Yesterday I went to a site for kids who have been sent by their principal to another school so that their behavior becomes more appropriate to the norms of a regular US classroom. I write this and ask myself, “Why aren’t we equipped in the regular school setting to help these kids better?” It’s a long process to get students to this particular kind of alternative school in my district; the guidance counselor, teachers, and parents are involved.
One of my former students was sent a couple years ago. No matter what I told him about, no matter how hard I tried, I could seldom get his head off the desk. I think (though never reported because I wasn’t sure it was him) that he took a large bread knife I had brought to school to cut a cake for an after-school activity with the Latino Leadership Coalition. When he was about to be shipped out of our school, on his last day, he finally wrote in my class (we did a lot of journaling). He wrote feverishly—about how his biology teacher had refused to let him in her classroom. She had screamed at him to “Get out!” when he tried to take a seat in her class, thinking she was kidding when she refused to let him sit. I read his entry and apologized to him for her, and, in a way, for me, for not being able to connect with him in meaningful enough ways to keep him coming back to school with a purpose.
And last year as department chair I lobbied to get one of the students in the department to one of these alternative programs. It wasn’t that we didn’t like him. He was riddled with problems from home, from what he was doing after school, from anger. A place where he could get a lot more personalized attention and be among students who were all trying to learn skills to “fit in” to the culture of school would be a better place, I thought.
This year, he is now my student—still inside the alternative setting. I had spoken with him so many times in the halls about his choices in life, about how he was doing. Several other staff members worked more with him, but he was still in the alternative school this year.
I found him a bit larger than the last time I had seen him—more muscular, older, in so many ways, especially around his tired eyes. He had been sleeping on his desk, uninterested in the work of school. His sympathetic teacher and I woke him, told him that he had to be tested for ESOL. He knows the drill after having been in ESOL in my district for two years now. His teacher told me privately that he seems to be making worse choices these days, getting himself into more trouble. He’ll probably be shipped to the juvenile detention center before long, or maybe not.
What did this test mean to this boy? Why do it? Why even come to school? (He’s legally obligated to and gets in trouble if he doesn’t.) How does he get out of bed in the morning? If you saw his face, you’d know why I ask these questions.
He didn’t finish the first test, the reading one. He just couldn’t. I don’t blame him. I said I’d come back again in a few days. I fear what I am to him. A symbol of an institution that hasn’t helped him? Just another piece of a world that is unfair? A hollow voice that makes unimportant demands on him? I just don’t know.
Entries (RSS)