Sanchez never considered himself the kind of student who had school figured out. Some days at NUAMES, he struggled to focus. Other days, the work felt overwhelming. When frustration got the better of him, he sometimes shut down, skipped class, or simply got up and walked out.

For a while, Cesar assumed the adults around him saw what he saw: a student who wasn’t succeeding the way he was supposed to. Instead, his teachers and counselors saw a student who was struggling, but also one with far more potential than he recognized in himself.

Finding a Different Kind of School

Growing up in Ogden, Cesar had always been curious about how things worked. He enjoyed taking things apart, putting them back together, and understanding how individual pieces worked together as a system. That curiosity initially attracted him to NUAMES, although he admits he wasn’t completely sold on the idea of a high school built around engineering, math, and science.

“I was a little skeptical,” he recalled. “I was just like, man, I don’t know. It just seems like a whole bunch of nerds.”

For a student who didn’t always fit comfortably into a traditional classroom, that independence came with challenges. Cesar remembers himself as one of the school’s “troublemaker kids.” When he became frustrated, he sometimes shut down, skipped class or walked out. But rather than treating his behavior simply as defiance, Cesar said teachers and administrators tried to understand what was happening behind it.

“They just kind of understood that it wasn’t me trying to rebel,” he said. “It was more like them figuring out, there’s probably something more to him. We’ve got to figure out what exactly works with him.”

Meeting Him Where He Was

That approach became especially important as Cesar fell behind academically. Instead of telling him he had created his own problem, NUAMES staff helped him build a way out.

Cesar remembers Kelli Booth, Mindy Nelson and other teachers and counselors working with him to recover credits and create the structure he needed to stay focused. A credit recovery class gave him dedicated time to catch up on unfinished work with teachers nearby to keep him moving forward.

At first, Cesar was suspicious of the attention. He wondered whether administrators were simply worried about graduation statistics. That perception began to change when he saw the same teachers and counselors doing the same thing for other struggling students. Mindy Nelson, in particular, noticed when something was wrong and brought together counselors and teachers to ask a simple question: How can we help?

“They were like, ‘We’re here to help,’” Cesar recalled. “‘We’re not here to pressure you, kick you out of school.’”

Soon, Cesar found himself in a classroom with other students facing their own challenges. They jokingly referred to the group as something like the “Breakfast Club,” a collection of students who didn’t necessarily have everything figured out but could work through it together. For Cesar, realizing he wasn’t the only one struggling changed the way he saw himself.

He became more willing to ask questions, more willing to try something again when he didn’t understand it the first time, and, slowly, more confident in his ability to figure things out.

“If I need it two or three times, they’re going to show me two or three times,” he said.

The lesson stayed with him well beyond high school: struggling with something didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of doing it.

We're here to help.

Learning to Solve Problems

Some of Cesar’s favorite classes at NUAMES were engineering and science. He especially enjoyed CAD and the process of taking an idea from a sketch to dimensions, a 3D model, and ultimately something he could build. At the time, he didn’t know how useful that way of thinking would become.

After graduating from NUAMES in 2017 with his high school diploma and some college credit, Cesar went directly into the workforce. He took a job at a manufacturing plant, earned good money, and bought his first home about a year after graduation. But he also knew he wanted to build something of his own someday.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cesar began paying attention to the people whose work never seemed to stop. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and other skilled tradespeople were still solving problems people needed solved. He started applying anywhere he could, and eventually HVAC became the opportunity that opened up.

Suddenly, the problem-solving skills he had developed years earlier felt familiar.

“The whole engineering part of it, the numbers, the math problem,” Cesar said. “You have A, and then you’ve got to get to C, and somehow B is your problem, and you’ve got to figure it out.”

It reminded him of NUAMES.

“They gave you the start,” he said. “This is where you start. You’ve got to finish here, and then you’ve got to somehow solve it. We’ll be here to help you, but not show you the actual answers.