit. And Marty Morrison, the school's public information officer, knows of only one other graduate--from last year--who got her her high school diploma and her associate's degree from Germanna during the same semester.
Jonathan said he thinks more people should try it, though, especially after he's blazed the trail with school administrators. Nelson said she doubts she'll have another student like Jonathan any time soon.
"I know he is inspiring to other students, but I wouldn't anticipate very many who would have the resources and the maturity to do what he did."
Inspiring others to learn is exactly what Jonathan wants to do. This fall he will enroll at James Madison University to study math and possibly get his teaching certificate. The coursework he did at Germanna will put him ahead of his peers academically. But he is entering as a freshman, not a transfer student. That means living in a freshman dorm, getting last dibs on parking and the like.
Eventually, he'd like to enroll in a graduate program for guidance counselors at Virginia Commonwealth University. It's the same program Nelson graduated from, and Jonathan said he wants to do for others what Nelson did for him.
"People should know that they can go so much farther and do so much more than just high school," he said.
To reach RUTH FINCH:
Email: rfinch@freelancestar.com
