A Day in the Life of an Alternative H.S. Program

Last week I spent a day with traditional school teachers from my county at a county-wide in-service. We heard 2010 National Teacher of the Year, Sarah Brown Wessling talk about student-centered classroom practices, exchanged ideas with colleagues who teach in our subject area, and in general had a day to re-charge.  At these in-services, I rarely feel like I fit in anywhere because my alternative high school program is so different from a traditional classroom. In years past, I have not felt comfortable about sharing what happens in my classroom because of those differences-- it's scary to be the only alternative educator in a room full of hundreds of traditional educators! This time was different though. I wasn't afraid to share. I shared some ideas and details about what happens in my classroom and was shocked by the fact that many of the colleagues I have worked with for a decade or more have no idea what goes on in our alternative high school program. I also read this post by Larry Cuban, who recommends that teachers speak out about their practice. So here it is... a play by play of a typical day in my classroom.

Students working independently: yes, the floor is a workspace!

Students arrive at 9:00 AM. (Research suggests that adolescents are more capable of attending regularly and being successful with a later school start time. See this article from the Sleep Foundation for links to research studies.)

9:00AM to 10:00 AM and 10:10 AM to 11:10 AM Independent/self-guided study time. Students choose what subject they want to work on and what course they want to work on. They have options not only in what course they want to study, but how they study it. They can use a traditional textbook to read, answer questions, take quizzes and tests. They can use an Internet-based curriculum (this year we are trying e2020.) They can design their own research project. Currently four students are working to create an aquatic ecosystem in a 29-gallon aquarium tank with the help of a community college Biology professor. (I recently read this post  about the need for traditional classrooms to offer Independent Work Time and found it very interesting.)

While they work, my aide and I are available to help them one-on-one if they need it. Kids can listen to music during class if it helps them focus, and they are allowed to eat/drink (as long as they clean up after themselves.) They work at their own pace, so if they miss a day of school they come back and pick up exactly where they left off. They each have a goal regarding work completion for a nine-week period of time. They each know how much work it will take to complete a course from the first day. They can discuss with us a personalized plan for progress or decide for themselves how much work should be done each day in order to complete a class.  

In any given hour, there are kids working on English, Biology, Consumer Math, World History, or Health. It is rare that two kids are working on the same thing at the same time. Most kids work on the same subject every day during Independent Work time so that they don't have to switch gears from Math to English. They can focus on one subject until it's done. They don't have to switch gears, but my aide and I do. We bounce from student to student to help with every subject area in a short period of time. There is never a dull moment!

In between 1-hour class periods, there is a 10-minute break where kids can text, get on Facebook, walk around, hacky-sack in the yard or just hang out. 

11:20 - 12:20 Whole group instruction. This is optional--students who do not feel comfortable working in a group setting do not have to participate; they can continue working on Independent Study credit. Each 9-weeks I look to see what subject-area kids are lacking credit in, and plan a course to help them. The curriculum can be challenging for me because I am a certified Language Arts teacher and kids often need credit in classes like U.S. Government or Math. In those cases, I must choose to either use our district-approved textbook to present curriculum straight from the book (I read the chapter to them, we discuss the questions together, they take the test) or I must get my curriculum approved by collaborating with a Highly Qualified Teacher. I can also use approved curriculum, but change the way it is presented. For example, this quarter we are working on an Algebra class together. Instead of teaching Algebra traditionally, we are learning traditional Algebraic concepts with Algebra Tiles. It is a hands-on way to illustrate algebraic thinking. Students are working at their own pace through the algebra curriculum and can help each other or wait for me to help them. I spend all hour walking around my classroom, looking over shoulders to check for understanding and helping kids who need help. 

Image via EIA Education

12:20 - 12:40 Closed-campus lunch. School lunch is delivered from the cafeteria at the traditional high school in town. Kids eat, surf the 'net, get on Facebook, throw a football in the yard, and hang out.

12:40 - 1:40 Another hour of optional whole-group instruction. This quarter we are reading the John Grisham book A Time to Kill together. Everyone takes turns reading aloud, but no one has to read more than they are comfortable reading. They must read at least one sentence, but can read as many pages as they want (the goal is to improve their oral literacy skills, not give them panic attacks!) We will analyze characters, talk about the criminal justice system, and examine race issues. They will complete reading comprehension quizzes and finish the course with a self-designed project of some sort that relates to the book. The options are endless for their project, they just need to have a vision of what it will be and let me know about that vision before they start working on it. Projects will be presented to the class when they are completed. In this class, my role as a teacher is to pick the book and come up with the reading comprehension questions. On an every day basis, I am just like the kids: I take my turn reading aloud, chip in on the discussions, and help if someone gets stuck on word pronunciation. 

Our ceiling is filled w/student art

Football in the yard

1:50 - 2:50 Activity hour. We don't have a gym in our building so this is the time of day we use for adapted PE, Art, and social interaction time. When the weather is nice we either walk to the local park to play basketball, frisbee golf, or to walk the track. When it's not so nice we play board games, card games or do art projects. We also use this time for community service projects: our annual Thanksgiving Feast for the Community, home-made valentines for the residents of our local nursing home, and raking leaves or shoveling snow for the home-bound are some of our regular projects.

We dismiss at 2:50. We do not give out any homework (Interesting post here about the homework debate.) When a student leaves for the day, they leave school behind them and go on to their lives outside of school--for many this includes working a job, taking care of children (their own or younger siblings), and a lot of responsibility. Similarly, I work hard to leave my work at work. It is nice as an adult to be able to come home and devote my time to my family; why not give that same respect for personal time to my students?

I take the time to interact regularly with my students. They are my friends on Facebook, they have my cell phone number, and can contact me in any way they feel comfortable doing so. I send a weekly letter home to parents along with an hour-by-hour attendance report and a handwritten note about their student's progress. Many parents are also Facebook friends, have my cell number, and can text or email me any time (some of them are probably reading this blog right now! THANK YOU for your continued support! ) We collaborate as much as possible to help kids graduate from high school. 

Not every alternative h.s. program is the same as mine. Some are much bigger; some are full-fledged alternative schools with a full faculty; some are even smaller than mine and exist as a "school within a school." Some things all alternative schools should have in common are: a student-centered approach to teaching and learning, use of a wide variety of teaching and learning strategies, community involvement, and most importantly an emphasis on building relationships with students. 

I hope you have a better idea about what alternative high school programs are all about. We actually do more than I mentioned in this post (job shadows, worksite tours, college visits, mediation, counseling, etc.) but this gives you a good idea of what a typical day looks like. 

Feel free to ask questions or offer tips on how you think we can improve! 

One Size Never Fits All

Image Credit: Flickr/Akbar Sim (voorheen Meneer de Braker)

This week a struggling high school student visited my alternative program asking about how to enroll himself. In a nutshell, here is what he said:

• I am a senior and I really want to graduate this year.
• I struggle with reading and writing, but when I ask for additional help from my English teacher she tells me that she's already explained things to the whole class and she doesn't have time to explain it to me again.
• I am really, really good at math. My teachers just need to show me how to do a problem once and then I can do it in my head. But I've flunked almost all of my math classes because I don't show my work; or when I do, I don't do the problems the same way as the teacher wants them.
• My school seems to think that one size fits all when it comes to learning...but their ways of teaching don't fit me! I wish I could go somewhere where I could test out of math classes and get extra help in English. I wish I could go somewhere that offered more hands-on learning because I learn better when things are hands-on.

I was so impressed with this student's self-awareness and motivation! He wants to graduate, he knows his academic areas of weakness and his academic strengths, and he knows how he learns best. These are all qualities that will benefit him greatly in the world of work. But in a traditional school setting, those same qualities are forcing him to consider dropping out or getting a GED. There is something very wrong with this picture!

This student is exactly the kind of student I recommend for enrollment in my alternative program---but due to constraints of the educational system, he cannot enroll.  Why? 

The student who visited me does not attend one of our partnering schools.  We are an alternative program not an alternative high school. This means that we do not offer our own high school diploma; instead, we partner with traditional high schools in our area. They dictate the graduation requirements for their students and provide funding to support our offsite program. When students have met all graduation requirements, they receive a traditional high school diploma from their home school.  If this student attended our program, any work completed in our program would be worthless because it would not count toward a high school diploma from a partnering school. 

Why doesn't the school just partner with our alternative program so that this student can earn a diploma? In this case there is one main reason: the school the student is enrolled in has its own alternative program. They don't want to send someone to another district when they have their own alternative classroom. The problem is that their alternative program only offers computer-based instruction for at-risk students. Their alternative program adopts a "one size fits all strategy" that is different from the traditional school's strategy, but still only offers one style of learning for all of the kids enrolled.

It is frustrating for this student to know that there is a program like mine that would offer him choices when it comes to learning, that would offer him more one-on-one assistance if he needs it, and that would allow him to graduate on time with his class--but he can't enroll because he doesn't live in the right district. It is frustrating for me to see a kid who so clearly exhibits qualities that will make him a successful adult, who is motivated to do what it takes, but might not graduate because of school finance and residency issues.

A lot of people talk about school reform. A lot of people talk about issues relating to teachers and how they are paid, about standardized testing and failing schools. But what about the kids? Where is the ed reform plan that focuses on the kids? The student who visited me is one of many, many kids who want to learn, but feel lost in the system. No amount of standardized testing or teacher salary-adjustments will help him be successful in our current educational system. At what point do we stop trying to fix the small stuff and realize that it's time for a system-wide change? 

In my dream world, that student would walk into our school building and be welcomed with open arms. Home address and financial partnerships between districts wouldn't matter. A kid wants to learn and a school wants to help him--that's all that should matter. How can we make that dream come true?

Akbar Sim (voorheen Meneer de Braker)Akbar Sim (voorheen Meneer de Braker

Accentuating the Positve

The first weeks of school are hard. My students test my limits over and over again. I dish out consequences repeatedly. I can't let up even once in these first weeks, or they will not learn these valuable lessons:

• Our classroom is predictable (unlike many of their lives outside of school) 
• Everyone is the same, but everyone is different. I will do my best to be fair--which means that a student with a disability may have different tools for completing their schoolwork than a student without disabilities. However, the consequences for not completing work will be the same for everyone.
• Some behaviors are acceptable and some are unacceptable---whether in our classroom, on the job, and in society. Acceptable behavior is rewarded. Unacceptable behavior will have negative consequences. 

Todd's book

This past week I found myself falling into a pattern of negativity: "You can't swear in public like that. It gives people a really bad impression of our school." "Don't talk right now. You're disrupting those who are trying to get work done." Every day I found a way to say what my students were doing wrong. I forgot to tell them what they were doing right.

Several years ago I had the pleasure of attending a presentation given by Todd Whitaker.  Todd is an educator and speaker who is spreading the word about what good teachers do. His tips are often simple and seem like common sense; however they are not commonly practiced. During the presentation I saw, Todd talked about this common scenario outlining the way teachers handle disciplinary issues in their classrooms: 

One or two kids act up. The teacher yells at the whole class. Everyone feels badly--even the majority of the class, who didn't act up at all.

He suggested that we change that paradigm in this simple way: One or two kids act up. The teacher praises and rewards the kids who did not act up. Those who made positive behavioral choices feel good. Those who did not are left out.

That simple premise is the foundation for a research-based practice called Positive Behavior Interventions and Support or PBIS. Many elementary schools are trying to stop punishing all students for the behaviors of a few, and are instead setting clear expectations, modeling positive behaviors, and rewarding those who meet behavioral expectations. It is a proven program that literally changes the climate of many schools. But all of the guidelines I've seen are for younger kids. I often wonder: How can PBIS be adapted for high schoolers?

Being negative and only focusing on what kids are doing wrong is a tiring business. They get frustrated. I get frustrated. Everyone feels grumpy all the time. Mid-way through the second week of school this year I was so tired that I knew something had to change. I remembered Todd Whitaker's presentation, and I remembered a lesson from a powerful curriculum called Reconnecting Youth (a research-based curriculum designed to help at-risk students attend school more regularly, improve their grades, reduce drug use, and decrease suicide-risk behaviors.) The lesson involves finding something positive about each individual in class and pointing it out publicly. It's been a while since I've used the RY curriculum with my students, but last week I decided it was time to accentuate the positive. 

I got a bag of plastic silver and gold tokens. I printed out a sheet of memo pages with the heading:

A Token of my Appreciation…

Flickr image credit: WayTru 

Then I hand wrote a note to each of my students about something I appreciate about them. I wrote their name, a note of thanks, and signed my first name. When school started, I handed each student their note and a plastic token, saying "This is a token of my appreciation. Thank you ____ ." 

I'm not going to lie. For some kids it was a stretch to think of what I was thankful about. But those kids are the ones who most need to know that I see them, and that I want them to succeed. Their messages included statements like this: "Thank you for coming to school twice this week and trying your best. I know that if you keep coming you will graduate. I believe in you."

Will it make a difference? I don't know. I can only guess that Todd Whitaker, the developers of RY, and PBIS are really on to something with their idea of modeling/rewarding positive behaviors. So I am going to try to think of other tokens, treats or positive rewards to give to my students in the coming weeks. I don't know whether or not it will make a difference to them, but I know for a fact that it feels better to me. New goal: accentuate the positive.

If you have ideas about another token, treat or reward I can give to my students please share. I'd love to hand out one a week. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

The Power of a Symbol

Several years ago I had a group of students who thought it was "cool" to draw swastikas everywhere. They drew swastikas on their schoolwork, on their clothing, and on their skin. I was horrified. When I asked them to stop, they questioned my motives. "We don't have any Jewish kids here. It's not offending anyone!" I told them it was offending me, and I wanted them to stop.

They did not stop, however. Swastikas continued to appear on their schoolwork and on their skin. One boy used a permanent marker to draw a swastika in the middle of his forehead.  He wore it with pride. He made sure to take off his hat when facing me so that I could see his open defiance of my request. When I looked at him questioningly, asking, "Why did you do that? I asked you to stop." He recited to me the thousands year-old history of the swastika, and assured me (with his blonde hair and blue eyes) that he did not intend for anyone to take it in an Aryan way. He was not a racist or a Nazi, he said.

 

Flickr Image Credit:Wm Jas 

I was deeply disturbed by his insistence that wearing a swastika on his forehead is something to be proud of. The previous year, a different group of students had gone with me to the local nursing home to interview residents about their experiences in WWII.  Their pain was palpable. To have this young man not show any regard for the memory of that pain bothered me immensely. I could only conclude that my student did not know the more recent history of that symbol well enough. As his teacher, it was my job to teach him. I could look at him and say, "YOU are a racist," which would cause him to become more defiant and angry. Or I could try to get him to see things from another perspective.

While thinking about how to approach the subject, I realized that the biggest challenge would be getting these rural, poor, white kids to put themselves in someone else's shoes. I thought about just showing them a movie like Schindler's List.  But that is just a movie. It is so easy to dissociate one's self from a movie; that's not real--it's Hollywood. Instead of a movie, I got the documentary World War II -- The Lost Color Archives. Even with its gut-wrenching scenes from the concentration camps, I didn't think that my students would find much reason to relate to the footage on a personal level.  I struggled to think of a way to make them aware of what the swastika symbolizes to so many people.

My students have all experienced pain. Some of them have experienced so much pain that I am amazed by their ability to survive. The boy with the swastika on his forehead was one such person. His history involves both physical and sexual violence, both of which deeply affected him. Many of my other students had similar backgrounds.

Two days after discovering the swastika-on-the-forehead , I told my students that we were not going to complete any of our regular schoolwork. "We are going to have a discussion. It will be a really serious discussion and I will be sharing some very personal information with you. It is my hope that you will feel comfortable enough to share some things about yourself, too. Because it is so scary to share such personal stories, I need you all to agree to treat each other with respect. If you cannot handle that, you may leave right now. You will not be penalized for leaving. But you will be penalized if you are disrespectful to anyone sharing their personal stories." No one left.

After sharing the story of one of my darkest memories, I asked my students if they had any similar memories. I was shocked by the number of kids who had been living with immeasurable pain. Rape, physical abuse and mental abuse are far more common than I'd ever thought they were. After an intense period of sharing and tears, I asked those who had been brave enough to share, "Are there things that you see, hear, or smell that seem to send you back in time? Do you have flashbacks?" Each one of those kids could name a scent, an object, a song that froze them in fear, making them return in their minds to the time and place they were hurt so profoundly.  I asked a girl who admitted to flashbacks  how she would feel if I played the song that triggered her flashbacks each day as she entered our classroom. I asked the boy with the swastikas how he would feel if I presented him with the trigger to his pain each day. I told them that while the swastika does have an ancient history as a symbol of peace, there are people alive today who will not see it as such. For those people, wearing a swastika is like forcing them back in time to their moment of pain. Then we watched the documentary together.

We wept together. All of us.

At the conclusion of the film I asked them if they now understood why I was so upset by their casual display of swastikas. With red eyes, they all nodded. The boy with the swastika on his head got up to scrub his face in the bathroom. When he returned to the classroom he said, "This was an intense day. Can we have a group hug?" We all stood at the front of our classroom hugging each other for a long time.

That was the single most powerful day of teaching/learning that I've ever experienced in my career.

_____________
For the past week, two things have been on my mind: the movie The Help, and the start of the new school year. The story I just told brings together my thoughts on both subjects.

On The Help:There has been much controversy over both the movie and the book.  I didn't quite understand the controversy until I read this post by Ann Freeman (via Nordette Adams.) I am left wondering: if I read the book, if I see the movie: will I be wearing a proverbial swastika on my head? Am I perpetuating the pain of the past?

On the start of the school year: There is more talk now than ever before about teacher accountability for the learning students do in our classrooms. I just wrote about my most powerful teaching moment--one that deeply affected both me and my students. Yet none of what was taught or learned that day is considered of value in our current educational system. There is no bubble test to measure a student's growth in her/his ability to feel empathy. How do we balance this need for accountability with the need to ensure that kids learn more than just reading and math? For it is my opinion that they also need to learn more about what it means to be human.

Redemption, Part 2

In my last post I shared some amazing stories of kids who saved themselves from dropping out of high school. As a teacher, those stories are the ones that keep me going year after year. They inspire to keep getting up and going to work in the morning. But to be honest, they don't stick with me as long as the other stories--the stories of the kids who did not make it to graduation. Those stories haunt me, sometimes, and it is hard to let them go. I relive moments where I could've, should've done something to make a difference. I worry that I am no longer an effective teacher and start combing the ads to look for another job. I worry.

In the past few weeks I have been contacted by a few of the kids who didn't make it. These kids have been doing the same "could've should've" dance that I do when I think about them. 

A girl I'll call "M," who dropped out of school several years ago, messaged me on Facebook.  She's ready to finish school but doesn't know how to go about it. She asked how to go about finally getting her diploma.

A young man who has struggled with alcoholism since the age of 14, dropped out of our alternative program at 17. He will receive his diploma from an adult high school completion program this week at the age of 20.  

And perhaps the most impressive story of all:

 Some rights reserved by RambergMediaImages

The mother of a sophomore student who dropped out earlier this year visited this week. She said, "I realized that I can't get him to graduate if I never did it myself." She enrolled in the adult high school completion program and is proving to her son that it is possible for the people in their family to succeed.

Talk about redemption! It is never too late to strive for success. 

Alternative Education is Going Global

Alternative Education underway - The Guardian Newspaper

I'll be honest, I don't know much about Belize. But this article showed up in my Google Reader feed (set to find all news with the tag "alternative education") and I decided to read it. What interests me about the article is the fact that government in Belize City believes that opening an alternative school will lead to an improved quality of life for all citizens. An alternative school will educate the kids who currently have no place to go, no purpose except survival.

It is exciting to think about alternative education in a global sense. Alternative students often feel like they are the only kids in the world going through the things they go through. How powerful to share a global connection with kids like them in Belize!

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Bob Dylan and the Student-Centered Classroom

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be. --Bob Dylan

This quote was originally tweeted by @fear2love and it really struck a chord with me. In particular, I liked how it could apply to education.

Check it out with one minor change:
I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each student as she/he is, without prior rules about what she/he should be.

I think most teachers are already thinking this way or are moving towards thinking this way. But there are others who are still terribly teacher-focused  instead of being student-focused. In simplest terms, those teachers need to realize that without students, they would have no purpose. It is the students who make up the school. Without them, a school is just an empty building.

Why I LOVE Public Education

It's time for a positive public relations campaign! We need to make sure the public hears what is GREAT about our public schools! I am limited to my own experience as a student, teacher, and a parent and I realize that not everyone has the same experience in public schools; but here's what tops my list of public school JOYS:

• KIDS!  When I was one, I didn't always fit in, was at-risk in junior high and high school, and didn't always love school. But in retrospect, I am so grateful for my time in public schools. I grew up in suburban Chicago and attended an elementary school with a lot of diversity (100+ languages spoken!) There was always a peer who who helped me and a group of friends that I considered my second family.  As a parent in Iowa,  my children attend a public school with a similar demographic to my old elementary school (yes, in Iowa!)  This huge mix of culture and diversity really prepares them to be global citizens. They learn about the world through their interactions with their peers. As a teacher, I love my students! We become a little family, sharing chores that keep the classroom running, sharing learning and sharing conversations. They are so smart and so funny sometimes that my time with them very rarely feels like work.
•  COMMUNITY-BUILDING! It starts in the classroom, where students and teacher become a little community. It spreads to a building, and if you're lucky, it moves throughout a district and/or a town. My students partner with the community in several projects each year. They are all labeled "at-risk" of dropping out and the "bad vibes" go both ways: they don't like most adults in the community and most of those adults don't like them. Community projects help everyone be more accepting of each other. As a parent, I want to see more of this at my children's school: we have such a wonderfully diverse population and if we interacted more we could all learn to appreciate and celebrate that fact! Where else can such community building occur but in a public school?!?
• GLOBAL VILLAGE-BUILDING! We start by building small communities, but why stop there? So many kids in my classroom and in my neighborhood suffer from poverty. They don't get to go on vacation or see the world outside of their towns and they don't even have access to technology to see the world via the Internet. I LOVE the fact that public schools can give students the opportunity to look out a window to the world. A small field trip, a guest speaker, a Skype meeting with someone halfway around the world, or an introduction to a Google app: any of these things we do in our public schools can show kids the world outside. If they can see a glimpse of the world outside of their hometown, then they can dream a better life.
• HOPE! In my professional life, I have seen some kids who are really beaten down by personal traumas and tribulations. By the time I see them, they have sometimes suffered for fourteen or more years. But despite all of that suffering, most of them still have hope! They still want to learn! They still come to school each day and get that twinkle in their eye when they understand something! They can still laugh! When I see these kids not only survive, but succeed, it is hard not to LOVE my job and LOVE public education--without it, none of the above would be possible.

A Message to my Fellow White Educators

I am relatively new to Twitter, but in a very short time I’ve become really interested in the discussions about education reform. There are two obvious camps that I can see involved in regular debate: the teacher/union/testing is bad camp vs. the Race to the Top/get rid of bad teachers/testing is the best tool available camp.  I’ve tried to become active in those conversations by sending messages, posting comments on blogs and retweeting, but the conversation never starts because no one writes back to me. I commented on an Edutopia blog and the blogger responded to every other commenter except me. That isn’t much of a conversation! Since then, I have had similar experiences when posting comments on other blogs. First, I had to wonder if my comments were written in invisible ink. Then I started to think there is some sort of technical difficulty. Do I have some sort of electronic plague? Then I began to think about what I have been talking about. Maybe something I say makes people uncomfortable? I thought and thought, and talked to my husband about it (a face-to-face conversation!) He pointed out to me that I regularly bring up issues relating to race and poverty. BINGO, I thought. The education reformers I’ve been trying to engage in conversation are white.

In real life and on Twitter, I find that most white folks don’t want to talk about race and ethnicity issues when they talk about education. I’ve heard white people say time and time again, “If I talk about race, people are going to think I’m a racist.”  But here’s the deal: if you don’t start talking about the fact that most of our “failing” schools are filled with African-American and Hispanic students, then you are not talking about education reform. If you do not acknowledge that race and ethnicity are directly related to poverty in our country, you are not talking about education reform. And if you don’t see the correlation between race/ethnicity and poverty--the single most important issue affecting student success in education--then you are not talking about education reform. If you are afraid to speak about the role race/ethnicity plays in our education system, then your inaction speaks louder than words.

We may have elected a person of color as president, but we still have racial problems in our society. When a black mom is jailed for enrolling kids in a higher achieving school, while at the same time thousands of white families across the country have done the same thing and have not been jailed--we have a problem. We need to open up the dialogue about the role race and ethnicity play in education.

To my white colleagues in education reform I say: Stop worrying about whether people will question your liberal sensibility. Stop worrying that someone will think you’re a racist (if that’s what’s stopping you) By not speaking out you are a bystander who is letting injustice happen and becoming exactly what you are trying not to be. We need to have open conversations about race and ethnicity and the impact they have on education. We need to prepare ourselves and our children for the future--because the time is coming where whites will be the minority. Change is coming, whether you want it or not. Prepare yourself by talking about it now.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS: HOW TO SUCCEED WITH "AT-RISK" (a.k.a. The Coolest) STUDENTS

He swaggers into the room, slithers into a desk in the back. Everything about him screams defiance. He ain't gonna learn nothin'. School is a waste of time. You can't make him do anything and any threat you make to even try will result in nothing--no action whatsoever. His parents never graduated high school; they don't care. The administration is sick of the kid, but they can't do anything because he's under the legal dropout age and they are required to provide him an education. He gets suspended regularly, but never for anything so bad he could be expelled. You look at him in your classroom and your stomach twists itself into knots, wondering what the coming weeks will bring. You wonder how much of a disruption he will cause and how much instructional time the other kids in class will lose because you're dealing with him. You're already planning the weekly TGIF parties so you can de-stress. Weeks go by and it's just as bad as you thought. You try to ignore his swaggering, slithering self but ignoring doesn't make him stop. He interrupts your instruction, makes fun of the assignments and distracts your other students. He doesn't do any work, ever. He's going to fail your class and you're just trying to make sure that your other students don't follow his lead.  You wonder, "Why doesn't he just drop out???"

One of the biggest frustrations for a high school teacher who is passionate about what they do is the kid who they just can't seem to reach. I was an at-risk teen and for 15 years I have been teaching at-risk teens. Despite all of this experience, I am not an expert. Every student is different. What works for one might not work for another. Each time a new student enters my alternative high school program I spend time thinking about how to reach them, and I know that in my district I am not the only educator who spends time thinking about how to reach a particular student who seems unreachable. The problem is not just occurring in my district, though.  Many educators are faced with a growing number of at-risk students in their classrooms. The reasons why at-risk numbers are skyrocketing would be another entirely different discussion! For now, I will just acknowledge that general educators are faced with a very difficult reality. Due to NCLB /AYP requirements and value-added assessment, your job may be at stake if you can't reach your students. Below are some things I've learned through my experience that may or may not help general educators who are trying to reach at-risk students.

Caveat: there are no quick fixes. If a student has been beaten down by the system for 14 or more years, you won't be able to reach that student in an hour, or even a day. But you can reach them. They want to be reached. Throw a rope out and they won't ignore your attempt to save their education. Here are some of the easiest interventions to use:

1.  Sometimes instruction is not the most important thing. It is your job to figure out when an issue is big enough to interrupt instruction and then to let it interfere.  Depending on how old you are, I bet you can remember powerful examples of when life interfered with instruction: Kennedy's assassination, the Challenger explosion, September 11. For at-risk students, life interferes with school on a daily basis. Those outside influences are more powerful than your lesson plan. You can choose to ignore the outside issues and keep chugging through the lesson, but you will not reach the at-risk student unless you acknowledge their outside struggles. (Notice I did not say you need to glorify their struggles or abandon your lesson completely.)
2. Treat your students as if they are your peers. Say hello to them--by name--when they walk into the room. When you first meet them, make eye contact and shake their hand. Introduce yourself the way you would if you were attending a meeting or a job interview. Make them feel important and respected. As teachers, we often say that students need to "give respect in order to get respect." With at-risk kids, the teacher needs to model the act of giving respect because many of them have never seen what real respect looks like. 
3. Give some positive feedback. Even if it's just a compliment about something non-academic: "I like your shirt today." Most at-risk teens only receive negative feedback at school: you're late again; you forgot your homework; you failed the quiz; you need to go to the office; that's a detention; get your feet off the desk; stop talking; you're disrupting your peers who are trying to learn! Then there's the nonverbal negative feedback: you're ignored by the teacher, you get the "evil eye"; your peers fear you, ignore you or make fun of you. Can you imagine how you'd feel if you were surrounded by that kind of negativity every day at work, year after year? That is the school reality for many at-risk teens. Positive feedback--as simple as a smile or a compliment--can make a HUGE difference in the day of an at-risk teen. And if you offer positive feedback each day for a week, at-risk teens might actually start to believe you are telling the truth.

These are some very basic strategies and some would argue that they are universal strategies that should be used with every student, whether or not they are deemed "at-risk". What do you think? How do you reach those hard-to-reach students?

Alternative School Student Bloggers

I teach in an alternative high school program in rural Iowa. Most of my students have stories to tell about their lives that could either leave you feeling depressed because of the hardships they've endured, or inspired because they've survived those hardships. They are definitely survivors. And they are definitely characters! One thing I can tell you for sure: Beavis and Butthead aren't just cartoon characters; they are alive and in my classroom this year!

Just recently, I established a blog for my alternative program. My goal was to guide them through an individualized self-study course on how to become a better writer. I hoped to expose them to a 21st century skill and improve their writing skills at the same time by showing them how to blog (Is that metacognition? blogging about blogging?) 

When I started the project, I thought it would be focused on helping my students improve their writing skills; but my Twitter family inspired me to make it into something much bigger. The project now involves facilitating my students on a journey across the Internet, helping them to be better citizens of the world, opening their eyes to what exists outside of our classroom. 


While this type of journey may not be a big deal to many high school students in the U.S., it is a big deal to students in my alternative high school classroom. Almost 100% of them receive free or reduced lunch. Many do not have access to technology at home (including cell phones) and most have never traveled more than 60 miles from their home. Their worlds are very small and sometimes very difficult. To many of them--before our blogging journey--Google was nothing but a search engine.


So far, it is amazing to watch them learn! They each set up an iGoogle home page and then learned to filter information with Google Reader. They are reading about things they didn't know existed and talking about news stories from across the globe. They are  blogging about their discoveries and their lives, and the act of  blogging is improving their writing!  


It is not any easy class to prepare for or to facilitate. Lots of prep work is involved and I do lots of running around to check on kids and answer their questions. But they are learning and sharing. And it is EXCITING to be a part of! It seems like the hard work is paying off--both for them and for me! The journey is not over, but getting there sure is fun!