Opening up: TC High grad earns diploma after years without schooling

Jun. 4—TRAVERSE CITY — Growing up, Megan Smith was supposed to tell people she was in school if they asked.

But, for much of her early life, she wasn't.

After kindergarten, her biological mother pulled her out of school in Idaho. In the years that followed, she and three of her siblings trailed alongside their mother, "moving constantly" from residence to residence throughout the country, Smith said.

"I kind of lived everywhere," she started saying.

"Not everywhere, but —" she sighed, and her voice dropped off, "almost everywhere."

Outside of her immediate family, some of her only other sources of companionship were a menagerie of pets that came and went throughout the years — cats, horses, ferrets, and dogs that she fostered with her siblings.

"They were kind of like my biggest comfort," she said. "Just being home and not having friends or a social outlet — I got to go outside and play with my dogs or lay down and take a nap with my cat."

She said having older siblings was the "best thing for" her. When they taught her how to read, that became a favorite pastime of hers — a window out of her insular world.

That world began to break open when she was in her late teens, living in Dallas, Texas, and made contact with her biological father, who lived in northern Michigan. After several visits to see him, her stepmom, and some of her younger siblings, fragments of that secret — that she hadn't received any structured education in years — began to emerge.

It was embarrassing at first, but, "being a kid, it's like, I didn't know any better," she said.

Smith moved to Michigan in 2019 at the age of 17, and enrolled at Traverse City High School shortly after. Her education was once again interrupted following the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but as of this weekend, she is a graduate with a perfect 4.0 grade point average.

It wasn't easy, said the now-21-year-old.

"I think the hardest thing for me was realizing that I didn't need to know stuff already ... because I was there to learn about it," Smith said. "And the teachers were extremely helpful and extremely dedicated to their students.

"It was really hard at first, but over time, it got way better and I loved it. I loved everything about it."

Under other circumstances, all those years she spent living alone with her mother and siblings would have been formative not only in regards to learning, but also in making friendships.

She was shy at first, and especially afraid to speak to people her own age, she said.

Holly Decker, Traverse City High social worker, said it must have been like walking into New York City for the first time — "a full blast of life and people and things that she wasn't fully accustomed to in a school building," she said.

Decker said she and much of the rest of the staff gave her time and space to acclimate.

But it wasn't long before the pandemic threatened to waylay both her social and educational progress even further. She was lucky to get a cashier job at Tom's Interlochen which helped her to gradually open up, Smith said.

That time also temporarily took her away from her schooling. By the time she came back, she was close to aging out of the system. She owes a lot to Lance Morgan, Traverse City High principal, for making the arrangements necessary to allow to her finish what she'd started, she said.

Decker said the staff "tried to be as fair as we could about giving her" the education, and the experience, that she deserved.

After all, the position she'd been put in wasn't her fault. She was a product of her environment, Decker said.

"She was super capable, and she was a rock star," she said.

This year, she was able to keep up with the demands of a part-time job, high school courses, and dual enrollment classes at Northwestern Michigan College. That's not an easy load for anyone, Decker said.

She believes Smith will only gain more confidence as she moves forward in her life.

That's not to say there won't be bumps in the road, but her perseverance, love of learning and moral compass "will carry her far," she said.

Last summer, Smith got the opportunity to combine her own personal growth with her love of animals, when she took part in a service opportunity through American YouthWorks as an Americorps member. While participating in that program, she worked with Amy McIntyre and City Girls Farm, maintaining goats for conservation grazing.

"That was the best thing I've ever done," Smith said.

She intends to continue taking courses at NMC before transferring to Michigan State University to study an animal-related field: animal science, biology, zoology.

Her Michigan family has been a vital source of support. Her stepmother has become her "best friend," she said.

She keeps in contact with her biological mother, but doesn't know why she took her out of school. It would be difficult to ask, she said, and she doesn't know if she wants to know. That's in the past, she said.

"I already did it," Smith said. "I already got past that fear of going to school."

Report for America corps member and data journalist William T. Perkins' reporting is made possible by a partnership between the Record-Eagle and Report for America, a journalism service project founded by the nonprofit Ground Truth Project. Generous community support helps fund a local share of the Record-Eagle/RFA partnership. To support RFA reporters in Traverse City, go to www.record-eagle.com/rfa.