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Hope W. was one of my favorite high school students. She used to come into my class after lunch, put her head down on her desk in the back, and pass out. Someone would wake her up after 55 minutes as they were leaving. I eventually learned that she and Kathy S. were trying to kill a fifth of gin for lunch every day.
That was during her junior year. One day she just disappeared. The kids said that her mother broke up with her boyfriend and moved back home in the northwest to live with her parents.
I never heard about her again until about three years later when she suddenly walked through the door where I was working. She had a friend with her who she introduced me to by announcing to her "Here he is. This is the man who saved my life." She told me that her friend had helped her clean up. She ran track her senior year and was a sophomore majoring in marine biology at Northwestern University.
In Hope's case, she wasn't very engaged in what I was teaching. Inherently very bright, her life was a complete mess when I knew her. The reasons that students don't engage in what is being taught are endless. Every child or adolescent is different, and they all have their own baggage. It is so important to engage them where they are.
I like Dewey's notion of the purpose of school is to bring together the funded history of civilization with the individual psyche of the child, with the individual psyche of the child proceeding first. That is a great generic definition for how to make engagement happen.
"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school....", I often recall important lessons I learned from certain people. I remember my teachers, and often for me the important lessons were about who they were, how they handled issues, how they imparted the curriculum, and how they cared about me. I encourage teachers to be genuine, and let students see their values so they can learn that teaching is driven by a sense of service, an expectation that conduct should always be ethical, and other important values.
When students aren’t engaged, and their test scores are dismal it can be discouraging. Maybe in spite of everything you try, you can’t meet them where they are right now. But, if they pick up some of those soft, all-important values they see in you and how you treat them, someday when the time is right, they might want to engage with school and get a good education. Never give up. There is always Hope for engagement!