What Kinds of Kids Fail High School Courses More Regularly Than Others?

I wrote this at school, after fretting over the fact that, every time a kid fails, we act like that's never happened before, it's very confusing and must be explained.  Actually it's a reality of the job, and I think we should know more, generally, about it.  I don't think the habit of looking at every kid as a unique little snowflake is always helpful.  Sometimes profiling means you have more tools to bring to understanding stuff.  Here's what I wrote (it starts out more dry and academic than I usually am on here):

Any number of factors far beyond a school’s sphere of influence (and sometimes even its knowledge) have undeniably huge effects on student success.  A sobering question is “What, if anything, could we do about any of this?”

 Since the divorce rate skyrocketed in the 50s and 60s, extensive research has been carried out exploring links between parental splits and juvenile crime.  It is very seldom that one sees a student who is in trouble with the law, but experiencing no problems in the classroom.  When it comes to explaining why certain kids end up getting into trouble with the law, the parents and the home are most often pointed to.

A study by Kolvin et. al in 1988 concluded that parental splits were just as significant a factor in juvenile crime as family income, lack of parental supervision, IQ, overly large families, or hyperactivity and related disorders.  The fact that all of these factors have been routinely used to explain why teenagers end up committing crime suggests that it would be only sensible to expect to see them having an effect on success in school as well.

When there is a divorce or separation going on (and in each class, there always are), many kids find their entire lives turned upside down and dumped onto the floor, and this is usually seen in their classroom performance as well.  Serious illness in the family may have a similar effect, though often to a lesser degree. It is telling that several studies (among them Amato and Keith 1991; Wadsworth 1970) indicate that the death of a parent has a significantly less disruptive and lasting negative effect on a family and its members than a parental separation does.

  Kids dealing with illnesses or injuries of their own, from emotional and psychological problems such as depression or eating disorders, right up through epilepsy, surgeries and cancers, predictably find that school becomes (of necessity) less and less a main focus. 

  Studies such as one by Hirschi (1969) indicate three factors which protect children from falling through the cracks and becoming juvenile delinquents:

·        identification with parents (as fellow human beings),

·        intimacy of communication with parents (two-way),

·      supervision by parents. (structure, routine, boundaries and protocols)

  It is interesting to see that the risk of social and legal rule-breaking is provably increased by kids not having a personal connection to, open lines of communication with, and supervision by the authority figures in their homes.  I would suggest that in a classroom, teachers are as much parent figures as they are anything else, especially in the psyches of the kids.

  Problems can be predicted with kids who aren’t identifying with their teachers and administrators (not seeing them as people, not accepting them as having competence or authority over kids, not sympathizing with their struggles and not feeling that they are being, nor are even capable of being, helpful or supportive in any significant way).

  Equally if kids do not communicate freely with their teachers, avoiding any kind of meaningful dialogue, this cuts off any number of avenues for help and makes educating them almost impossible.  Kids can use anything, including purposely topic-changing small-talk, wild stories, profanity, surly silence, belligerence, humour (and simply leaving the room or the school) to avoid any meaningful two-way communication about their success ever happening.

  Also at risk are kids who are either not supervised in their classrooms, or who remove themselves from being supervised by being truant or leaving the classroom at every opportunity.  Just as some students use extracurricular activities (or in-school duties related to sports or other events) to learn new skills under the friendly, looser and more personal supervision of teachers, others use them to avoid time spent in the classroom being supervised as they learn.

What is seen in the classroom when kids are “at risk” of failing?

Uninvestedness: Kids Who Don’t Hope or Care

After the first ten formative years of education, most kids have learned that adults seem to care about (to them foreign) things like savings accounts, income tax, parking, mortgages, elections, pension funds and education.  Kids often have trouble identifying with anyone who is going to be talking for any length of time about these topics, let alone taking any interest themselves, though it could be argued that these things will (one day, at least) be of great importance to most of them. 

Many of our students have learned that when it comes to these things, if they know nothing about them and never try to make changes to them or not, as far as they’re concerned “nothing happens either way,” so it “doesn’t matter.”  If they think people should vote liberal in Lanark County, a conservative will still win anyway, every time. They’ve seen it happen their whole lives.  And they’re too young to vote. So caring about things in which they don’t feel they have any say seems pointless.  Getting emotionally invested in any of it seems risky, wasteful and foolish.

  The depth of their understanding as to how they’re doing financially, socially and educationally goes no deeper, often, than a passionately felt “She loves me!” or “She hates me!”  Their reality can be colourful and brutal, painted with the broadest of strokes.  It isn’t, to their minds, that they spent all their money and then tried to make a cell phone payment and so a lady is phoning from the bank, or that they gossiped about a friend and so are now getting the cold shoulder, or that they didn’t do any school work and so are now failing a course.  That cause and effect relationship simply doesn’t seem real to many of them.  To many, it’s simply “She hates me.” 

As childish as this sounds, kids who fail courses quite often honestly believe that they have “been failed” because the teacher “hated” them. They are quick to point out students whom they feel to be lazier and less intelligent than themselves who did better in a course, as evidence that “she loves him, so of course he did better than me!”  (And things like that have actually been known to happen.) Kids have a strong belief that the world isn’t fair and can see dramas and conspiracies everywhere.  They also sense the importance of healthy communication and personal connections.  They know that identifying with people determines whether we can work with them.

Some parents have (sometimes in a practice handed down through several generations) just as little investment as their kids in the idea that school is necessary and good, and worth doing right and for real.  Some parental figures, if quizzed, would not be able to tell you which courses their child is taking this semester.  In some extreme cases parents wouldn’t actually know what grade their child is in (or what previous grade their child is still making up courses from.) I had one parent come in to demand why I was assigning exactly the same novels to her son again this year in English as I’d assigned him the previous one.  She hadn’t remembered that he was taking the same course again because he’d failed it the year before. At the end of the term he hadn't attended school for two months, nor was he living in the same town as his mom.

For parents who see school as a formality, and as something to give lip service to, but which doesn’t actually matter in any real way, phone calls from teachers are just about teachers shaming parents for their child’s lack of success.  For some of them, their kids are doing poorly because clearly, we “hate” them.  There is some truth to this as, if no personal connection has ever formed between teacher and student, and there is no communication, and the student will not work within the structures of the classroom, success is doubtful.

  Actually wanting to pass and simply being made to feel ashamed of having failed are not the same things at all.  The effect of not investing emotionally in getting school credits is pretty predictable, of course.  If your passing of courses and graduating high school is merely someone else’s hope (rather than your own), you are free to say “I don’t care” whenever you are urged to do work you don’t want to do.  In fact, “I don’t care” becomes a magic, good-for-all-eventualities shield against troublesome authority figures.  Because it works.  Stumps them every time.  If you really don’t care, no one can really help you at all until you do.

Disengaged Kids

A number of studies indicate that despite everything we put into teaching them, kids mostly teach each other.  We are not part of their inner circle, and so we are often just talking heads to them.  It is commonplace to see students daily paying no attention whatsoever to teachers and administrators who are earnestly talking away (including what PA announcements and written instructions are saying).  We've all seen that.  Still, we assume that if any kid is working, they must be doing what the teacher asked, or what is written on the sheet.  Not so.  What happens is that after having not listened, if they later feel they need to know anything, the first student who thinks s/he’s got it figured out often guides the work of anyone who gets in any way curious about it all.  Fortunately for students, so many handouts, sheets, essays and assignments are so uneducatingly identical one to the other throughout the school experience that, with a quick glance at a sheet, they can develop some kind of wild guess as to what they maybe should do, and do that, after perhaps conferring with whoever is sitting nearby, working confidently away.  Any teacher who routinely assigns work which isn't routine, and which has little "assignment easter eggs/powerups/hidden levels" built into it, will quickly see how on auto-pilot kids are, and how much they are relying on each other's guesses rather than teacherly instruction.  Students generally prefer asking each other what we meant, rather than simply asking us, standing beside their desk at time of asking.  They certainly do not trust that every single thing we tell them is very important and which they should listen to, actually is important and that they should listen to it.  And they are right in not so assuming. We really do repeat ourselves, filled as we are, generally, of the correct conviction that we're not being heeded.

  A kid who is ostracized or reluctant to engage with others is cut off from this network of peer support.  Students who feel no connections to any students or teachers may simply not ask anyone anything, even if they need to know something in order to succeed.  Even if they didn’t listen or weren’t there when instructions were given.  These students may give up on assignments at this point, or may hand in what are (diplomatically speaking) brave, wild guesses at what they are supposed to be demonstrating mastery of.

To complicate things, some kids have irregular phone service at their house, or no land line.  Some kids have no computers at home, or no printing and/or internet. Some don’t know how to use any of these things properly.  This means even if they do schoolwork at home and have a home computer, they often can’t/don’t know how to print it or transfer the data to school for further work on it, teacher or student help, or handing it in for marks.  All of this further cuts them off from being able to connect to the school, the other kids, and teachers.

A Problem Identifying with Formality

To many kids, people who are dressed “business casual” (or even more formally than that) or who use even slightly formal language, tones of voice or jargon, and who avoid conflict with odd platitudes and placating "I" phrases are simply not people they know.  To these kids, people dressed this way and acting like this are about as real-world as Mickey Mouse.  Many kids literally cannot identify with people painted with a veneer of formality, paper-thin courtesy and a shellacking of professionalism.  They cannot view them as real human beings in quite the way they themselves are real human beings.  They can't see through the candy shell, but are fairly certain it's not a person under there.

Undeniably, when it comes to people who work with addicts, gang members, teen moms and victims of any stripe, the first thing that needs to be thrown out is formality.  At adult high schools, all teachers are called by their first names.  Therapists do not have their patients call them “Dr.” At Alcoholics Anonymous, nobody gets called “Ms.”or "Sir."

So a strong negative response to middle-class formality and professionalism is understandable: these business casual folks who don’t swear are not anything like anyone in the families many of our "at-risk" kids come from, nor even like any friends of their family.  These authority figures are, to them, dressed like landlords, lawyers, police, Jehovah’s Witnesses and politicians.  Like the evil, digital Agent Smith from The Matrix.  Formal language is a foreign language to many of the kids having the most trouble with school.  They understandably cannot identify with administrators who spend the day coming onto the P.A. as disembodies voices, saying things such as:

Your attention please: This is an important reminder for all senior students that the third floor is out of bounds during period 1A at this time until further notice for all students not having Trent University bursary application surveys proctored on flip days this week.  And a reminder as well to all students to not go up the “down” staircase at any time, particularly during lunch B or during Flex periods. As well, could the members of this year's ZOOM Student Advocacy Team report to the cafetorium now for briefing and reorienting. Thank you. TGIF.

 They equally cannot identify with teachers who say things like:

Listen up, guys!  This is essential to your future!   You need to buy into your own success and have an Action Plan for achieving it!  
Alright folks: get out your Personal Passports for Guaranteed Success (that’s your PPGSs) and turn to the "SHOOT! Action Registry" section.  (It’s the section colour-coded periwinkle.  Right after the sunflower "Ideas! Idea! Ideas! CURVE is your friend!" section on maximizing your own potential and formulating strategies for success…)

Paul, don’t tell me you lost your Passport to Success again?!  How will you succeed now? 

Okay, just go get another one from the pile.  In the lavender “Totally Essential Resources You Need to Help You Succeed!” bin, yes.  TERYNTHYS.  That’s right.  Lavender.  Beside the taupe one.  The big pile of papers, yes.

 Many of our students didn’t learn talk like that in their homes.  It sounds foreign to them because it is.  It sounds like elves from Mirkwood, or Star Trek Klingons speaking their own, wholly made up tongues.  Because this is made up language.  It is, generally, a failed attempt at communication.  It isn’t remotely from the culture these kids are from.  They're too busy thinking "WTF?!" to hear and decipher a word.  In their heads, people who speak it aren’t real people being real.  They feel that people who talk like this (and who never swear, though they often look angry) are fake and are probably lying or selling something.  (and they're not far wrong)  They cannot identify with the people spouting this arcane argot, so they are mostly going to simply pretend these people aren’t there at all and hope they go away.  Failing that, they can mock them for seeming so foreign to what is the culture 'round here.  They feel there is something simple, honest and virtuous in what some would consider slang or vulgarity.  A warm, appreciative laugh of recognition and identification rings out whenever a bit of it creeps into any conversation they hadn’t until that point been accepting as genuine.  Suddenly they identify.

Unaccustomed to Structure or Boundaries

What is the effect of kids not having much parental supervision?  These kids may sleep on as many as three different beds/couches in three different towns, all in the same week, every week.  The word "home" doesn't mean much to them.  They may have personal belongings, including school work, in all of these various places, and also in a number of motor vehicles and in their locker.  (of course some fix this by never taking school work with them when they leave the building.)  This lack of a home base can result in a simple “Where is your novel, Sarah?” being answered quite honestly with:

Novel?  Oh that one?  I dunno…I’m still mad because the principal said I did stuff I totally didn’t.  I hate him, but he hates me anyway, so that’s okay.  He better watch out.  Anyway, my dad’s stupid girlfriend picked me up from bingo last night and I might have left it in her car, but she dropped me off at Judy (that’s my foster mom)’s house and it could be there, but then I had a fight with her doucebag son Jacob so I had to crash at my boyfriend’s step-mom’s place (her name’s Destiny) instead, so it could be there too.  Bitch stole my lighter.  Or Jess might have it.  I’m not talking to her anymore.  Such a skank.  Took my weed and thirty dollars.  I’ll see if I can get Jane (that’s my real mom) to drive me around and look for it, but she’s not in town again until next weekend, if she gets her license back, I mean.  I’m having a super tough week, so don’t bother me or I’ll just totally lose it, okay?  I SO have PMS right now... Just go ahead and teach your class or whatever and I’ll text Mark (he’s my worker) to maybe go get it or something.  That book is so boring and pointless anyway.  I can't read it.  Oh, and plus I’m going to be away tomorrow for court. Can I go the bathroom?  I need a drink.  Also Stacy needs her smokes.

There are no boundaries.  Persons, places and things blur together and slip and slide over into and back out of each other all week long, with no specific time and place for anything.  These kids may have been raised with no regular meal times, no regular bed times, or in fact, bath or laundry days.  Things like tattoos, smoking, piercings, drug and alcohol use, promiscuity (and kneejerk reflex, physically combative responses to any perceived affront to their dignity or mood) may unfold throughout their formative years, completely unsupervised (or even observed) by any parent figure, starting at a shockingly low age.

  It is also possible that they are imitating their parent figures when showing immature or immoderate approaches to these. However the adults around them act is their “normal.”  If the adults around them demonstrate no capacity for delaying gratification, no understanding of boundaries, and little personal restraint in most areas of their lives, kids grow up with that being normal.  If failure and apathy are a child’s culture, it’s no wonder that colourful, peppy, acronym-infested brochures about maximizing one’s potential for excellence tend to fall on deaf floors.

These “absent parent” kids are often badly nourished, and their sleep habits and indulgences in junk foods, cigarettes, alcohol, pot and energy drinks/“coffee milkshake” beverages aren’t helping their brains develop nor function.  For many, a strong admixture of stimulants and depressants (often along with a great deal of aspirin and other pharmacy stuff) has been the formula for getting through their day for longer than they can remember.

To expect these kids to show up to school and then to five different classes at specific, not-on-the-hour times (many kids cannot read the hands of the school’s clocks) without being late, and having brought different expected materials to each, having worked on various assignments “at home” is simply beyond some of them.  Schools with "flip" timetables, in which students are not in the same class at the same time from day to day, are perhaps not really considering this.

Others have literally never had to remain within any environment in which someone else had the right to decide where they sat, whether or not they were allowed to talk or swear or eat, or what they were allowed to do with their cell phones.  Some of them have been allowed to smoke at the dinner table for some time.  For some, pajama bottoms, yoga pants or sweats can be worn 24/7 without being washed or removed for a week. To them, teachers who let them sit in the back of the room zoning out and playing games on their phones are acting normal, while teachers who encroach upon their accustomed liberty in these areas “hate them” and are clearly bad people with emotional problems and control issues.  The fact that there are so many teachers with emotional problems and control issues does not help this impression.  The experience seems no doubt like they have been sold into indentured servitude.

It’s Not Just About Class

Although a glance into the “resource room” of any school will reveal how direct the correlation between “kids in jeopardy” and kids from lower income, broken homes really is, that’s not the whole story.  Sometimes kids from fairly affluent homes have many of the same problems getting through high school as their less moneyed counterparts.

First, it should be obvious that some kids with a surprising amount of disposable income can still display trouble in the three aforementioned areas.  Kids from rich homes can equally be accustomed to being left unsupervised, with no regular times for eating, sleeping, homework, laundry, changing clothes and all the rest.

They can also get very emotionally cut off from their parents and end up living with closed lines of communication.   Some kids communicate mostly digitally.  They can, often, equally fail to identify with their parents as with students and teachers at school.  Sometimes having affluent, influential, highly educated and successful parents is daunting and can cause children to despair of ever being that kind of person. Parental success is a lot to live up to, and can be its own burden.
  Conversely, children of "successful" people may learn only the use of the money, the influence and the power, without having been around to see how it was earned or how it is maintained.  They may come into a school feeling undeniably entitled to success simply because they are themselves.  Also, children of affluent families may be unwilling or unable to connect to students and teachers who are clearly from a lower financial bracket.  Hard to take a teacher seriously when your car is nicer.

No matter the reason, it is a serious problem when any child is not even slightly invested in success (as defined by a teacher or school population with which they may not identify or communicate with in any genuine way) and is also completely disengaged from most of what goes on in their classes each day.  More sobering, there is no guarantee that any strategy is simply going to “fix” this situation for all affected students.  At the root of the thing, if you can get the student to accept you as part of his or her life, part of his or her culture and story, that you are a genuine human being and you mean what you say and are competent and capable of communicating and genuinely helping (and willing to boot), then you may well make a difference.  Or not.  And you have to be prepared for both eventualities.

It would be nice to feel that we have all the control, and enough ideas to save the day pretty much every time or know the reason why, to be able to insightfully and eloquently outline the reasons for "lack of success" on forms, to be able to ensure it doesn't recur.  The grim reality is that this is and always has been a two-way thing.  Until a student chooses to identify with you, to communicate with you and "work with" your boundaries and structure and supervision, you can’t succeed with them on any level.  And you won't have much of a clue what went on, let alone what went wrong.  You'll just know that the lines of communication, the personal connection, the identifying with each other and working together instead of being at loggerheads, simply never happened.