What exactly is a graduation coach? As a graduation coach, Denise Lawson works with students to ensure that they graduate on time.

“It can sometimes be difficult because I’m meeting with students who have attendance issues, failing a class required for graduation and so on,” Lawson said.

Her job is to try helping them come up with a plan to turn things around in order for them to graduate when they are supposed to.

“You don’t have to be the brightest, smartest person to succeed in life but you do need a strong work ethic. And you need to be compassionate, that’s another important thing. Try not to judge people and be compassionate about their situation,” Lawson said, expressing the importance of students likely to graduate.

“It’s important to be passionate about what you’re doing and always want to do the right thing,” Lawson said.

Denise Lawson has been Kempsville Graduation Coach for one and a half years. After graduating from Kellam High School and mastering in marketing at Old Dominion University; she worked a school to work transition specialist.  Lawson worked with schools to come up with resources and programs to help students transition successfully from school to the workplace. She went on to teach marketing education for 16 years at schools in the Virginia Beach area.

“Teaching marketing education I moved around a lot,” Ms. Lawson says. “I even taught at Kempsville for two years (between 2007 to 2009).”

Teaching at Bayside High School, she decided it was time for a change based on her experience. The position opened up at Kempsville for graduation coach and it sounded like a great position to transition into.

As a teenager, she wanted to to be a retail buyer.

“After taking fashion marketing in high school and really enjoying it, I wanted to go into the retail industry. But getting into school and realizing things are not always what they seemed; classes were not exactly what I had expected,” Lawson said.

Because she loved her fashion marketing class, she figured she would major in marketing and teach fashion marketing instead of being a retail buyer.

Lawson loves to travel and works as a part-time travel agent in her spare time. She said that if she wouldn’t be a graduation coach she would do that full time.

Last year Lawson worked with a student who made a special impact on her. His name was Amir and he had just moved here from Iran.

“After coming here he struggled with the language barrier; he was in two English classes (English 11 and English 12). He was also in US History and US Government, working really hard to graduate on time.”

Mrs. Lawson helped find a professor from Virginia Wesleyan who was also from Iran to mentor and tutor Amir once a week. She explained that he was basically started crying from joy when he knew he was going to graduate on time.

“He was a great student, so appreciative. He really made an impact on me, in this position, and I felt like a made a difference,” Lawson said.

“Kempsville really is a wonderful school; the staff and the administration are just great.”

Having worked at a lot of schools, 6 of the 10 high schools in the Virginia Beach area, Lawson has only nice things to say about Kempsville. If she had the opportunity to give advice to all students at the school, it was to just get involved here at school.

“It will make your experience so much better and it will really help you academically in the long run. The more you are involved, the better you’ll do in school, and once you graduate, you will have great memories.”