Norwich - Juan Torres was the kind of student who just didn't show up. He didn't do his homework. He started things and never finished them.

Then, he said, he woke up.

The thing about failing classes and not showing up for school, said Torres, is it means going to school even longer.

”You don't want to be here another year,” Torres said. “When you're in high school, you don't want to be here anyway. But the thing a lot of people don't seem to understand is, you're not going to graduate if you don't come.”

Next month, Torres, 18, will graduate as president of his class at Thames River Academy in Norwich. He's college-bound to Three Rivers Community College and hopes one day to be a graphic designer.

Staff at the approximately 75-student regional alternative high school - which caters to students facing emotional problems, poverty and other life struggles - said it is students like Torres who keep them going.

”My hope is that he just takes it and runs with it,” said teacher Nancy Watrous.

Torres grew up in Holyoke, Mass., and came to Norwich in seventh grade. At Norwich Free Academy, Torres said, he didn't feel like he fit into the larger school environment. He had trouble concentrating and was having difficulties at home, he said.

When he came to Thames River Academy his sophomore year, Watrous said, Torres didn't come to school and didn't do his work. His brother also had gone through the school but dropped out before graduation, Watrous said.

Torres said that same year his mother, Rosa Powell, and his stepfather, sat him down and told him that he couldn't succeed at the rate he was going.

At the same time, Watrous said, Torres' older brother had started taking adult education classes.

”I think he saw his brother struggling and said, 'I don't want to go there,' “ Watrous said.

Torres said he did a 180-degree turn. He'd always imagined himself going to college, and he still wanted to fulfill that dream. He dropped the friends he hung around with, who weren't going to school or doing their work, and made completely new friends, he said, other “gamers” like him, who enjoy using computers and Anime.

”It was a really big change,” Torres said. “... That used to be 'cool' not to do my work.”

Torres said the smaller classes at Thames River Academy helped.

”If you have problems, you talk to teachers for assistance,” he said. “They don't want kids to fail.”

Every student at the school needs to complete 100 hours of community service in order to graduate. Several days a week, Torres walks one and a half blocks to Greeneville Elementary School, where he assists teachers at special classes like gym and art.

”They call him 'One,' like O-n-e,” Watrous said of the kindergartners.

Greeneville School physical education teacher Melissa Moore put Torres in the middle of the gymnasium and lined the kindergartners up at four colored cones. One pint-sized youngster in a Superman T-shirt squealed as he ran from one cone to the other, with Torres shuffling toward him - one step for every one of his four - arms outstretched like a monster.

Greeneville kindergarten teacher Kendra Turo said some volunteers just like to run errands for the teachers but don't really enjoy interacting with the kids. But Torres, she said, is wonderful with the children.

Laura Wraight, social worker at Thames River Academy, said someday Torres would be great working with youngsters or teenagers dealing with the same kinds of problems as those at Thames River Academy.

In Watrous' social issues class of just five students, including Torres, they discuss race, poverty and other issues that often affect the students personally.

”If somebody doesn't show up. He's usually the one saying, 'Where have you been? You have to come to school,” Watrous said.

j.wernau@theday.com