high expectations and high support…but how?

10.19.10 By Kati Delahanty

My students are over-aged and under-credited. This means that they have failed at least one entire academic year. And many have failed more than one. I work with students who are re-engaging with school after years of non-attending. One young man came back this September after spending three years out of school. His skills are low; he is out of practice.

But that doesn’t mean they are the slow students…or the downtrodden…or the bad kids.  It doesn’t mean that they can’t do the work. And it certainly does not mean that they don’t value education. It is true that they have not yet been scholastically successful. And they need to own that…to hold themselves accountable. But their failure is not theirs alone. They have failed in as much as they have been failed. They are the products of either criminally low expectations or nobly high ones with little support. The adults in their lives either gave up on them or expected them to do everything right without showing them—or teaching them—how to get there. I know a lot of teachers who “teach lessons” by refusing to accept make-up work or by not giving second chances because, after all, life doesn’t give ‘em. And I get it. Believe me…I get it. But what happens to the students who never had bed times, or dinner every night at 6, or someone to wake them up and put them on the bus at the same time every day, or a favorite TV show to watch at exactly 8 pm? What about the students who have grown up without ever having been taught to value promptness or what it means to manage their time? They need to be taught. They need to be shown how. They need high expectations—they deserve that—but with high support. And this is the piece that I can’t wrap my head around.  Because high support often feels like enabling.

Am I giving high support or enabling if I call a student at 5:45 am to wake her up so she can catch the bus and get to school on time?

Am I giving high support or enabling if I meet with a student three times after school to work on one notebook entry when no college professor or boss would devote that much time to such a small assignment?

Am I giving high support or enabling if I post due dates in our classroom, e-mail them out, and give them verbally at least twice a class?

Most days, I think I’m demonstrating high expectations by insisting that all students complete ALL assignments even if they are late. But other days I feel like SCREAMING when students don’t complete one manageable homework assignment on time. I want to give them the support they need while preparing them for the harsh reality of the real world.

But it’s really, really hard to do…

And I’m NOT suggesting that all of my students have bad parents or even have had bad teachers. Many of them have been taught time management every single day of their lives. But for some reason—for lots of reasons (complex ones) I’m sure—they haven’t made the right academic choices. And so here they are: showing up and not doing it all, but doing some. And how do I not give them second chances? They haven’t yet mastered getting it right on the first try.  And they need me to keep teaching and re-teaching these life skills. Trust me; they aren’t going to get something for nothing. They will earn promotion to the next grade and their high school diplomas, but it just may take them a lot longer and many more chances. They need more than one opportunity to get it right. They need high accountability with high support.

And I need help thinking through what that should look like…

My heart breaks every time a teacher, student, parent, PO, or random stranger (who has just asked what I do) assumes that the over-aged and under-credited students I work with are unintelligent, lazy, or less than.  They aren’t; they just don’t hide that they need help.  So for better (when they are blowing me away with their perspectives on life and literature) or for worse (when the re-teaching and reminding feels like an all-out cage match), we’re in this together.

And even though life doesn’t give many second chances, I do.