False Hope Pupil

Rex thought he had a really great day the other week. One of the new troublemakers in his class took to heart the one-on-one pep talk Rex had with him. He listened to the math lesson and then asked for help to actually assimilate and apply the lesson on paper, rather than demanding the teacher give him the answers. It felt good when the boy asked if it were possible to move up to 8th grade next year (where he should be) and said he would really try to make it there. Rex said it gave him great hope. If he could make a difference to just one of these kids, it would almost make it worth all the crap.

But Rex's high led to an even worse low. It only took a few days for this kid's motivation to wane. It doesn't look like the desire would ever return either. All he was interested in was getting high. My question is: what hit home to the boy that made him care about his future? Is it possible to reach it again? And if so, how could it be maintained?

Among other things, the kid brought a couple of lighters to school and was playing with them. He refused to turn it over, and because Rex thought he would physically hurt the boy if he did it himself, he enlisted Mr. Brotherton's help to retrieve it. The next day, the boy refused to enter the classroom when he came to school, so he had to be dragged to the principal's office. When the kid cussed at Rex, that was the last straw. Rex had even gone so far as to plead the case of this boy to keep him in the school, and now the student was pretty much spitting in his face. Burnt out, Rex isn't giving him another chance. The boy can take his bad attitude and see if another charter school will take him.

Like the Isrealites wandering in the wilderness for 40 years to kill off the stubbornly wicked generation, maybe these kids need to be weeded out and replaced with a new set of delinquents. Maybe Rex could start afresh with more force and less tolerance.

UPDATE: no other school would take the boy, so he would have counted as a dropout from Brazos. Since the school can't afford more dropout statistics (a lot of them dropped between Christmas and January), the school took him back.

One of the other boys is being expelled now instead. (They can't expel everyone at once because they need students in order to get any money.) They promise not to take him back (although I won't believe it because the school has a history of taking back kids they kicked out) because his number had initially been up for going to the alternative school in his district and, to avoid that, had enrolled in this charter. Supposedly, if he dropped out of school, he'd be counted as that public school district's dropout. I'll believe that only when I see he doesn't come back in a few weeks. The ironic part is that this kid is moving out of the school and his cousin is moving in.