Making the Connection
A LEAD Charter School Graduate Plugs Into His Future
Growing up, Tajae Gilford-Rogers looked up at the stars and dreamed of being an astronomer. That was until he fell behind at school and the thought of years of postsecondary education felt overwhelming. Now, just months after he learned to splice fiber optic cables thinner than a human hair through the RampUp America program and earned his fiber optics certification as a student at LEAD Charter School, he's a college student by choice, putting the pieces together to build a network that connects him to the future he wants.
Before LEAD
Tajae can trace his feelings about school all the way back to second grade. Through elementary school, he often struggled to stay engaged, and as he got older, a familiar pattern took shape. He would start each year behind, then lock in once he realized his grades were slipping, pulling them up just in time to move on to the next grade.
“I knew I could always do the work,” he says. “I just was the person that never tried to do it.” The work itself was rarely the problem. He remembers times when his homework average sat around twenty percent while his classwork was close to perfect. What he was missing was a reason to care.
Part of that, Tajae believes, came from the narrow path his previous school laid out for him. College was presented as the only option, and trades, construction, and other career pathways never came up. “It’s like you only have one type of option,” he says. “That option was only college.” He had wanted to leave for years, and he saw other students around him in the same position, left largely on their own to decide whether to catch up or fall behind. “Sometimes it just doesn’t work for everybody.”
He found the opening he needed during his last stretch of summer school. A friend told him about LEAD and its construction program, and Tajae applied.
What Changed
As a YouthBuild school, LEAD Charter School pairs a high school diploma with hands-on career training, so students earn industry credentials in fields like construction, solar installation, fiber optics, and healthcare alongside their academic coursework. Small classes and close relationships with staff are central to the model, with counselors, instructors, and advisors getting to know each student and the goals they bring with them. Leadership development and community engagement are built into the experience as well, giving young people a place to reconnect with school on their own terms and leave with a clear next step.
At first, Tajae mostly wanted a change of environment. What he found at LEAD was something he hadn’t experienced before: staff who made time to talk with every student and get to know them. “I feel like they understand people more,” he says. “Other schools, they just don’t connect as well.” He sees those conversations as part of what YouthBuild is built to do. “They’re doing that to help build people, and it’s helped me build myself and motivate me to push forward.”
LEAD’s career and technical certification programs gave him something concrete to reach for, and Tajae reached for all of it. When he sat down early on to talk through his goals, construction was one of the options on the list. “It’s there, so I’m going to take it,” he remembers thinking. “And I did every single one that was up there.”
Construction opened his eyes to the city around him and the work behind it. He climbed onto roofs, learned to handle tools he had never used, and came to understand how the right habits keep a worker safe. “These tools can hurt you, or these tools will help you inside your job if you use them the right way.”
Along the way, he made a decision about the kind of life he wanted. “If I want to have a better life, I need to put myself in a position of having a better life,” he says. For Tajae, that meant building toward a sustainable career and making sure he was doing a little better than he had the day before.
“LEAD gives you opportunities that might not have been given to you before,” he says. “A lot of people talk about careers, but there’s opportunity, and we’ve been given the opportunity here.”
In the Lab
Tajae found out about fiber optics through a text about the new program. He wasn’t sure exactly what fiber optics was, but he knew it came with a certification, and he wanted another one to carry with him. Alongside fellow LEAD graduates, he spent several months in a downtown Newark lab with RampUp America, learning the technical work behind the networks that keep the city connected. When OYN first featured that group in From Newark to the Network, Tajae chose one word to describe his transformation: determination.
It was in that building that his direction shifted. He had been weighing trade school or a career in construction, but he wanted to aim higher and pursue work he would truly enjoy. He decided to enroll at Essex County College to study cybersecurity, the same student who once believed college wasn’t for him now choosing it on his own terms.
He sees each of his certifications as a tool he can draw on wherever his path leads, whether he works in the field first or finishes his degree first. “Maybe it might come up with a big plan,” he says. “You never know.”
Still Determined
Graduating from LEAD marked the start of adulthood for Tajae, along with the freedom and responsibility that come with it. “Whatever I want to chase after is what I want to chase after,” he says. “Whether I succeed or fail, I’ve got to keep pushing forward no matter what.”
Asked whether determination still describes him, he didn’t hesitate. “Even right now, I need to motivate myself to push forward, because if I want to chase what I want to get, I’ve got to make the effort,” he says. “If you have that mindset where you understand this might be a bad situation, you can still go forward and make your dreams come true.”
His advice to young people in Newark who feel the way he once did is to keep their heads up and remember that a mistake doesn’t have to define them. “Learn from everything you have done,” he says. “Your life is not over.”
Tajae is also honest that he’s still finding his way. “It’s not the future me talking. This is the present,” he says. “I don’t have everything all connected yet.”
What he does know is that LEAD opened doors he hadn’t seen before. “LEAD gives you opportunities that might not have been given to you before,” he says. “A lot of people talk about careers, but there’s opportunity, and we’ve been given the opportunity here.”
Now, he’s in his first semester at Essex County College, working toward an associate's degree in cybersecurity and networking, a field he says just fits him.
The pieces of his network are still coming together: the construction skills, the fiber optics certification, the college classes, and the motivation he found once his goals became clear. The connections are in place, and Tajae is ready to see where his life goes.
