Making Changes

Teaching teenagers is often a challenge. Teaching teens with substance abuse and discipline problems seems an insurmountable task. Eileen Davin (BA, Psychology, ‘84) teaches at a new school at the Wolfe Center in Napa, a counseling and outpatient treatment facility for teenagers with substance abuse issues.

“Several of my students have significant family and mental health issues,” says Davin. “They are abused, and their parents are addicts or in prison or with a history of incarceration. I have students from two different gangs in my class, so we follow a strict dress code—no red or blue attire for both students and staff.” Many of Davin’s students are on probation.

For Davin, being a teacher is much more than teaching academics. “There are so many important life skills we learn in school with the right teachers,” she says. “I have had students stand up at graduation or in front of drug court [a probation division] and talk about the changes they have made in their life and how they feel about themselves because of something I have done or taught them.”

Davin continued her education after graduating from CSU, Chico, earning a master’s in speech-language pathology from University of the Pacific in Stockton. She began her teaching career in 1990 with emotionally disturbed deaf students at Napa State Hospital.

Davin’s husband, Francis, is an American Sign Language interpreter for the deaf. They live in Napa and have two children, Zoe, 5, and Zak, 2.

Lisa Kirk , Public Affairs and Publications