When Elizabeth Rich was 11 years old, taking care of her family took precedence over her schoolwork. Rather than work on her homework for classes she hated, she took responsibility for her toddler sister, helping her mother by taking her to the park and keeping her out of the kitchen.

When her grades started dropping, her middle school teachers identified her as a student at academic risk and recommended her for the learning alternatives program, which Rich now credits with getting her through high school.

“I knew. I knew freshman year that if I switched back to regular classes, I would not have graduated,” she said.

Rich, who graduated from South Portland High School this past Sunday, was raised in a working class family where her father was a mason and her mother a Hannaford employee. Rich’s family never enjoyed what is common for many families in the community – a home of their own. Since she was 10, she’s been uprooted at least once a year, sometimes more, moving in and out of her grandmother’s home, her aunt’s home, and various apartments.

Though she acknowledges this instability isn’t ideal, she doesn’t begrudge her modest upbringing and says the instability she’s experienced has helped her become a more decisive individual who is in control of her life. “Most people would look at it as a bad thing…but I understood why we had to move. It gave me more experience with the world. It gave me more common sense,” she said.

Until she was 10, she lived in the same apartment in South Portland, but with Rich getting older and a baby on the way, it was getting cramped, so her parents decided to move. This first move began the whirlwind of relocations that Rich said contributed to a drop in her middle school grades. When teachers realized Rich wasn’t completing her work, they recommended her for the learning alternatives program, which selects students having difficulty in traditional classrooms and places them in a smaller classroom settings with a more personalized curriculum.

Learning alternatives engaged Rich in her work where the traditional classroom failed. Rather than toil in memorization and chronology, Rich said, “we talked about current events and wrote in a journal every day and our teachers responded to them everyday…most history classes would teach you dates and what happened. What I learned was how they happened.”

Rich spent about half her classroom time with the learning alternatives program where she said the classroom became more like a second home. Tania Ferrante, Rich’s teacher, has known her for four years. Ferrante is most impressed that through all the upheaval Rich endured, she stayed in school and didn’t let her motivation lag.

“She’s lived alone, bounced around from family member to family member, but she’s always kept it together,” said Ferrante.

Despite her struggles, said Ferrante, Rich is not self-absorbed. She sees through a wider lens. As a freshman, Rich played tennis for the school. When she pulled a tendon, she was temporarily deterred from playing. She stopped playing permanently so that she could meet her little sister as she got off the school bus, which conflicted with her practice schedule.

Rich takes this all in stride, with no grudges and no regrets. She did what was necessary at the time.

Though she enjoys doing things for others, Rich admits she doesn’t expect help from others, especially when it comes to money. In fact, she prefers, not to get it.

Working through high school cleaning rooms at the Howard Johnson and then at a retail shop at the mall, Rich earns money for the things she wants and needs and doesn’t ask her parents for much. She pays her own cell phone bill and buys her own clothes.

“I’d rather them have the money for my sister than me…I don’t like to be a burden on other people,” said Rich.

Rich lives with her grandmother in Scarborough and will attend Southern Maine Community College in the fall with the help of a grant from the early College for ME program at the school. The money will cover the cost of half her classes per semester.

Rich plans to take businesses classes because she’s always enjoyed and excelled in math. Someday she said, she will own her own beauty salon out of her home, like the one her mother used to visit in Ferry Village. “I want this. I want this, and I’m going to get it,” she said.

Liz Rich graduated from South Portland High School this past Sunday and will attend Southern Maine Community College in the fall.