Hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host Jake White. And today I’m talking with someone that’s really, really inspirational from starting her own like shoe brand and shoe company that went insanely huge. And today I’m just so inspired by how she is putting students in recovery first. And she’s starting. I’ll have you, Alejandro verify this, but I think the first recovery school in Arizona, correct, which, my gosh, that’s incredible. So everyone, this is Alejandra Gastelum. So Alejandra, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me and so sorry it took us so long to get here. I couldn’t wait to, I mean to do this. I’ve been so busy because you know I work for an adolescent treatment center right now and so with that job and then also you know getting Power Academy you know ready to, hoping to open by the end of this year you know it’s just been, it’s been crazy. It’s been insanely crazy busy.
Oh, I believe it 100%. I, you’re one those people that I look at and I ask, how are you doing all of this? And so, like you said, this is like a conversation we’ve both been looking forward to after seeing each other at different events and stuff like that around Arizona. Um, so for people that are just meeting you, can you kind of give us your, um, quick history on how you got to where you are and then tell us a little bit about Power Academy.
Alejandra’s Journey from Shoe Designer to Founder of Power Academy.
Yeah, absolutely. So as you mentioned about the shoe designing, so I was a shoe designer for 11 years. I’m originally from California, Pasadena, California. I started my own shoe brand, Alejandro G in 2010 and it was a global shoe brand, know, just doing amazing, amazing. Then I fell into addiction. So the addiction changed my course. It didn’t stop my company. But it changed my purpose and my passion for what was important in this life once I got sober, what God did for me and everything. And I ended up shutting down my shoe brand after 11 years and staying in Arizona, because this is where I came for treatment. That’s what brought me to Arizona and deciding that I was going to help others, you know, get out of, you know, addiction and crawl back into those dark places with them to help them.
So I’ve been working in the field for about five years now in the behavior health field. And my passion has always been adolescence. I started to work for an adolescent treatment center and I was really seeing, so prior to that, I was working with adults and I had always wanted to work with adolescents. There’s not as much, I mean, as you know, there’s not as much adolescent treatment that there is adults. So mean, we have a ton.
So it’s much easier to get a job working in an adult center than it is an adolescent. So when I started working with Horizon Recovery, I was able to, I work on the front lines. I do admissions and I’m the community liaison. So I was seeing what was going on with these kids and the family, like the stories that they would tell me. And one thing that I realized was that there is not.
For example, like adults, once they’re done with treatment, they go into sober living. So they go into some kind of supporting environment because that’s what you’re supposed to do to transition back into life. You can’t just jump back into your regular life, you know, right after you, you you get sober. So there was a lack of, you know, that continuum of care for kids. And what I was seeing is kids are in and out and in and out of treatment. And I just realized that, you know, All the parents that I’ve taught, since the last year and a half, I I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parents. And it’s the same story, know, kid in and out of treatment, the second they go back to their high school, they relapse. And this is actually statistics. Within two weeks, they relapse, and within six months, they’re back in treatment again. They’re essentially going right back to the environment they got sick in, right? that’s just not, know, treatment 30, 60 days is just not enough time for even an adult to be able to just jump back into those environments, right? So I had actually started, which is funny, I had started already before I had even known what was going on, you know, specifically with Horizon and all the clients that we have, you know, dealing with there and the families that we work with. I started researching recovery high schools just because that’s my passion. I had seen a documentary on TV about recovery high schools and I was shocked to learn that we did not have them here in Arizona. Especially that Arizona is known for one of the top places for treatment in the United States. I mean, we’re literally oversaturated with adult treatment. So I, course me, I’m like, I prayed on it and God was like, do it, let’s go. So I started reaching out to the Association of Recovery Schools.
I went out to their first conference. My mentor is Sasha Coles. She runs the largest recovery high school in Houston, Texas called Archway Academy. She actually just stepped down from that position after, I mean, taking that school to just an amazing level. But she’s still my mentor. So she kind of helped me navigate what all this looked like you know, what it takes to run a recovery high school as well as Association of Recovery High Schools. They have been incredible with just kind of, you know, showing me like what the blueprint looks like. But every recovery high school has their own like niche, right? They do it differently in some way, but there’s key components that all of them have. So, you know, if anybody is ever interested in learning about recovery high schools, the first place to go to is you’d want to go to the Association of Recovery High Schools.
Website and kind of see you know what they have there. So I went to their conference. I met all of the other this was last year. I met all of the other, you know, recovery high school owners. There’s currently 46 recovery high schools in the nation right now. When I Learned about not only what they did, but actually visited these schools Saw the environment in the way these kids were thriving and they’re not only in their sobriety but their graduation rates and mental health, I was sold. I didn’t know how I was gonna do it. Everybody said it’s very difficult. It’s very difficult to open up a recovery high school. Not only that, because it is essentially like a micro school, it is a lot more expensive to run, right?
The Need for Recovery High Schools and the Impact on Students
I, after doing all this research, preparing what was I going to do for this recovery high school? What was it going to look like? I got all that planned out. Who was my team going to be? All those like, you know, really crucial start, starting kind of things. I started working on it. I started developing what my program was gonna look like. You know, I feel like I’ve developed an amazing, amazing school I’m working with the school district right now. I’m not even going say what school district yet, but I plan to open up with multiple school districts across Arizona. So power is not going to just be just in one location. It’ll be in multiple locations to cover more of the kids that need it. But one of the things, or a couple of things that really sold me was not just seeing these kids in person in the schools, holding each other accountable. It was the cool thing to be sober.
They didn’t have to deal with the peer pressure of everybody else and things like that. And then they have the community of other kids that know what they’re going through and they just become like a family. So not just that, but then the statistics are incredible. It is over a 65, 70 % increase in abstinence and graduation rates and mental health. They also did a study on regular intervention, which would include like, RTC, PHP, IOP versus a recovery high school. now we’re not a, what’s the word, a replacement for treatment. We are not treatment, right? A recovery high school is not treatment. So with just regular intervention of the things that I just mentioned, 70 % of kids relapse. With a recovery high school involved after their care, 30 % relapse. That’s a significant amount of kids. And when we’re talking about Arizona too, Jake, we are looking at just, it does not just increase the substance, the abstinence and the mental health, but the graduation rates. know that Arizona has one of the number one dropout rates in the nation? 729 ,000 kids dropped out last year from high school in Arizona alone. 729 ,000 kids. Most of these kids are now doing online high school, which is not beneficial to them because it creates isolation, lack of being able to, you know, know how to, what’s the word, like speak with other kids and what’s that word I’m looking for? Yeah. Like soft skills and social skills and collaboration. Yeah. Yeah, social skills, there you go. Yes, absolutely. So parents are, you know, are like are really worried about.
These kids dropped out because one, their mental health, two, some of them substances. There’s a lot of vaping going on in schools and a lot of kids are getting expelled. And then they just don’t wanna go back to school. There is so many kids per high school that they don’t get, they just don’t know if a kid is, something is wrong. They have too many kids to worry about that. They don’t have any type of individualized care.
So with the recovery high school is essentially for kids, you know, it’s either they can just have mental health, know, mental health or substance use as well or both, right? So we’re supporting both of those groups because they’re just not gonna thrive in a regular high school that has thousands of kids. A recovery high school only has a max of 70. And that is because we want to have very individualized care per student.
I wanna know every single kid’s name. I wanna know if they seem off, because there’s so much less kids, right? That we’re able to tell when something is going on and really giving that individualized care that they need to support their sobriety as well as their mental health. So, you know, the, Go ahead.
For, at this, like just hearing your story, it seems insane that Arizona didn’t have one, but it takes someone like yourself, someone to identify and then say, right, why are we not doing this? Putting it together. And it seems to make so much sense. And the statistics are there. Even just looking at the common sense factor of, Hey, a student goes through and then they’re put back in the unsafe environment. Of course, relapse rates are so high in that way. So this is such a great solution. I’m curious, can I ask you kind of like almost to dissect this? So I want to ask you probably like four or five questions. Number one, if someone’s listening to this and saying, wait, that’s actually a gap in our continuum of care as well, we should consider having a recovery high school.
The Success of Recovery High Schools in Increasing Abstinence and Graduation Rates
First of all, who are the people that you’ve met so far? And you’re like, yes, you need to get these people on board. Who are those people?
So I would I mean I would definitely it’s a the the Association of Recovery high schools is a small who runs like the actual Association I would just Contact go online contact the Association of Recovery high schools Andrew Finch and everybody that’s over there is absolutely amazing. I actually bought
Andrew Finch’s book on how to start a recovery high school and it kind of also lays out some basic You know plan of how to do it but don’t try to do this especially if this they’ve started this if Their model is working Don’t try to go and recreate something that is already successfully working on top of that you do want to be accredited by them as a recovery high school you know, after two years you’re in business, you’re able to get a credit, they’ll come see the school and, you know, and approve that you’re running everything that needs to be in place for a successful recovery high school. So that would be the first step is getting in contact with the association, letting them know what you want to do and helping them kind of guide you. But it’s a lot of your own legwork, to be honest with you. It’s, you know, you’re talking about there’s so many different ways.
The only thing is, is every recovery high school has opened up differently. So, I mean, there some that are completely non -profit, some that charge a tuition, a couple of them have actually become their own charter schools. There’s just so many different ways to open it. You really have to kind of navigate how you’re going to open it. Some have, you know, got completely funded by a governor. I mean, there’s just so many different ways. And you know, for it is, it’s, you know, it’s a lot harder to open up something like this in a state that it’s never been done because you’re trying to show a new, prove a new concept, not a new concept, but a new concept to that state, right? So people understand that’s been, I mean, everybody is like, yay, clapping their hands for me, but it’s not a lot of people stepping up to actually help, but I guarantee once it opens, everybody will say, yay, you know, they should go up for carpet or the red ribbon cutting. But so I’ve been having to deal a lot with that. You know, just everybody is there’s not one person who hasn’t said this is absolutely needed. Right? I’ve been to governors and mayors offices and everything like that. And, you know, I’m going to at this point, other than I’m trying not to go after grants, most of the recovery high schools do not use grants.
The Importance of Individualized Care and Support in Recovery High Schools
They just don’t want to deal with all the little intricate details that go into grants. So I’m going to try to do it that route unless there’s a really large grant. I’m not going to go after all these little ones. It’s just with much work. So I’m going to rely on the community to help raise money for this school. I have not started raising money yet. And that is because my location right now, which I’m just praying about, should know maybe today or the latest next week, they’re just doing some checks. I will actually have something way more than I imagined. Most recovery high schools are actually ran out of either commercial buildings. They’re also ran out of churches, not any type of religious connection, just using, you know, lot of churches have like school, like office spaces.
I’m actually going to have a potential school campus an actual school campus so I’m very excited about that and So I should find out you know, like I said either maybe today or next week and Where was I going with that? I lost my train of thought.
That’s okay. Cause we were talking about the people you need and then you were talking about how.
So, you know, everybody opens up differently, you know? So that’s the one thing that you’re gonna kinda have to navigate. And then on top of that, I, it’s kinda funny, I told the association, I told Andrew Finch this. I said, when I first met with him, I said, I am going to be the top recovery high school in the nation. And not in a way, I am the most humble person, not in a way that’s like, look at me was more that I wanna set the standards higher. I wanna raise the bar for the next people coming in, right? And so I am actually the first recovery high school and they’re all like, how did you do that? But I am the first recovery high school that will actually have IOP on campus. So they are actually mandatory for them to do IOP, which is the step down after RTC that they normally would do. So normally when kids leave a treatment center, they go back to the regular high school and then they do IOP, intensive outpatient treatment in the evening, right? There is always, they’re always coming back to us from IOP because it’s that time that they’re at their school that they’re then screwing up the IOP part because they’re relapsing and then IOP has to send them back up to a higher level of care. So, and or they don’t show up to IOP because they didn’t make it, they were tired after school or parents couldn’t make it. There’s always something that can fall through the cracks.
So with my school, we’re gonna have it after school, no excuses. You have to go, whether you go at my campus or another campus, you’re mandatory to do, unless you’ve already completed IOP prior, like 30 days prior to admission, that’s fine, but you have to be working an active program. So the IOP is the one thing that I’m gonna have it on school campus. And then I’m gonna have boarding. So I’ll be the first school to have boarding as well, not right away.
I wanna make sure, I wanna get the school open and running and then we’ll see the need. And I know there’s gonna be a major need, especially when this is gonna be the first campus. I have parents that are waiting all the way to send their kids to the school. I haven’t even really talked about it to the public, more so, just industry people that, this is coming know, word of mouth, have parents already waiting to send their kids there. And I have even kids that say they don’t want to go to any other school but Power Academy, just because they know that they’re going to be with other kids that are going through the same type thing. So I have kiddos that are coming, they’re going to be coming all the way from, you know, Surprise to out in Chandler, you know, so, so there will be, I’m also going to have pickup locations too for the parents so they don’t have to drive them in.
But then I do have kids in Tucson too. So those will more be the ones that will need the boarding will be beneficial to them. And then go ahead. Okay.
Power Academy’s Vision for Expanding Access to Recovery High Schools
I’m curious, is there anybody as you’ve gone out and talked about this, is there anyone who either didn’t want you to do this for some reason or was like, it created a challenge? Is there anybody who is like challenging this or is everybody on.
Everybody has been on board. I never had, I have not had, I mean, I even sat at, you know, talked to Mayor Gallego and she was just like, wow, this is like major for you. Like, thank you for taking on such a big, you know, initiative, you know. And the thing is, is a lot of people don’t, when I say recovery high school, what is that, right? I mean, they hear the words, they understand what it could possibly mean, but what does that look like? And that’s what I want to talk about. What does a recovery high school look like? Can I talk about that right now? Or did you have another?
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it.
Okay. So essentially the key components is obviously, are not, this is not treatment, and I’m gonna repeat that because it is not. So this is the continuum of care or kids that are coming straight from school that are just struggling in school, right? They’re caught vaping things like that instead of getting them to the point where they get expelled like this is the intervention for them, right? They can come to a recovery high school Even if it’s for a couple of months get some sobriety, some support under their belt and go back to their school, right? It is open enrollment. So that’s the key thing about a recovery high school It is kids are going to be coming in and out all throughout the school year It is regular education ran through so it is a regular school day with certain things in between that would help support, you’re gonna have recovery coaches on site, so every student will be assigned a recovery coach. For me specifically, I have some pretty amazing things with, so I, you’re familiar with the Meadows, right, the Meadows? The Meadows is a world -renowned program, is one of the top treatment centers across the United States. Their programming for families and adolescents
Like I said, world renowned, people wanna buy it. So the CEO of the Meadow, Sean, he is absolutely been supported of Power Academy. So I ended up, they ended up introducing me to two of their therapists that got trained in their programming, right? The adolescent programming and the family programming. I’m actually these, kids, are going to get family programming. The families, we’re gonna have family programming from the Meadows, from the therapists from the Meadows, as well as the adolescent program from the Meadows. So I have two therapists that will be coming in to do that with our kids on top of everything else. And that’s top tier, you know, on top of the IOP. The IOP is a separate component, but this is something that is also gonna be added in.
So really everybody does, most of the recovery high schools, it’s essentially the recovery coaches on staff and the regular education. Some, recovery high schools have partnered with a school district so that they provide the education. And then the recovery high school provides the nonprofit side recovery side, right? Because I’m not actually the school. The school district is the school.
We are, and we just kind of collaborate in the same building to get this done. So I’m a nonprofit and that’s the school. But like I mentioned, there are some, there are think one or two maybe, it might be two, but I know for sure one became its own charter school. So they’re actually do all the education and you know, and all that too. And I don’t want to go that route. It’s just much, I want to focus. I don’t want to focus on the education component. My expertise is not education.
The Key Components of a Recovery High School
It is recovery, right? So I wanna love these kids so much that they’re never gonna leave. I get asked this question all the time. People say, how long do they stay with you for? And I’m like, well, they have to stay with us at least to complete IOP, right? But I said, and some kids come and go, some kids will stay the entire four years if they want to. But the way I’m going to love them, they’re never gonna wanna leave.
I’m gonna bring in yoga, we’re gonna do volunteer work. Volunteer work is so important in recovery, not only for adults, but also for kids and for anybody really in general. It’s all right. So I have so many things incorporated into this. mean, they’re gonna get, we have college career readiness counseling that’s gonna be provided by the Education Board Arizona.
You know, I have so many different components to get these kids. I want to see these kids graduate, whether it’s walking down our stage for graduation or it’s another, going back to the regular high school. I just want to make sure that they’re, you know, that we’re getting our kids because people, people really forget how important this is. I mean, just in Phoenix alone, we have 43 ,000 kids using in Phoenix alone, 43 ,000. I haven’t even done the numbers across the rest of the state. And on top of that, we also bring in 54 % of the fentanyl distribution comes into our border, to Arizona. So we’re not seeing any decrease in substance use with kids and even adults. We’re seeing an increase.
So something is not happening here. We’re not doing something right if we’re seeing an increase consistently, right? So it’s like we have to, and that’s what I’ve talked to even government officials, we have to try something new. We have to try something new. All of this isn’t working. Yes, do we have a lot of programs that go out and talk to kids in the schools? The best way to help these kids is to remove them from their environment, right? You can’t get a kid better when 10 of their friends is going in the bathroom to vape at lunch and they’re trying to stay sober. It’s just not gonna happen. So we have also a major component too. And I’ve talked to actually ASU about this. there is, so the association, which is called ours, works with the association of recovery and higher education, the ARHE. And those are the CRPs, the Collegiate Recovery Program. So there are like 140 some colleges that have recovery collegiate recovery programs. This is to support kids, know, teens with, you know, that are in recovery and things like that. Well, at the conference, I got to meet the ARHE too because they, you know, they work hand in hand, of course. If my kids are graduating from a recovery high school, I want to make sure that I’m sending them off, showing them all the amazing colleges that will continue to support their recovery. It does not in high school and especially going into college, that is gonna be a lot more difficult to not have that support and find that community of friends and things like that to be able to have sober fun and know that you don’t need to use or drink to have a great college experience. So I’m really passionate about also making sure that ASU and I think U of A has one too, that their CRPs are really, really good programs so that I can feel comfortable saying to my kids that graduate with me, like, hey, this is going to be a good place for you to go because their recovery program is going to be really supportive of you. So there’s so many things, that go into this. I’m telling you.
The Importance of Volunteer Work and Support in Recovery
Well, what I love that you touched on and what it seems like you’re maybe one of your strengths for building the program is you are bringing people together. You’re, you’re having these partners. Okay. The metals is going to come in for this program. The school district is taking care of the education. I’m taking care of this part. So you’re really developing partnerships. You don’t have to create the entire structure, but you’re finding here’s my strengths and here’s what I’m going to do. And I love what you said.
Because like when it comes to prevention as well is yes, prevention has like, you know, primary, secondary and tertiary and intervention is kind of that secondary, tertiary is addiction and treatment and stuff like that. But if we’re going to see change, it can’t just be education. It has to be action and community. just like the gap that you saw is, well, they went to treatment, but then there was no community piece. And so you’re building that community. And I resonate that with that so much because of Ivy 18 and what we do. I’m like, we have to, it’s not, there’s no one silver bullet that’s going to cure addiction.
It’s these community partnerships. And it’s so exciting to watch you because you’re, you’re building it. And when you, sent me a text like, Hey Jake, can you come throw a sober party with our kids and all that stuff? And I’m like, Oh, there’s nothing more I’d want to do. Like, that’s incredible. You know you’re coming to Power Academy.
The Need for New Approaches to Address Substance Use
And I’m like, and that’s the enthusiasm we see you leading the way. And we’re like, yes, just make me a part of it. Like what can we do to help? So from this point, I would love to end on this note. If you had to canvas your experience so far in creating this into like a simple outline, here’s what step one through five that I did. And then I would love to end with just kind of how can people sign up for Power Academy, just follow y ‘all and anything that you need. But can you give us that outline before we say goodbye?
Yeah, and I want to say this last thing before I say that because you’re talking about community. It’s going to take the community to make it work. This is not something you’re going to be able to do alone. You know, this is something that you’re going to want to pull in different partnerships to help make your program the best that it could be wherever you’re located.
So let’s go into an outline. I did do, although it’s not like an, cause it is a nonprofit, right? That’s another thing that people are really, really shocked about when they hear all the services that we offer. They’re like, well, how much? And I’m like, it’s free. They’re like, Whoa. And you know, my Jake, my biggest thing is, is my hardest phone call I have to make to parents is telling this is what you owe in deductible. This is what your insurance, you owe your insurance. And some families can’t afford that. And we have worked with parents to try to do payment plans to help do as much as we can to support them. But I understand that if you don’t get paid, you don’t keep the lights open. I have very, it’s still to me very conditional love with what I call conditional love.
Yes, we want to help you, but you have to have the right insurance. You have to have this amount of money and things like that. And I understand that it is a business that has to, you know, especially with all the therapists and clinical directors and everybody you have to pay and staff, you have to make money, right? I get that. But me, I am, I want to take on this unconditional love that says you don’t have to have the right money. You don’t have to have the right insurance. I am going to try take that, I don’t want to call it not a burden, but carry that weight of trying to go out and pull in this money. So as a parent already dealing with this, the stress of their kids and the brokenness that they’re feeling understandably to see their kids going through the things that they’re going through, I want them to just be able to show up and not have to worry about how are we going to collect this money, right? So that’s one of the biggest things that I have been very I’m adamant about it but okay, so go into how we do this.
Building Partnerships and Collaboration
So first you would obviously I like I mentioned you want to contact the Association of Recovery High Schools Research research research I spent an entire year from January of last year up until November I was on calls I was I was going to visiting recovery high schools I went to, they have their conference yearly. I just missed this one coming up because I, my work, but they was just in San Diego. Get involved so you can go to the conference, you can meet everybody, you can sit there and hear everything that goes on with recovery high schools and meet. And then research, just research all the recovery high school stuff. there’s, obviously I have a bit of a advantage because one, I’ve, you know, in recovery myself and I work in the field, so I already know what needs to be implemented into the program to make it successful. So if you’re not familiar, if you haven’t come from a background of behavioral health, I highly recommend finding somebody to bring in that has worked in the mental health field or even partnering with going and talking to a treatment center and partnering maybe with a treatment center to do this.
So that would be the first step. Make sure that you have all your apples in order with ducks lined or whatever you call it. And then you want to, created, even though this is not like an investor situation, like nobody can invest in this, there’s no money to be made. I created a whole entire business plan. How is it going to run? What does it look like? How am I going to make money? What sources am I going to pull money from? I created an entire business plan. So I didn’t even start any of until I had done so much research and had a clear vision of what Power Academy was gonna look like. I started that in like November. Then I started the business plan and did everything. And I’ll tell you this too, if you’re gonna get it started, all recovery high schools are nonprofit. 100 % of them are nonprofits. Even if they’ve become a charter school, they still have a nonprofit kind of portion or something involved in it, right? Get your 501c3 immediately, cause that is going to take a long big mistake I made, I am now officially a 501c3. However, can take from six to eight months. So as soon as you get your nonprofit, with the state and also your EIN and all that stuff, go get your 501c3 right away. If you’re going to be a complete nonprofit. Then you are going to just, at the end of the day,
It really the next steps really determines on how do you want to set it up. If you want to go to, you you want to start looking at grants, if you want to start looking at grants, you’re going to want to see what grants can provide for a, you know, abstinence and, you know, and things like that. You’re going to want to go talk to whatever, whatever school, you know, if you want to partner with the school district, that’s another thing. School districts move very, very slow, understandably.
They have a lot on their plate. You’re gonna wanna start that conversation with whatever district that you want to go with immediately because that is going to be a process to work with them. You’re looking six, seven months, maybe even longer, right? So you wanna start that conversation. I guess really the key thing is to figure out how you want to open up that school and then figuring out what it is that you need to pull in, who you need to meet with in order to get the school done. So if you, like I said, a school district, go meet with that school district. Start the conversation, figure out where you’re going to get the, you know, where you want to get the money from. I would even start meeting with, you know, whatever city, like the mayor, city officials. If you can get to your governor, do it. I still have not got to our governor yet, but I’m praying I’m like close. I’d love to get to her. She comes from a social worker background. So everybody told me that she would love this.
So, you know, there have been governors who’ve allocated money for the recovery high schools. And then it kind of relieves the stress of having to, you know, raise money every single year. My mentor raises $1 million a year, not through grants, $1 million a year for Archway Academy. Yeah. So, yeah, so it is, it’s crazy, but you don’t have to run it.
Some recovery high schools, they’ve started smaller. There are some recovery high schools that are literally running with 20 students. It’s not the amount of students you have. If you can just change one life, it makes it all worth it, right? Even if you have two students, some are just doing it and starting in just like one room and just getting the kids the support that they need. My mentor told me the one thing that, or actually two, actually two or no, three. Recovery High School owners told me the same thing at different times. I said, what is the one thing that you would tell me about starting a Recovery High School? They said, do not get caught on what you want it to look like. Just get it started. Get it started. These kids need it because we all have this big, grand, beautiful vision, right? But that will happen. Get it started. Prove the concept, especially if you’re in a new city like me, doing a new state like me.
Prove the concept and it will come. Everything else will come into place, right? And yeah, think that, I mean, I think it’s, yeah, I think that’s really, that’s really it. And you can, we have a website up right now. I did have the whole education component up, but I took it down because I ended up changing my partnerships. So I haven’t, until that’s closed with the partnership that I’m working on, I haven’t put up anything, but there is, you can see a ton of, know, details on it’s poweracademy-us.org. That’s where you can find the website. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s great. Thank you for sharing all this Alejandra. It’s, it’s really awesome.
I am passionate about it. Like you asked me in the beginning, what, how does she do this all? It is passion that drives me. I cannot wait to meet my babies, my students. I just want to love them all.
Yeah, I’m so excited for you. Congratulations on all the growth. Again, tag us in whatever you need. If you need something, hit me up. But we are cheering for you, ready to jump in and fundraise and whatever else you all need. I’ve got people for you to meet, all that good stuff. So thank you.
I can’t wait to, you know, I’m not doing this without you. You know, you’re coming on to once a month or whenever you want to, but to come and, you know, just do something fun and different with the kids that, you know, they haven’t heard. They still need, some high schools actually bring in like the AA model and the 12 step model. I’m personally not gonna do that. Will there be like principles and some concepts that are pulled from the AA or the 12 step model?
Yes, but that is not going to be implemented into our program. So I would love to have groups like you come in and really talk about stuff and make it fun and talk about the thing. and one more thing I want to add before I know I’m probably over. One more thing, something huge. Other than Power Academy, we have a secondary part of Power Academy called Power Up.
So this is gonna be for the kids and the kids that get suspended from school instead of them going home because they vaped and doing nothing and watching TV and it’s, it’s a vacation. They’re going to come into Power Academy or to Power Up program. It’s gonna be separate from the Power Academy students on the same campus and they’ll spend a day, I don’t know how many hours it is gonna be yet, but like say three or four hours actually getting some intervention. They’ll learn about, you the causes of vaping, what it does to the brain, what the marijuana does to the brain, and just the effects of, know, so that at least that when they go back to school, they have actually learned something about their choices that they’ve made instead of just going back like, yeah, I just came back from a vacation. All right. And then vape. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. exactly. That’s restorative is the way to go. That’s exciting that you’ll have an area for that too. And for them to see how powerful Power Academy is. Okay.
The POWER of Providing Opportunities with Education and Recovery
Let’s do this. Tell us what the Power acronym is and then we’ll say goodbye.
Okay. I did not say that it stands for providing opportunities with education and recovery. I know it’s not such a crazy like, why did you come up with that? I’m like, honestly, I was praying. I was praying about helping God to help me figure out a name. And I was thinking of like power came to me and I’m like, I don’t want power like because power is an actual word, and I’m like, I wonder if it could be an acronym. I’m not lying, Jake. When I said immediately, I said out loud without even thinking. I was just like providing opportunities with education and recovery. And I’m like, does that work? And I like wrote it down and I’m like, does. I even called my sister. like, do I have to have an, letter for in? And she goes, no, you do not. That’s not, you whatever. And I’m like, my God. I was like, this is perfect. So yeah. Yeah.
That’s amazing.
For all of you listening to this episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour, this has been our episode with Alejandra Gastelum. I mean, you know, if you’re thinking about doing this, we have some call to actions. have the association to reach out to you. have your partners and we’re going to follow Alejandra on her journey. Go to poweracademy -us .org and check out all the things that she’s doing.
And if you’re in Arizona, please make sure your partners know about this program and what’s going on. See how we can partner up to support her and to send students there. Because like she said, it’s going to be, I can already see it. The students are going to go there. They’re going to be reluctant. They’re going to fall in love with the community and love with their growth and they’re not going to want to leave. And I’m so excited to witness it. And I mean, this is just the perfect way to end. Check all of that out. Alejandra, thank you. And for everyone listening, we’ll see you next Monday for another episode.
