vision talk show, and organized students to participate in activities when Nelson Mandela of
South Africa visited New York City in 1990.
Eric was intelligent and outspoken, though he was not always responsible about tasks
and time (after all, he was a teenager). We met with his guidance counselor and he was
transferred into an honors class in the second half of 11th-grade.
Eric was an only child living with his mother and grandmother in an apartment on a sta-
ble block in a predominately working-class and poor community. One morning on his way to
school, Eric was arrested when the police ran a drug enforcement sweep on his block. He
was quickly released and no legal charges were ever made against him. However, the affair
left Eric extremely bitter.
As the school year progressed, it became apparent that Eric was failing a number of
courses. His soccer team coach and I both met with him and tried to keep Eric focused on
school. Eventually, he passed all of his subjects and the coach was able to get him a summer
job at a sleep-away camp out of the city. The next year he graduated from high school,
joined the Navy, and moved away from the community for good. Eric Larson was at risk, but
with strong support he was able to make it through a difficult school year and summer, grad-
uate from high school, and get his life organized.
In neighborhoods like the one where David and Eric lived and went to school, every stu-
dent is at risk. Daily life places them at risk of poverty, disease, drug abuse, pregnancy, crim-
inality, and victimization. Herbert Kohl (1994) believes that these conditions contribute to re-
sistance to learning by students who experience life and school as a series of irrational
conditions, arbitrary demands, and injustices. In her book,Framing Dropouts(1991), Michelle
Fine argues that many high schools use boredom, humiliation, and bureaucracy to drive
these students out, and that dropping out of school is often the only choice that allows them
to retain any sense of dignity. Strategies that are supposed to make students learn often only
insure that they do not learn.
Deciding to resist learning or to drop out of school are only part of a series of complex
and difficult choices that face these teenagers. The problem of redirecting teenagers goes
far beyond the confines of a school. It is a problem of our society as a whole, how it is
structured, and what kind of future it is prepared to offer young people. But despite the
broader dimensions of the problems, it is my experience that teachers can affect the lives
of their students.
I try to make it possible for students to enjoy learning by connecting topics with their
lives, such as the oral history project David Santana completed with his grandfather. I do not
mean just entertaining students. A lot of the pleasure people experience in learning comes
when they master something that is difficult, something they did not think they were going
to understand. Suddenly the world is less of a mystery, and they have a sense that they can
control it.
For schools to be successful, teachers must establish communities where students have a
sense of ownership, of relationship with adults and each other, of creating shared expectan-
cies, and of democratic decision making. Our students are part of an unjust world in which
they feel they have no control. They need fairness and a sense that they are respected and
can make a difference. Eric Larson’s role as an activist and his ability to give leadership to
other students were crucial in sustaining him during a difficult period of his life.
One of the things I like best about school, when I was a youngster and as a teacher, is that
in September you have a blank slate and can start all over again. No matter how poorly you
performed in the past, you get another chance. Within the at risk student population there
are teenagers who have decided they want direction. They want to learn. Their situation has
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