Overview:
A first-year alternative-school teacher recounts how building warm but firm relationships with the so-called "bad kids" revealed them not as problems but as resilient students failed by a broken education system.
Every teacher knows the kids in this essay.
Or, I should say, knows of them.
The one’s only present on the roster, with a chronic absenteeism problem. The one’s who derail your whole lesson with a handful of snarky comments that set the entire classroom off. The one’s with a foul mouth and what seems like every excuse in the world to not turn anything in. The students who beg you in the last week to let them turn in extra credit so they can barely drag their percentage kicking and screaming to the holy grail 60% mark for a technically passing grade.
These are the “bad” kids.
When these kids disappear, when your administration finally does something about their behavior, you know you shouldn’t see it as a victory, but it’s always a bit of a relief.
In my first year of teaching, I secured a job on an alternative continuation campus, and I learned the answer to a question that many teachers don’t realize they should be asking.
When the “bad” kids disappear, where do they go?
They come to me.
The hours leading up to my first day in the classroom gave me an anxiety I was unaccustomed to. I have struggled with mental health my entire life, but I’ve always been more depressive than anxious. Suddenly I was shaken with a lack of confidence mixed with tentative excitement. I had access to my roster, and a pile of career-building, self-confidence worksheets the substitute had been giving to my students during the days my district paperwork was still being processed.
I spent two hours matching the answers on the worksheets to the names on my digital roster, eyes skipping back and forth, trying to get a head start on memorizing names and guessing at their personalities. My interview had made it clear that this campus operated very differently than a traditional comprehensive school. The top priority was to build relationships with my students. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get anywhere with teaching them content.
In lieu of having the three day week of welcome to ease into those relationships, I dedicated myself to the task (and I cheated a bit). When coming up with sentence examples for the second week, I built in answers from the worksheets and from my first interactions of getting to know students. I would mention students by name and their desired occupations, their interests, their pets. Every time I took attendance I asked each student a low-stakes ice breaker question, and tried to commit the answers to memory.
Eventually my anxiety settled to a low simmer, but each Sunday it seemed to come back snarling and wreaking havoc on my necessary sleep schedule.
The kindest compliment I have ever received is that I seem to have an innate capacity for making an earnest, excited connection with just about anyone. It is a blessing and a curse to have this incessant desire to talk to every stranger I meet. Some people find it a bit much, but I have found that my students, many of whom feel as if no teacher previously really cared to get to know them, are taken by it. I worked customer service as often as I could since I was a senior in high school, and this tendency was honed especially well in both the Taco Bell drive through and the local college bar where I cleared tables and delivered food. The rotating door of employees in my food service jobs also equipped me well for the strange quarter system my alternative education campus operates on. Every quarter, I would get a new batch of students to work with. Some may have been with me the quarter previously, some may be entirely new to the campus.
I also have a close family member who struggles with what could very generously be called anger issues. Helping them through their adolescence, always returning with forgiveness and a chance to start again, was something I spoke about a lot in my interview, and I found that it wasn’t a bluff; words said in anger and frustration from teenagers do not have the ability to puncture my thickened skin.
I was surprised it took me four quarters before I had to kick any students of my class. Looking back on my previous experiences before starting my career in education however, I realize that it shouldn’t have come as a shock at all. The only reason those students had to leave the room was because their behavior had become a detriment to my relationships with the rest of the class, who had begun to voice their desire to continue with the lesson instead of listening to the disruptive side conversation which had increasingly grown in volume. I remember folding my hands together so the two girls wouldn’t see them shake as I gave them their two options, “one of you may move seats or both of you need to go to the dean.” I was so nervous about ruining the relationship I had steadily built with one of the two students, and even more anxious about setting back the painstaking progress the other student had made with our on-campus intervention team.
I didn’t have anything to worry about.
When I saw the first student of the pair, the one who I had a solid rapport with, she immediately apologized, opening the door for me to check in and make sure she was doing okay. Later, I offered to have a restorative conversation with both girls to set clear expectations without causing further anxiety and confrontation with either party. While the girls declined, the behavior incidents from both girls substantially decreased after I set a clear expectation. This was not my first lesson in the necessity of warm, but firm expectations, but it was certainly the scariest to learn.
What I have come to realize about my students is that they have learned a cold hard lesson about the education system that most higher-ups do not want to reckon with. Our education system is deeply divided on what an education is supposed to be for. Are we making reliable citizens who can participate effortlessly in existing institutions? Are we imparting necessary knowledge to cultivate a rich intellectual existence? Are we teaching to succeed on standardized tests to secure funding and security for educators and administrators? Are we cultivating change-makers who will dream of and shape a better world, as many education schools claim to prepare their teachers to work towards? Ask five educators and you will get seven answers.
The result on most campuses is predictably unpredictable outcomes. Most schools have declining test scores, literacy and numeracy is plummeting, while graduation rates only trend upwards. Without a guiding mission, schools are doing their best to maintain a status quo of achievement in the form of graduation rates and grade inflation. Everyone knows that the kids are not alright, no one feels confident enough to take a stab at the foundational flaws haunting our systems writ large, and my students were just the ones unlucky enough to learn it faster and harder than any of their peers.
But my students are not bad kids.
My students come to class when they can, by the underfunded public bus system in my city, or by foot. Many illegally drive to get to campus, fearing the lack of a diploma more than the risk of getting arrested for driving without a license.
My students come to class hungry because they couldn’t afford dinner, tired because they worked a closing shift, frustrated because their family is living paycheck to paycheck and that would put anyone in a bad mood.
Every time I find myself developing a jaded attitude about my students’ capacities, I learn a new side to them that forces me to reckon with the signficance of my position. My coworkers and I may be the only adults who can consistently show up for them, who can be safe and reliable. We are a rock in their white water river, and we cannot afford to let ourselves drift away in the current.
Because my kids aren’t bad. They’re bad ass. And every day I love them a little more for it.
