Just keep swimming

My old facility emphasized the therapeutic. I would never want a child in this system, but they would be there if I had to make that call. Even when the child came in illiterate and had not endured compulsory schooling since second grade, we overwhelmed them with our confidence in their success.

We did not necessarily believe in their capacity. Still, we understood there was only opportunity for growth if we fostered an environment of hope. It wasn't quite a lie. We could almost convince ourselves it was true and, if it were not, knew still it was the right thing to do.

This same paradigm does not apply to the state's highest security juvenile detention facility. The students are no more literate or scholastic than at my former facility, but they are older. They have had more time not to function in the system but to become calcified.

I teach an English 101 class through a local community college. However, I can only admit to feeling I am teaching whatever student is on the other side of the screen for distance learning. My class is scheduled for the first period. Morning is not where my students wish to find themselves. As such, I have each of my lessons in separate folders for their Securebooks, most of which have videos that explain a version of what I would have. It is not a perfect method, but it is better than them not being able to engage with the curriculum on any level. They can do my class via these videos and prompts, as the fact that a few of them do evidence. This semester, two of them had accrued enough points to pass a month into the three-month class and spent the rest accruing grades until they had A's. I gave them all they needed on the first day and only had to coach and critique them from there.

Then there is this kid. Before he entered the facility, he had graduated from high school, or he could not have been enrolled in my course. I do not see how he could have done this ethically. He told me that he had five different teachers at this facility "help" him with his application letter and boasted that he hadn't written any part of it -- one of those who helped him says this is not true, that the boy wrote it, though under the direction and guidance of others. To my way of thinking, if one cannot write a college application essay primarily on one's own, one is not ready to take a college writing class, even a course to which I make appropriate modifications.

This boy may not see it, but it is a struggle to believe he had ever had more than social graduations to make him another teacher's problem. I am yet another teacher putting him in this situation when the compassionate thing would have been to tell him no. He is not ready.

Ordinarily, for students of his lack of practice, we have an introductory, non-credit-bearing class to prepare them for college's minor rigor. This was skipped due to a lack of staffing; this filter would have let the boy learn enough material to decide if he wanted to pursue college before it would impact a transcript and require tuition. (The state pays for these credits, but I doubt the college gives discounts merely because they do not have to do anything for this beyond filing my syllabus and accepting my final grades; the state pays me my usual salary, and the college contributes nothing.)

The head of the college program asked if I thought the boy should be withdrawn from the program. Logically, the answer was yes. He could not do the work at a collegiate level. His deficits are so profound that he needs intense remediation beyond the scope of this course. Without hyperbole, he would struggle in a first-year high school writing class, even though he was given credits that said he passed it and more. He could not read or spell the word "critique" to say nothing about being able to give one to a peer -- this is not a hyperbole. He actually could not.

The student tried to do the work, though with the techniques he had used in previous classes: copying off others and demanding to be given the answers with the implication of violence. When it comes to writing essays and doing research papers, this is not functional. I could not convince him that completing minor worksheets was far less important than writing me timely rough drafts.

I should have suggested that he withdraw rather than face failing this course. By my initial hope for him, I had set him up to suffer that blow to his ego. My kindness will hurt him in the longer term. He is furious he will not be socially graduated yet again, as that is not something I can do when doling out college credits.

He haunts me. I go to his unit every day. I heavily annotate the work he turns in -- though he does not understand no matter how much he is told that worksheets are 4% of his grade and the writing he resists is 70%. The system could serve him much better than forcing him to endure a college class for which he is far from prepared. It would have been better to suggest he withdraw. I did not want to be a stumbling block to the success of a young man who will never see beyond a razorwire fence.

My niceness for this boy was shallow, mostly conflict-avoidance. What I have done for him, pushing him along, was worse. I have looked askance at everyone who socially graduated this kid, but I will drag him over broken glass to a 65 if I can. I will try to believe in him because I could not look him in the eyes and tell him he wasn't ready.

I was enrolled in a graduate literary criticism class in my undergrad. After the first of them, the professor took me aside and told me I should drop it because I could not have been ready. I took this as a challenge, deciding to rise to the occasion to prove her wrong. I earned that A, though I also gained a twitch whenever touching the onion paper of a book weighing ten pounds or hearing Jacques Derrida's name.

This boy cannot elevate himself for freshman English. Every step will be torture and will bring him nowhere. I did this because it was my habit. If a kid wants to try and is willing to put in the work -- even if it requires constant handholding and depending on the effort of classmates -- I want to give him that chance. But it isn't for him.

To retread a tired analogy, it is not so much penalizing a fish because it cannot climb like a monkey but repeatedly hucking it at the tree. I cannot feel I taught the fish anything, only made it breathless and bloodied. I have done it no favors when I could have been letting it swim.

He has shown me flaws in my grading. I am supposed to produce a young man who can write well enough for English 102. I have not and cannot by appeasing my guilt and desire to push a child well below college level toward a D. It is impossible for him to get otherwise. A D is not transferrable, though he cannot transfer it anywhere. Some of my residents have sentences that can be expressed on one hand. His is closer to a middle finger. That does not mean I work any less. Still, I am in this awkward place because I allowed myself the fantasy he was the same as the seventh graders at my old facility who needed rigorous phonics before they would write their name at the top of a page. I never want to be a party to the system I decry.

last watched: The French Dispatch
reading: Bluebeard