Graduation is always a milestone, but for St. Mary Catholic Central High School and the Goda family, this accomplishment has been a team effort with a lasting impact.

(0:03) Graduation day is right around the corner, and this celebration is even more special for Jacob Goda and his parents, because Jacob has Downs Syndrome.

(1:01) We learn about Jacob’s primary education in Monroe Public Schools, his desire to be a St. Mary Falcon, and how the St. André Bessette Inclusion Program at St. Mary Catholic Central High School helped make that dream reality.

(2:41) We meet Zach Patterson, a popular athlete at St. Mary’s — and a friend and mentor to Jacob. He talks about his friendship with Jacob and how the school’s peer mentorship program works.

(4:12) Kyle McElvaney, the program’s director, discusses the Inclusion Program’s goals and structure, and Amie, Jacob’s mom, mentions how this program differs from those in the public schools.

(7:31) Jacob’s dad Steve talks about how they approached St. Mary to get this program started and the support they found from school administration. School principal Jason Linster discusses the Inclusion Program through the lens of St. Mary’s mission to provide a Christ-centered learning environment for all.

(9:57) Zach reflects on Jacob’s joy and friendships, and Jacob talks about some of his favorite parts of school, from managing the girls’ baseball team to receiving his varsity letter for bowling to his favorite class: yearbook.

(13:11) Jacob’s favorite teacher, Nancy Masuda, talks about Jacob’s role with the yearbook — how well he interviewed students, at first, and then how he grew into a great photographer, as well.

(14:34) The Godas reflect on how Jacob has blossomed at St. Mary’s, and Nancy talks about the relationships St. Mary’s students have built with Jacob.

(17:23) Zach, Nancy, and Kyle discuss what school would be like without Jacob. In short, it would simply not be the same.

(20:33) Amie talks about the witness that Jacob can bear for not just the four other inclusion students who have joined the program, but for an even broader community.

Reporting by Daniel Meloy; narration by Emily Mentock; production by Ron Pangborn

Listen to ‘Detroit Stories’ on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. Podcasts also will be posted biweekly on DetroitCatholic.com. 

Title: The Making of a Falcon

[Pomp and Circumstance playing]

Narrator: May 16 is a big day for Jacob Goda. On that day he will wear his school’s navy blue caps and gowns and gather with the rest of the St. Mary’s Class of ‘21 in the school gymnasium for a COVID-friendly graduation ceremony. He’ll walk across the stage, receive his diploma, attend the senior class party. His mom, Amie, has already promised she’ll cry. Graduation day is monumental for many people. It communicates coming-of-age transitions, bittersweet goodbye’s, bright futures, and hard-earned accomplishments.

But for Jacob and his family in particular, this day will memorialize the impossible because on May 16, Jacob is graduating, and he has Down Syndrome. This is his mother Amie.

Amie: It's kind of surreal. I don't think four or five years ago when he was in middle school, if you would've asked us what it would be like to see him graduating from SMCC, I don't know that at that point we would have even thought of it as a possibility.

Narrator: Four years ago, Jacob was in a classroom for cognitively impaired students in one of Monroe’s public schools. While his gen-ed peers roamed hallways, bounced around different classrooms, worked with many different teachers, he was relegated to the one classroom where he spent most of his day. Unlike his elementary school experience, where he was learning with the mainstream student body, he was isolated from the general population. And he felt it. As a fiercely social person, this set-up, far from helping him succeed, was hindering his progress.

What he wanted, more than anything in the world, was to be a St. Mary’s Falcon. His parents were both graduates of the school, his brother and his sister. Nearly everyone at their church came out of St. Mary’s. He was the football team’s most fierce fan. But having Down Syndrome, Catholic school was never really an option. That is, until he and his parents made it an option.

[St. Mary’s fight song]

This is the story of the St. Andre Bessette Open Door Inclusion Program at St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Monroe, Michigan, and its very first graduate.

Welcome to Detroit Stories, a podcast on a mission to boldly share the stories of the people and communities in Southeast Michigan. These are the stories that fascinate and inspire us.

The routine is always the same. After 6th-hour gym, Jacob stops by his locker to grab the water bottle his mom sent him with and a couple of books. Zach Patterson, the popular captain of the football team and pitcher for the baseball team swipes his water bottle and runs down the hall with it laughing. A chase ensues.

[running, laughing sounds]

Zach: So I'll steal his water bottle and then he'll kind of like chase after me and get his water bottle back. And then we kind of just have like fun little games between ourselves.

Narrator: This isn’t some nightmarish, captain-of-the-football-team-bullying trope. This is the jovial back and forth of two friends who spend a lot of time together. Zach is Jacob’s 7th hour social justice class peer-mentor. Peer-mentors are the students who assist St. Mary’s students with intellectual disabilities with their coursework as part of the school’s recently founded St. André Bessette Inclusion Program.

Zach: So a peer mentor is a fellow student who works with a student who has a disability or can't necessarily handle what a normal student would in a classroom. And so they put a student with that student with a disability to kind of help them around the classroom and around, you know, homework and the normal classwork that you would get in a classroom at SMCC. So we kind of just, we kind of translate to the student, maybe what the teacher is saying so that they can understand better and then relay it back to home so that the student's parents can kind of guide them along further when they get home.

Narrator: The peer mentor program is an integral part of the inclusion program. Kyle McElvaney, the director of the program, recruits and oversees the peer mentors and instructs the inclusion students.

Kyle: The goal is for them to spend — as they get progressed through their high school years — to spend less hours with me. Because obviously the goal is for them to be more independent. they may start out with me two to three hours a day, depending on their needs and what, where their academic deficits are. And then by the end, they may only spend an hour with me a day. They’re in the regular classes with, you know, their typical peers. Most of the time they're with them at least five of the seven hours of the day. Now they may have a modified assignment and instead of, you know, say remembering 10 different things, they may only be required to remember five different concepts, but we still push them. And we really don't let them use their disability as an excuse.

Narrator: Kyle, who is also the football coach, coaches his inclusion students towards graduation with the same emboldening confidence he does his football players heading into a game.

Kyle: When they graduate in May of their senior year, I want them ready for the real world, you know, and whatever those weaknesses may be for them. We want to turn those into strengths.

Narrator: This is exactly what the Godas wanted for their son — for someone to see the potential in Jacob that they saw everyday. For people to appreciate and see his differences as an asset, not a deficiency. This is Amie.

Amie: So through elementary school, Jacob was mainstream and then around middle school, we changed him into what in Monroe County they call a community-based education program, which is an intermediate school district classroom within the school building. They still participate with the gen-ed kids for, you know, classes that they do really well in, for what they would consider to be like your extracurricular classes, music, gym, art, computers. And then upon entering high school, we had switched them into what's called a Mo-CI classroom, which is a moderately cognitively impaired classroom. And with that, he was pretty much in just that classroom all day long. He was no longer seeing his, you know, general ed peers. And after having been mainstream and in gen-ed for so long, it was really difficult for him to feel so isolated from the general population.

Steve: He's a very social, social boy. And he's a very smart boy. And we found that being isolated in a Mo-CI classroom was not best for him. So we, we sought other opportunities

Narrator: But living in a largely rural area like Monroe, there weren’t many opportunities. What’s more, the Godas wanted to be able to give Jacob a Catholic education, but there were only fifteen Catholic inclusion programs in the U.S., and none of them in Michigan. The Godas had sent their first two children to their alma mater, St. Mary’ Catholic High School in Monroe. The family were passionate Falcons: they went to all the football games, served on the school board, they loved the tight-knit community and they wanted to be able to share that world with Jacob. This is Steve.

Steve: And so, so Amy and I talked about it and, obviously with our other two students going — other two children going through there, they’re SMCC as students, we have very good, close ties with the school and the administration. And, you know, we approached them with the idea of possibly finding a way that Jacob could go there. Sean Jorgensen, the president, had said that that had been a long-time goal of the school, to evolve to that point. They had spent a lot of time and effort with other kids that had learning needs, but not gone the full step of doing an inclusion program. And Sean was great. He said, you know, sometimes you just need to take a leap of faith and jump in whether you're ready or not.

Narrator: They jumped in feet first. The Godas had approached the administration with the idea in June, and by August the program director, Kyle McElvaney was hired, the peer mentor program was set up and the school was ready for Jacob Goda. For Jason Linster, the principal, this was just another part of living out the school’s mission.

Jason: We kind of felt that, you know, if we wanted to be a truly inclusive school, that we need to take that next step and bring students like Jacob into our building. What we want to provide for Jacob is that we want to provide a Christ-centered learning environment for students with special needs. There weren't really any schools around that were doing that, and it was something that the president of school, Sean Jorgensen and I had talked about kind of in passing. And then we were approached by a family who was willing to help us start that. And we had Jacob as someone whose older siblings were alusi of our school, whose parents were alums of our school, kind of waiting in the wings for that opportunity. So we were able to bring Jacob in and provide Jacob with, you know, he wanted to be a Falcon. And he wanted to be part of our, you know, part of our family. And, you know, that's the biggest thing is, is, you know, if we are truly a Catholic school in the Catholic as universal term, you know, definition of the word, then we need to be finding opportunities for, for those students.

Zach: He wants to be friends with everyone. And it's just like, it's really great, the way that he interacts with the whole school. Whenever anyone says hi to him in the hallway he always says hi back. He's always walking around with new people. The friendships that he has with some of his peer mentors are really important and the friendships he has with other fellow students. The joy that he brings to the school is unmatched. And it's every day.

Narrator: At St. Mary’s, Jacob was like a fish in water. He went to football games and cheered for the friends he knew by name. He went to the school dances. He sat in the same classes as his peers. He managed the girls baseball team. He joined the bowling team and received his letter jacket. This is Jacob.

Jacob: I like when we walked to classes and like, base- I’m a manager of the softball team. And it was a great opportunity for me to work with those girls. They are great girls, great teammates, great friends. And I did bowling, too, but I decided to quit because my family's more important to me than bowling. And I was — my family is more than bowling because bowling was a lot of effort, and I want to be with my family more than bowling. And I got my varsity letter in bowling, and I got my varsity jacket, and it’s a great jacket, but I don’t wear it a lot because it touches above my neck and it messes up my hair. Yeah.

Narrator: In his first year he was spending several hours a day with Kyle, learning how to tell time on an analog clock and other more basic lessons. By his third year, Jacob spent most of his day with peer mentors in mainstream classes. Jacob’s favorite class was yearbook with Nancy Masuda.

Jacob: Like, I would, like, add names and taking pictures of the team, and adding names, and I can like take pictures, and I've learned a lot and there's a great opportunity for me to be a part of that, and it's a great — it’s a great class. My favorite teacher is Nancy Masuda, because she's like, the best teacher.

Narrator: This is Nancy,

Nancy: And initially, he had this superpower of everybody wanted to talk to Jacob. So we sent him along on all of the interviews and he was really great at getting people to open up. From there, his role expanded where he became a really good photographer. He started off having problems with the fine motor skills to be able to take a photo, but we put his camera on a tripod and we immediately had magic. He took some really great photographs. One of the girls, Alison Pinkelman, who is our yearbook editor and Jacob's best friend, started having Jacob do some work within the yearbook itself. And he was able to cut out photos. And last year we had a lot of photos that we cut out. And Jacob was responsible for all of those cutouts this year. We've actually moved him into a really unique role where he is able to work with other students on the yearbook staff and actually help them in constructing their story.

Narrator: The Godas were immensely thankful to give this opportunity to their son. His flourishing was not so much a surprise as a blessing hard-earned through their persistent advocating for him.

Steve: I think he's really gained confidence in himself and then really, you know, developed his social skills even more. He's always been a social kid, but really putting him in the environment with peers and having him go to regular classes with peer mentors and work through homework assignments, would follow up with his peers on things he’s doing well and things he can work on. I think that has really helped develop his social skills, but also given him confidence that he can do a lot of things that everyone else can do as well.

Amie: I think he's really blossomed into an amazing young man.

Narrator: This blossoming did not come as a surprise to the Godas. They knew their son, they knew his potential, and they were confident that they could help see him through any academic obstacle. What they had less control over was how the student body would receive Jacob and how they would treat him. They could hope of course, and pray, but the resulting transformation that overtook the students, teachers, administration — that is something they couldn’t begin to dream up. Nancy got to witness the effect Jacob had on the student body right from the beginning.

Nancy: Initially I think that our students were just a little bit unsure of what to expect from somebody that they viewed as different. And as they got to know the inclusion students, I think that — I am confident that they know that these students are very much of the same mindset that they are, and they don't think of them as being different. They're not put off by them. If they would see somebody in the grocery store who might have Down Syndrome, they are not going be put off by them at all. They would be just as comfortable around them and that is a great skill for everyone.

Narrator: This is Principal Linster.

Jason: I think it's preparing them for what the real world looks like. You know, Monroe’s kind of a small town and so when we can, you know, create a more diverse classroom situation for a student, it's the better for their personal growth. So I think, and again, the teaching a student empathy, compassion, all those things are very important. And just teaching them that, you know, that as Catholics, we should be welcoming to everyone.

Narrator: This is Zach describing what the school would be like without Jacob.

Zach: School would be boring. It would not be fun. I look forward to my seventh-hour class a lot more than I think I would do. Because social justice at SMCC is actually — it's a pretty difficult class and having Jacob to be there, it makes it one of those classes I don't dread. So having Jacob around at CC definitely makes it a better place to be around. It's really — it's kind of a beautiful thing. He's always making people smile and making people laugh. He has a lot to offer that I never really realized before I had him in the classroom.

Narrator: Here’s Kyle.

Kyle: I'm trying to say this without sounding selfish, but it's made my job enjoyable. I mean, I see Jacob at 7:15, 7:30 AM every morning during the week. And no matter how bad of a day you've had, or how bad a weekend you had, you can't help but smile when students like these come in your room and they just want to talk to you and hear about your family. And then to watch their progress over the years and see them grow, it's very rewarding. I think he's just one of those people that come into your life and you're very blessed that he does, because he's changed my life for the better,

Narrator: Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: Well, I would say that quite honestly, Jacob has taught me quite a bit about life. One of the first things that he said to me — and I don't recall the exact situation — but I think that I was, you know, saying, “Oh, well, you know, I really wish maybe I was younger,” or “I really wished that I was faster,” or I suppose, wishing that I would be different. And he said, “Mrs. Masuda, you have to be you.” And I have said that to so many people who have said, “Gosh, I want to be just like you when I grow up.” No, you don't want to be just like me. You want to be you. And saying that to adolescents, they are fine, that God made them perfect, and to follow whatever it is that that God wants of them. So those are the things that I'm going to take with me for the rest of my life that Jacob has inspired me.

Narrator: That lesson is pretty critical for all teenagers in a phase when self confidence is particularly lacking. But Jacob taught that lesson most profoundly to the inclusion students who followed in his path. Since the program was founded three years ago, four other inclusion students have joined and learned from Jacob’s witness. Everyone involved refers to Jacob as the program’s trailblazer. He was the big old heart that barrelled through the halls of the school dismantling supposed myths of Down Syndrome. He melted the hearts of everyone around him and nursed a capacity of openness for future students like himself.

Jacob’s family hopes his witness will serve an even broader community. Here’s Amie explaining.

Amie: You know, when we were expecting Jacob, we were given the choice to find out whether or not he did have Down Syndrome and whether or not we would want to terminate that. And I just always feel like there's going to be someone out there somewhere who has come in contact with Jacob, who is going to be faced with the same choice. And they won't think twice, because they will — “I knew a kid in high school who had Down Syndrome, his name was Jacob Goda. He was amazing. This is going to be great.”

Narrator: “Greatness” was all Amie had on her mind when she held the wriggling ball of joy that was her newborn Jacob. It’s safe to say she couldn’t have envisioned May 16, her son graduating from the same school she did. She wouldn’t have pictured a future University of Toledo student. She couldn’t have pictured the dozens of future inclusion students who would follow in his path. But she knew she was holding someone “great” and she was absolutely right about that.

Amie: What do you think, Jacob? What's next for you?

Jacob: Well, my future is very bright. And, a great program I got into, and I can’t wait to graduate and move on with my life.

Narrator: Detroit Stories is a production of Detroit Catholic and the communications department of the Archdiocese of Detroit. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts.