how school systems set us up to be angry assholes to one another

There is no group of students I will defend with more vigor than low performing seniors.  The angry, hopeless kids who push everyone who tries to help them away.  

Why?

Because more often than not, the system has failed those kids since the beginning.  

Their struggle usually starts in early elementary school. Intervention doesn’t take place in a timely manner; or, if it does, teachers are so often overwhelmed they have no way to provide the student with needed support.  Thus, the child who struggles begins to quietly fall behind.

The slip is usually indiscernible to parents and teachers because the child is already learning how to mask weaknesses. The forgotten homework was actually too difficult to complete.  

The classwork they accidentally took home? Same thing.

And when those smaller diversions stop working - or when the child  begins to be seen as defiant or lazy, the student is forced to escalate their deflection.

Misunderstood by parents and teachers, s/he begins to resort to humor.  Those who can’t assume the class clown persona often begin to withdraw.  Either way, though, the child is learning every day that they aren’t going to get the help they need.  Sooner than later, the child’s needs are so compounded that when someone asks what’s wrong, the child won’t even know how to answer.  

From the outside, it often looks like they just won’t do the bare minimum that’s asked of them.  Defiant and lazy, those kids.  But their defiance and laziness is actually the mask they wear because they have been left so far behind.

The prevailing mindset of the People in the Know is that children should not be held back until later in their education. Something about growth or maturation or some such rationale. Teachers are forced to find a way to promote a student who is woefully behind and place them in an environment that is even more harmful to them than the last.

By the time struggling students reach middle and high school, it’s too late to help them.  They’ve internalized the Bad Kid or Class Clown identity, and there’s no way for them to get out of it.  Their behavior reaps the rejection of their teachers and sometimes their peers.  Parents don’t know what happened.  They used to be such a good kid.

Every time I hear one of my seniors say, “I hate school,” my heart breaks. Because they do hate school, and for good reason. Imagine showing up to a place every. single. day. and being lost and overwhelmed. Imagine knowing your teachers see you as a burden.

Plus, they know school is bullshit because they’ve gotten as far as they have with nothing to show for it. They can hardly read and struggle with the most basic math.  “Just study harder” is an insult to someone who has never had success studying in the first place.  

“Why aren’t you paying attention?” Did you even try?”  

Believe me, those kids prove they have tried harder than their peers simply because they keep showing up.  The fact that they continue to show up despite the rejection and hostility they face at school is astonishing to me.  Not to be hyperbolic, but I see their attendance as the resilience of the human spirit and how strong our drive to survive is.  

By the time I see the students who struggled in elementary school as seniors, they have been beaten down to the shuffling, grubby-looking kids most of their peers steer away from, lest they become guilty by association. The students who do associate with them are likewise lost.  

The least I can do is try to give them a tiny bit of dignity and self confidence before they graduate. Show them the respect they deserve as a human being.  Most of my course is built around my reading and discussing topics with the class.  I ask them to write occasionally, because maybe something will stick; but I never ask them to write about literature or some other topic they have no connection with.  

I might ask for a letter to an incoming freshman, a letter to themselves, a letter to a trusted adult - any topic where the students will have an outlet for their ideas.  If the student refuses, though, I don’t care.  

Because that morning, a person who has been hearing for years that they are not doing enough got out of bed and showed up. That act alone is enough for me, and until the system recognizes its terrible flaws & fixes them, it should be enough for everyone.