Category: education

Categories
education

A Team-Based Approach

I get paid to be the member of a team that is responsible for planning, organizing, coordinating, and implementing a self-designed educational model to a group of roughly 30 students who have been diagnosed with a range of cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioral disorders.

Depending on the ever-changing needs of the student body, the school employs between 20 and 25 staff members each quarter. About eight or nine of those staff members (myself included) serve on the leadership council for the school.

One of our duties is to determine how each of our staff members will be deployed. Before doing so, we invite staff members to suggest their own ideas and suggestions, and we invite each student to request opportunities that our staff can strive to fulfill.

As we develop ways to deploy the staff, the council takes into consideration the strengths and challenges of each student, as well as the strengths and challenges of each staff member. We use that knowledge to further the educational plans of the student.

We judge our decisions against the assumptions of our model. While the model was inspired by others, we designed it in-house and then corrected it through both observation and evolution (any change that didn’t survive in our environment…didn’t survive). It’s a process that requires significant time to compute, though it’s less computation and more of an art form; thankfully, our council seeks to honor the muse.

In addition to strategizing and implementing individual educational plans for each student, the council works to expand the potential of the school. We encourage an atmosphere of learning and growth by fostering professional-development opportunities for the staff and welcoming members of the local community to share their passions with our students and inspire the next generation.

At the same time, we work directly with students on almost a minute-by-minute basis, forcing us to divide our attention between strategy and delivery to a sometimes worrisome degree (hence the need to divide the weight of the mission throughout the entire team).

While we have an executive director who acts as the ultimate arbiter, the general give and take of the school’s progress is determined by anyone who cares to contribute. Staff members are invited to attend each strategy session, as are the students (we’ve had several take us up on the offer).

The result is a school that feels less like an institution and more like a living, breathing force that remains open to outside influence and yet confident of its general direction. Participating in that force, allowing its inspiration to move through me and back into it, and feeling its effects on my soul, is a true joy.

It has its frustrations, but the Buddha teaches that all life is struggle; and yet as we all know, our lives need not be devoid of joy. For every frustration we feel as team members, we feel as well the ultimate joy of its release: the deflation of tension, the expansion in coöperation, and the resultant celebration.

Frustration is present, yes, but thanks to the good will of the team members, frustration merely increases our probability of improving the school.

Our team-based approach to running the school allows every adult to connect with students on a regular basis, which reinforces our mission to keep the school student-focused (as opposed to staff-focused). We not only serve as administrators, but as teachers, advisors, and student-transport drivers. We step up as counselors, as first-aid deliverers, and as triggered-student deëscalators. As a member of the team, we must be immune to anything that would stand in the way of our kids and brave enough to jump into the breach to save them.

None of us would be able to do it alone, nor would we want to. We depend on each other and make ourselves dependable in turn.

We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Categories
education life politics

What Makes a Man?

Desire. Humility. Knowledge.

Perspective. Integrity. Truth.

The story of this moment.

Watching *Breaking Bad* and judging Walter White. Watching *Game of Thrones* and judging Jon Snow, Rob Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and all the others. Talking with my wife and judging myself. The question repeating in my head: “What makes a man?”

The connective tissue is my desire to connect them in this moment, the moment when I sit down to write, with the mantra repeating in my head — “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?” This is coupled with a sub-intellectual urge to find the right music for the mood: a pushed finger and scrolling eyes searching for the right song in a list of always-already right songs — “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?,” “What makes a man?” — and then I find the words, lined up perfectly in a column of song titles: “Desire. Humility. Knowledge. Perspective. Integrity. Truth.” — the track list of Kamasi Washington’s 2017 EP, *Harmony of Difference.*

That’ll do, pig, that’ll do.

~~

What makes a man?

The answer is performative. Each person is and ought to be free to perform their understanding what makes a man, and each person is and ought to be free to judge the performance of others relative to their already-held ideal of what makes a man.

A man is, then, what a man does and what others think of him for it.

A man is shaped by internal and external pressures. Both are capable of bending or twisting or sometimes even breaking his integrity. This makes a man no different from any other person. Individuals of all stripes are capable of great miracles, great joys, and great horrors, inspired by strange combinations of internal and external pressures that shape their performance of the truth, a performance whose quality can be and ought to be judged in the light of all that is known.

Some stories define a man by the pressures he refuses to relent to and by the conflicts he generates in his refusal to stand down, but in that too, a man is no different from any other person, and no more likely to stand up in the first place. We — all of us — are and ought to be defined (at least in part) by the positions we’re willing to defend and by the passions we ultimately use to defend them.

And so I ask once again, “What makes a man?”

~~

I teach and mentor individuals who identify as trans, as well as to individuals who openly question their gender. I also teach and mentor cis individuals. Many of them are highly invested in the question, “How does one become a man?”

The best answer I can give them is to watch the performance of other men and live out the traits they admire.

The ones I admire make up a harmony of difference.

### Desire
A man desires. Not content with the way things are, he sets his sights on something beyond himself, something different from everything he’s known, something to attract his interest. When he finds it out beyond the horizon of himself, he feels compelled to pursue it.

### Humility
A man stops short. He knows his limits. A man understands that desire and pursuit do not always lead to success, and he accepts man’s natural inability to “have it all.” With humility, he recognizes the appropriate time to give up the hunt, and he understands how to be gracious while doing so.

### Knowledge
A man knows when he has come to the edge of his understanding, and he experiences learning opportunities as they occur. He responds to differences in opinion and differences in beliefs with a curious heart, and when engaging in a debate, he seeks insight, not victory. A man seeks knowledge for one thing and one thing only.

### Perspective
A man stands atop an ivory tower of discoveries and recollections. Each floor added to that tower increases his odds of finding something new on the horizon, something interesting. It also gives a man a broader view on all that is known — the realm of experiences and stories between his tower and the horizon. With both a wider and more detailed perspective, a man can judge the performances of others against a diverse range of possibilities, bringing him closer to the truth of what is and what ought to be.

### Integrity
A man tests the integrity of others, and he responds with integrity to any test put before him. He desires wholeness in others, but allows himself to be fascinated by the fractures. He understands that interesting places twist and bend, and he finds joy in those places, the way one finds joy in the twists and bends of a waterslide.

### Truth
A man enjoys the truth; hard or not, he enjoys it, and he treats it as a sacred thing. Having once experienced it by happy accident, he desires it again and again. But a man stops short, and with humility, he knows when and how to give up the hunt.

~~

What makes a man? His ability to harmonize in a world of difference.

Categories
education life

What I’m Teaching Now

One of the cool parts of being a generalist (a job which isn’t available in most school systems) is being able to teach a wide variety of subjects. This quarter, I’m teaching in five.

Advisory

First, and with the direct support of two of my colleagues, I participate in an Advisory of seven students. For those  who haven’t paid attention to the changes in pedagogical theory these past twenty years, “Advisory” is kind of like a mix between home room, study hall, and a workshop focused on the development of both personal character and intrapersonal skills.

Sometimes it looks like a bunch of people just hanging around a conference table. Sometimes it looks like a lecture by a teacher or an exhibition by a student. Sometimes it looks like a staff-supported homework club. Regardless of how it looks, it attempts to be an experiential practicum in community building: this is how you maintain a relationship in a healthy community.

Human Rights

The second class I teach focuses on human rights. I want the students to produce a video or audio-recording that connects at least one of the rights listed in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the biography of an individual or group of individuals who fought to declare or protect that right — but I’m still working on the best way to help them do that.

My ultimate goal is to teach them how to research the progression of a topic through time by analyzing the actions of real-life individuals who were crucial to the topic’s current status. I also want them to understand the ways in which the actions of individuals can influence the actions of an empire, which will hopefully strengthen their conception of what’s possible in their own lives.

I just need to figure out how to get them from point A to point Z.

I also have to teach this subject to two different sections, one of which meets for 90 minutes a week, the other of which meets for 45. Obviously, the latter section will need to go from point A to point Z while skipping over points such as E, F, and G.

Dungeons & Dragons

My third class is, once again, Dungeons & Dragons. This quarter, I am the Dungeon Master for a party of six students, five of whom have significant experience playing the game.

I’ve written previously about using Dungeons & Dragons in the classroom, so I’ll just say the difference this time is that I’m trying to create a campaign that requires the students to investigate, analyze, and report back on a series of diverse cultures. The students won’t be “adventurers” as much they’ll be “scouts.” There will be fights with monsters and magic and perhaps, if I get particularly inspired, the tracking down of a conspiracy, but the goal — the academic goal — is give them the experience of thinking critically and in an anthropological way about the concept of “culture.”

Basketball

The fourth class is Basketball. A colleague and I are trying to develop close to a dozen rebellious and poorly coordinated teenagers who don’t understand the rules of the game into a servicable (and fun-having) basketball team capable of playing in some kind of official capacity on behalf of our school.

We run two 90-minute practices per week; so far, we’ve had one. I have my work cut out for me, but I love basketball, and while I doubt my coaching skills, I don’t doubt my knowledge and passion for the game.

I’m hoping to get a whistle.

Military Tactics

The last class I have to teach (also with a colleague) is Military Tactics. The name wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to call it “Jedi Training,” but my colleagues convinced me otherwise, since “Jedi Training” would make the students think it was a Star Wars thing, and it most definitely is not.

Instead, it’s a The Men Who Stare At Goats thing.

If you haven’t seen the movie, The Men Who Stare At Goats is a fictional representation of a nonfictional account of true-to-life programs sponsored by various agencies in the United States military-industrial complex. It explores the nation’s real-life effort to create a team of super soldiers trained in the art of extra-sensory perception and capable of “remote viewing” and even “remote assasination.”

I haven’t read the nonfiction book that the movie is based on, so I don’t know which parts originate in reality and which parts are wholly fiction. With that being said, the movie presents one of the initiatives as the brainchild of a soldier played by Jeff Bridges, aka, “the Dude,” and based on a real-life lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who, among other things, was part of the team that came up with the slogan, “Be All You Can Be.”

In the movie, the lieutenant colonel was given a mission in the early 1970s to explore the ways in which the wisdoms of the counterculture might inform the military’s ability to successfully complete a strategic and tactical mission. Eight years later (in the movie), the soldier returned with an operations manual and the intention to produce — with military funds — a battalion of warrior monks to be armed with countercultural principles, paranormal abilities, and the ability to generate peace when possible and deadly violence when necessary.

There’s a lot to be doubted about some of the claims of the First Earth Battalion, but its existence is not one of them.

My colleague and I have both reviewed real-life documents produced for the First Earth Battalion, and I’ve done several hours of research into its history. My colleague and I also possess many years of knowledge and experience informed by the principles of the counterculture, most extensively in terms of the music of the Grateful Dead but also in more academically inclined ways.

Our general goal is to produce in our six or seven students not only a fascination with what our government is willing to pay for when it comes to achieving a military victory, but also a rudimentary experience of going through the training, an experience that will be one part intellectual, two parts physical, and three parts spiritual.

I am least prepared for this last class, but one becoming a Jedi warrior requires you to sometimes close your eyes and trust in the Force.

The Other Classes

I have more than those five classes on my schedule. Most of the others are one-on-one, where I’m either serving the student in a project-manager capacity or the student is serving me in an internship capacity (with tasks related to the school’s marketing needs and benefits related to the student’s communication skills).

Finally, for the last block of the week, I have a class where I join four musicians in the school’s music studio for a forty-five minute exploration of the realm of improvisational sound. It’s ideally suited to cleanse the soul after a hard week of school.

Looking over my classes for the quarter, I thank whatever experiences and people led me to become a generalist. It really does make teaching a hell of a lot more fun.

Categories
education

Democratizing Justice in the Schools

My school has a judicial committee comprised entirely of students (and advised by a staff member). The judicial committee is charged with enforcing the rules of the school. It acts upon reports submitted by both staff and students, which allows students to settle their differences without the interference of a staff member (outside of the advisor, who doesn’t get a vote). The rules of the school, in their turn, have been determined by a congress comprised of both staff and students, with each member of the school receiving an equal vote, regardless of age, grade, or employment status.

In theory, this sounds great, but I fear that somewhere along the line, the adults in this relationship made a mistake.

I am a radical democratist: I put my faith in other people. I believe that all people have it within them to act faithfully and good, and that what people need more than almost anything else is to be heard. People who have a voice are people who want a choice, and putting people together in a room and asking them to be faithful and good is the best way to lay all of the available choices on the table.

When implementing our ideal judicial system at the school, us adults made (and continue to make) a mistake. While we allow the students to adjudicate issues related to minor annoyances, we shield them from the most serious issues facing our community. When there is a serious infraction against the community in our school, we don’t ask our students to deal with it themselves (advised by a staff member, of course); instead, we take it upon ourselves, imagining the students to be too delicate to handle any of our community’s “real” problems.

A case in point. At least once or twice a year, we have to evacuate a building because a student’s behavior threatens to turn violent. When this happens, the offending student’s consequences are determined by a team of staff members, and the students are asked to just go on their merry way.

Except of course, they don’t. They internalize the notion that their school is a place where violence can always happen, and that when it does, it will be dealt with by someone else, and that despite their own concerns and interests, no one will ever consider their ideas or opinions on the matter.

If that isn’t horrible training for life in a democratic society, then I don’t know what is.

Imagine a school where even the biggest issues are brought to the students to deal with, not in terms of a shame circle or anything like that, but in terms of [restorative justice](https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/restorative-justice-overview/), which asks offenders to repair their harm to the victim and to the community. Schools should not hide a whole level of learning and wisdom from their students, one that forces them to face their community’s real situations and to work them through together.

A challenge to this approach comes from the concept of privacy. At what point does an individual’s privacy outweigh the loss of the community’s ability to represent itself in all things? Consider a case where a student reports an unwanted sexual advance made by another student in the form of a digital photo sent via text (e.g., the unrequested sending of a “dick pic”). In this example, the recipient of the photo does not feel comfortable addressing the problem alone, and so seeks out a teacher for help.

Should the teacher encourage the recipient to “write up” the offender, forcing the latter to face (at the very least) a small panel of their peers? Or should the teacher take it upon themself to address the problem (in whatever way that might be), thereby saving both the recipient and the offender from having to talk about the issue in front of their peers?

If the latter, doesn’t the teacher 1) encourage the spread of rumors, and 2) invite the students to deal out justice on their own terms, with no guidance from the wisdom of our entire species’ history of justice systems (as understood by the school’s Congress)?

There is a question of legal privacy as well, but do accused students have the right to prevent their peers from determining the right course of action? What if every student attending the school (and every guardian representing them) signed off on a policy saying that all who are accused should expect to face a jury of their peers?

In the case of the “dick pic,” both the offender and the recipient would have to face a small panel composed of three students selected at random from a congress of their peers (serving on the panel is akin to jury duty). The recipient would state their case; the accused would declare themselves guilty or not guilty, and the panel would take it from there (again, in terms of restorative justice).

The mistake we continue to make is that, for all of the real issues, we restrict the judicial panel to a team of staff members and all of the students know it…just as they know how to tell us what we want to hear. How much more powerful would it be if every offender had to face their victims, recognize their offenses, and work to restore justice to the community?

We’re sometimes too afraid of our students, too afraid of young people in general, not trusting them to act faithfully and good. But if we don’t teach them to face their problems head on, in all of their complex reality, then what kind of adults are we teaching them to be?

Future generations are going to be here long after us adults are gone. If we want to continue our species’ long journey out of the wild anarchy of nature, we better make sure our kids know how to act faithfully in the name of justice, and to do so regardless of the complexity of the issue. Not every adult (and not every student) in my school will agree with me, but I think it’s a debate worth having.

Categories
education politics

Government Sponsored Trauma

I sometimes forget that I work with disabled students (not exclusively, but primarily). I once thought this was a good thing. We are taught, rightfully so, that every disabled person is, first and foremost, a person — hence the re-prioritization of the syntax from “disabled person” to “person with a disability” — and so I teach not to “the disability” but to the person in front of me, with all of that person’s unique strengths and challenges.

This is best practice in the education game (diagnosed disability or no), but it sometimes blinds me to the web of symptoms and the way they work together to create an invisible disability that is just as real and just as all pervasive as the needing of a wheelchair.

The proper response to my recall of this fact is for me to invest time and energy into becoming more familiar with what the experts have to say about how teachers can best support the growth of students who possess such conflux of symptoms, which is why my charge for the summer is to research and (re)produce for the benefit of my colleagues the best ways to work with our kids.

I started the process about a month or so ago, and for the moment, it’s slow going. I’m up to the “D”s in an alphabetic list of official diagnoses for my students. For each diagnosis, I’m scanning the entry in the latest version of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders. I’m then doing a lot of Googling and reading about each diagnosis, copying and pasting (and sometimes simplifying) the best research I can find in a limited amount of time, concentrating my energy on the areas that would best benefit a teacher, rather than, say, a parent, boss, or friend.

The experience of doing this has been incredibly rewarding. I haven’t internalized all of the information yet, and I haven’t yet systematized how or when to apply one piece of this new-to-me knowledge to one of my actual students (I’m moving too fast for that), but the process of forcing my brain to read all of the different ways these brains with disabilities engage the world has strengthened my compassion, increased my patience, and asked of me what can I do to make their worlds a better place.

I love these kids so much — even the ones I can’t stand — and now, at this moment, all I can think about is: those kids on the border.

My school specializes in students whose diagnoses often relate to some kind of trauma (we didn’t specialize in this on purpose; those were the kids who kept coming to us). The kids I teach have experienced the worst that reality has to offer: sexual, physical, and emotional abuse; parental death and/or abandonment; the downstream effects of parental addictions; familial and cultural exile; pain, fear, hate, and rejection.

I know how trauma manifests long after the traumatic event is over; I face it every day.

The last numbers I saw suggest that the United States government is forcibly removing children from parents at a rate of roughly 45 a day. The numbers are so high that the government is reportedly building tent cities to house them all; they have already filled abandoned shopping centers with these children — infants, toddlers, and all.

This is not something the children will get over. It will result in millions upon millions of dollars being spent by some assortment of government agencies to ease their way through life, whether through special education grants or through public mental-health services. If resources aren’t committed to managing the fall-out from this government-sponsored internment of an entire population, the result will be one of intense and uncontrollable anger and/or intense and uncontrollable fear (often made manifest through a bodily-violent rejection of the norm).

If the government isn’t creating a dearth of its financial resources in restitution to this crime against humanity, then it is creating an entire generation of south and central American terrorists, adding even more fuel to whatever negative reality drives these people north in the first place.

If you can’t find it in you to cry shame for our government’s current actions, then find it within you to feel the affront of the government’s actions harming your self-interest. Interning these children and destroying these families will only result in the creation of more financial dependents and the sending into action of more American soldiers.

As someone who works everyday with the victims of childhood trauma, I tell you: No good will come from this, only more and more trauma.

Categories
education politics

A (d)emocratic Response to Flag Flying

One of my students made a proposal to School Congress today requesting a minimal amount of funds to purchase a Pride flag and a Black Lives Matter flag to hang somewhere on our school’s property. I’m proud to say that there was zero discussion regarding the wisdom of hanging each of those flags somewhere on the property and zero controversy surrounding the procurement of school funds for the purchase of those flags.

I’m also proud to say that there was tremendous discussion and controversy around the need to accompany those flags with an American one.

During the discussion, both students and staff made reasonable and passionate arguments for and against flying the American flag on school property. Arguments for included respect for the service that military veterans have given to this country, the progressive principles enshrined in our nation’s founding documents, and the refusal to relinquish the symbols of the United States of America to the forces of capitalism, intolerance, and hate.

Arguments against included our nation’s history of genocide and oppression, its traditionalist committment to systemic racism, its imperialist foreign military, and its violent support of nationalistic thieves and madmen in the name of capitalist stability.

The discussion continued long after the school’s Congress adjourned. I discussed it at length with several students throughout the day and heard from other teachers that their classes were also dedicated to its discussion. Later in the afternoon, the controversy had grown so strong one opponent openly declared that they would rather burn the flag than fly it, while one supporter of the flying the American flag used this controversey to tell the school they were planning on leaving soon.

I couldn’t have been happier about the uproar. One student forwarded me an article on the legality of flag burning. Another wanted to discuss how the military was just a poverty trap (in that it just lies there, waiting to snatch up all the poor people it can find); this particular student has several veterans, as well as current servicemen and women, in his immediate family, and despite thinking it is trap, he still considers the military a viable escape route from his current socio-economic reality.

One student was adament that the decision to accompany the Pride and Black Lives Matter flags with the flag of the United States would make an even stronger statement than flying the two flags alone.

This particular student didn’t elucidate his reasons, but what I think he meant was that flying all three flags together would demonstrate that we, as a school, refuse to ignore our nation’s history. Flying these flags together would demonstrate our committment to understanding the nuance and complexity that takes “a people” from a place with enshrined racism to a place with unenshrined and yet still systemic racism; a history that sees the raising of statues to violent, outspoken racists who’d rather kill a black man than give him the right to exist as a free person, as well as the history that sees the mainstream call for and eventual successful removal of those statues from our public squares; a history that includes consistently violent attempts to reduce the spherical spectrum of gender and sexuality to two opposite and extreme points, as well as a history that includes the pride-filled rejoinder to one of those attempts at the Stonewall Inn, and the ensuing use of the American legal system, as well as the American entertainment system, to expand the franchise of American citizenship to members of the nation’s historically marginalized LGBTQ+ communities.

I agree with this last student, and I would add that many members of my school’s community (both within the school and without it) have great respect for the American flag and would like to see it flown, and ignoring their desires would be a disservice to the community. Opponents may disagree, but their reasoning for disagreement would be adequately represented by the critical placement of the other flags, both of which call attention to our community’s need for increased tolerance, acceptance, and love.

Regardless of how I feel, however, what makes me proud is that our students are debating the topic and channeling their (limited) knowledge and (teenage) passion in attempts to persuade their fellow community members. It’s everything I hoped for when I first brought the idea of a School Congress to my colleagues, and while it has sparked quite the controversy, it has also sparked a conversation about our school’s culture, and I couldn’t be happier.

Categories
education

Dual Enrollment for High Schoolers

One of the interesting things about Vermont’s education system (and it may apply in other states too) is that it offers flexible pathways to a high school diploma. In practice, that means schools are directed to be as creative as possible when it comes to awarding a student a high school diploma. The state doesn’t scrimp on putting rigor into the system, but it also recognizes that one person’s rigorous education is another person’s improperly installed faucet. The state looks at the range of possible, successful lifestyles available in the culture and allows students to tailor their educational path to the lifestyle that most attracts them, only asking that they pursue that lifestyle with a sense of discipline and focus.

That is an educational mission I can get behind, and it’s one of the reasons I work at the school that I do. It takes the spirit of that mission and tries to live it out to its fullest. Whatever flaws exist at our school exist solely because of the resources that are available to it, and not due to any flaws in the underlying system.

Because virtually every school is working with limited resources, Vermont taxpayers have, through our legislative process, made certain resources available to each and every one of the state’s high school students. One of those resources is the ability to take two college courses for both high-school and college credit. Though it has other benefits, the “Dual Enrollment” program allows every student in Vermont to receive their high school diploma with six college credits under their belt, provided gratis care of Vermont’s taxpayers.

Not every high school student is prepared to take advantage of this resource, however. College classes are no joke, and many high school students don’t possess the necessary study habits to succeed at the college level, where for every hour of class time, students should expect to put in a minimum of two to three hours of indepedent work-time. Unfortunately, that kind of sustained, unsurpervised work time is often beyond the ken of an attention-limited teenager.

That’s where the high school comes in. Schools need to schedule time in each student’s day to receive direct assistance on how to manage themselves and their resources when it comes to achieving their academic goals. The role of the high school in the Dual Enrollment process is not to help the student learn the content — college resources must be used for that, whether by taking advantage of a campus tutorial center, advocating for accomodations for their specific learning disabilities, or seeking direct help from the professor or teaching assistant; instead, the role of the high school is to improve the student’s executive functioning.

If students are interested in attending college courses (and at my school, we actually require it as a condition of their diploma), then the high school must do everything it can to support them, short of following them to class and taking notes for them.

Not every student needs assistance all of the time, but high schools need to continually check in with them and schedule time each week to dedicate their attention solely to the question of their college class, time when they are more or less guided depending on the student’s needs.

Not every student wants to go on to college. Some don’t even want to achieve a high school diploma — they think of themselves as just killing time until they’re old enough to drop out (of course, educators try to use what time we have available to us to convince them to do otherwise, but that’s neither here nor there).

Regardless of a student’s future plans, they ought to have the experience of attempting to succeed in a bona fide college-level course. It’s a gut check. It may disappoint them — it may destroy their confidence or increase their anxiety — but it will also give them a sense of what they’re able to achieve when the academic rubber hits the rigorously tested road.

I don’t say that to be cruel. I say it because, when the dual enrolled student experiences that gut check, they still have time left in high school to work on whatever skills they found lacking during the experience. I also say it because college is not cheap, and every student ought to receive a free (and honestly offered) sample before they decide to buy.

I’m proud to live among taxpayers who are willing to foot the bill on those initial costs, and as an educator, I do everything I can to make sure our tax dollars don’t go to waste, applying my portion of it to ensuring each student understands at least one way they might be able to approach an academically challenging goal.

This is not say each student I’ve helped with this process has been successful in their college class. Students drop courses halfway through a semester, and despite their best efforts, students sometimes fail a whole semester. That’s okay. From a high-school teacher’s perspective, the only thing I care about is whether, through that experience, the student learned something about themself, something they can work on if they so choose.

College credit is nice. It has real monetary value and (ideally) tangible or intangible educational value, but college credit is also just a bonus; it sits atop the experience’s instrinsic value, which, intrinsic as it may be, still must be earned.

Dual enrollment, while open to every student, is not for every student simply because not every student is ready for a reality check on their study habits. But for students who are capable of self-reflection and of setting and acting upon a goal, the experience is as good as it gets, passing grade or no.

As a high school educator, an adjunct college professor, and a lifelong student, I can’t recommend it enough.