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Ogden • Evelyn Morales had signed up for extra help with her schoolwork, but she was still surprised when Nora McCroby showed up at her door for the first time.

Morales wasn't happy. She took her time getting ready the first few times McCroby came over, but the dedicated Own Your Future mentor at Ben Lomond High School never left. Morales would eventually give in and come to school.

"For me, each student is important and I want to rescue them, to show them somebody cares about them," McCroby said.

A year later as a junior, Morales is excited about school. She's in an urban dance course and hopes to go into a career involving music one day, reported the Standard-Examiner.

This is a 180-degree difference from her ninth-grade year, when Morales had a nonexistent grade point average, a 58 percent attendance rate and dropped out for nine months.

Morales said she struggled with the self-motivation to go to school, and as a result, her grades suffered. But when her sophomore year started, she decided she was going to give it everything she had.

"I came in so determined," she said. "I was like, 'I got this, I'm going to do good in school, I'm not going to miss a day any more, and I'm going to be the best student I can be.'"

But that didn't happen, at least not right away. Morales soon fell back into her old habits of missing school, which made her feel like she was disappointing the people around her.

"Once you realize you aren't able to measure up to who you wanted to be or who people wanted you to be, it weighs on you," she said.

That was the year the Ogden School District started Achievement Club.

Keeli Espinoza, assistant principal at Ben Lomond — where the program is nicknamed "The A Team" — said the goal was to get more students through to graduation.

"It started out trying to support students who are capable but have fallen through the cracks," she said.

Existing teachers were asked to help by working one-on-one with students who needed an extra push. Espinoza said there are now more than 200 students in the program district-wide.

McCroby works with 20 of them.

"I'm calling, I'm texting, I'm going on home visits," she said.

After continuing to miss school in 2015, Morales and her parents met with school officials, where she signed up for Achievement Club even though she was hesitant.

"I didn't want to add more people into my situation just so they could be disappointed in me," she said.

But McCroby wasn't ever disappointed. Instead, she helped get Morales to school, collected her assignments from teachers and praised Morales when she did follow through.

"I would expect her to be upset with me, I would expect her to yell at me, and it's not like she ignored it, but she would always be like, 'I'm so happy to see you!'" Morales said.

This past summer, Morales also got more involved with her church ministry and began to realize she was just distracting herself by focusing on other people. Morales didn't know how to articulate how it clicked, but she realized the importance of self-motivation and accepted that sometimes the reward for hard work is more hard work.

"Going into my junior year, I had this different . I felt like that wasn't me anymore," she said. "I know I wasn't a different person over the course of three months, but it was more like I had a different way of addressing things."

This year, Morales comes to school more often and completes her assignments. In mid-December, her GPA had increased to 3.4 and she had an attendance record of 98 percent.

She was so successful, in fact, she was asked to pen a letter to the Ogden School District Board of Education that was distributed at a December meeting.

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever read in my entire life," district spokesman Jer Bates said at the board meeting.

In fact, several school officials were brought to tears as Morales stood before the board with her parents and McCroby.

"Nora helped me analyze the steps I walked in and ingredients needed to build my next step," Morales wrote in the letter. "I found the balance between pursuing my passion while being committed to my responsibilities."