Someone recently asked me, "Before your encounter with the stranger on the park bench, what would you say were the main causes of your lack of interest in school? Was it primarily due to an unstable home life or was it something about the educational system?"
Most of my apathy about school was due to three factors: what was going on at home, at school, and within me. First, I had a very unstable, sometimes unhealthy environment at home. Sometimes there were drugs, alcohol and abuse. Those things made it harder for me to function at school.
Second, I had teachers who meant well, but who were culturally incompetent. They viewed me through their white, middle-class lenses where people ate three meals a day, had a washer and dryer, and who had two parents at home who help their kids with homework. While that perspective was not inherently bad, it blinded most of the teachers and staff at my schools from understanding life through my lens. Their ethnocentricity caused them to make the fatal slip of believing that because they were “normal,” that they were also “the norm” by which I, and other kids like me, should be evaluated. They meant well, but still did harm, because they often asked questions that embarrassed, alienated and devastated me.
Third, there was a huge identity crisis going on within me. I did not see myself as a good student, and I never felt accepted by any particular groups.
Those three things, together, slowly eroded my interest in school.
I think schools could have done a couple things to help me: Although they could not change what was going on at home, they could have done a much better job at equipping their teachers and staff with the cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills needed to work with kids like me (I have some strong ideas about how to do that...later).
Related to that, teachers could have spent more time helping me get some small academic victories, so that they could help me improve my self-image or self-confidence as a student.
As a struggling student, there was no way anyone was going to get me to believe that I could graduate from high school or go to college, because, in my mind, people like me didn't do those kinds of things.
What they could have done, however, was take a little time to show me how to prepare for the upcoming quiz or test. For example, I didn't know how to study: that I was supposed to go to a quiet place without any interruptions so I could focus, and I had no idea that repitition was the mother of learning.
Had someone just pulled me aside, and gave me little encouragements like that, I wonder how much better I would have done on my quizzes, tests, and in school; and, I wonder how those small victories would have helped boost my self-confidence (and my attendance).
Don't underestimate those small, little nudges of advice and encouragement with your struggling students. They can help in a big way.
Do you know any kids like this? What are some things you have done to help kids who are chronically absent?