lost causes

for our weekly meeting, all the 11th & 12th grade teachers (all 5 of us) got together to talk about a very special group of students: the juniors with more than one F. there were quite a few of these folks, and the purpose of our gathering was to figure out what we could do to help this group get back on track so they can graduate next year. this is supposed to be the beauty of having a small school: we can give struggling students individual attention. but because we have limited funds these days, our teacher to student ratio is not where it should be, so it’s still quite a big challenge.

now i really enjoy working with these teachers. they’re funny, blunt, and self-described “hard-asses” (unfortunately, that does not really describe my classroom approach, so i don’t totally fit in with that), and moreover, they get straight to the point, which make our meetings run pretty efficiently.

so as we ran through different intervention strategies, we quickly eliminated ideas that didn’t seem doable, either because they wouldn’t work or because they just weren’t realistic. then we came up with the idea of doing a fantasy draft.

for folks that aren’t familiar with fantasy sports: at the beginning of a sports season, you get together with your buddies, create a fantasy league online, and then “draft” athletes onto your team. throughout the season, your fantasy team racks up points depending on how well your players perform in reality, and whoever has the most points at the end wins the grand prize.

so for the first round of our draft, we went around and each teacher selected one student they’d focus all their attention and energy on for the next 3 weeks, with the hope that the student’s grades would improve. after 3 weeks, we’d look at progress reports and see if our plan worked. well, when it was my pick and i was officially on the clock, i picked a kid that has been a big time struggler, because we had a pretty good relationship already and i thought maybe i could help him out.

little did i know, he was already in an even more dubious student group: he was a “lost cause.” i took a peek at his transcript, and i could see why — even though he was in his 3rd year of high school, he had only passed a couple classes up to this point. everything else was an F. he just had F’s everywhere. F, F, F, F, F, F, F, F… and F. shocking to me because he was a nice kid, and usually in my mind, i expect kids with those kinds of grades to be not-so-nice. so i selected another student, and he was also a “lost cause.”

i know what my colleagues were saying. we should devote our energies to helping students who actually stand a chance to pass and graduate with teacher support. ultimately, i selected a student who fell under this category, and i’ve been working hard on helping her. and yes, it is nice, because there is the feeling that she’s on the edge and just needs a lil push to make it over.

secretly, i’m resisting this idea of the “lost cause,” because it is not a theological category, and therefore shouldn’t be something i use to categorize anyone, or anything, really. as i was leading cgroup that night, i thought that maybe part of what it means to be a christian teacher is to see each student the way god sees them, no matter how far they might be from academic success; that is, as someone who can be redeemed.