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The New School Year Brings Some Hard Questions With a Fresh New Start—and Definitive Answers

By Bill PagecloseAuthor: Bill Page Name: Bill Page
Site: http://www.teacherteacher.com/
About: About Bill Page ... Bill Page, a farm boy, graduated from a one-room school. He forged a career in the classroom teaching middle school “troublemakers.” For the past 26 years, in addition to his classroom duties, he has taught teachers across the nation to teach the lowest achieving students successfully with his proven premise, “Failure is the choice and fault of schools, not the students.” Bill Page is a classroom teacher. For 46 years, he has patrolled the halls, responded to the bells, and struggled with innovations. He has had his share of lunchroom duty, bus duty, and playground duty. For the past four years, Bill, who is now in his 50th year as a teacher, is also a full time writer. His book, At-Risk Students is available on Abebooks, Amazon, R.D. Dunn Publishing, and on Bill’s web site: http://www.teacherteacher.com/ In At-Risk Students, Page discusses problems facing failing students, “who can’t, don’t and won’t learn or cooperate.” “The solution,” he states, “is for teachers to recognize and accept student misbehavior as defense mechanisms used to hide embarrassment and incompetence, and to deal with causes rather than symptoms. By entering into a democratic, participatory relationship, where students assume responsibility for their own learning.” Through 30 vignettes, the book helps teachers see failing students through his eyes as a fellow teacher, whose classroom success with at-risk students made him a premier teacher-speaker in school districts across America.See Authors Posts (53)

No kid would deliberately choose to fail. Failing is easy to do but painful to endure. Compelled to be in school, living with embarrassment, fear, and boredom, failing kids hide their discomfiture with bravado, apathy, or defiance: if they don’t even try, they can’t fail. Failing students’ misbehaviors are symptoms rather than causes of their behavior. A new school year offers a new lens through which teachers may see students at risk of failing.

The term “at-risk” refers to students whom teachers cannot control, motivate, or teach by traditional techniques, a one-size-fits-all curriculum, and a fixed schedule. Barbara Kingsolver offers this definition: “Kids whose parents are too immature to guide; too diminished by poverty to nurture; and too far from opportunity to offer hope.” And, I would add, too lacking in prerequisite knowledge to be of help, too demoralized to encourage, and too overwhelmed with daily survival to care.

Consider what might be required for an at-risk student to succeed rather than fail this first semester? Can students who failed or narrowly scraped by last year accomplish the following feats this year? (For the sake of empathetic reflection, please verbalize an answer aloud; don’t just read the questions.) Can teachers expect students to:

Make up the lessons they failed? Make-up for lack of prerequisite knowledge?
Catch-up while keeping up in all of the current lessons and classes?
Learn previous material while learning new information?
Now learn whatever prerequisite material is necessary for this year’s learning?
Have the previous failures disregarded or expunged from the record?
Have initial grades and marks averaged into their new learning attempts?
Overcome a stigmatizing record, inferior feelings, and a predisposed attitude?
Expect a change in the teacher’s and classmates’ attitudes toward them this year?
Expect the level of difficulty to decrease as the year progresses?
Have a good or perhaps better relationship with the teacher this time around?
Regard the new semester as a new opportunity, a reprieve, or a new chance?

What if contributory factors in last year’s difficulties and failure involved::

Home-life circumstances such as parents unwilling or unable to help?
No place or conditions for study or getting remedial help?
Language difficulty? Writing ability? Spelling? Neatness?
Living in a homeless or battered woman shelter?
Lack of study, concentration, or organizational skills?
A dysfunctional, impoverished, or non-English speaking family?
A family in the midst of divorce, sickness, crisis, or unemployment?

Will their failure likely be positively motivating or negatively motivating?
Will parent(s) understand the child’s discomfiture and encourage him/her to do better?
What changes or accommodations might the teacher expect to make? Any at all?
Will there be just a lecture or a two-way conference to discuss a new beginning?
Will there be an opportunity for a fresh start, improvement, and change?
What will make school different this year? The teacher? Anything at all?

What are the chances the teacher:

Will accept part of the responsibility for student failure?
Will make adjustments in teaching after the student fails the first test?
Will show concern for the student’s embarrassment, anxiety, and pain?
Will do a thorough analysis of the contributory causes of the failure?
Will attend a staffing with others to discuss and coordinate efforts?
Will request a faculty focus group to study and share ideas?