Solutions?

For three years in my teaching career at two different schools I was assigned to teach the overage for grade students in my building. For two years I taught 8th graders who were 16, and several years later I was assigned to teach 6th graders who were 16. This was a sign to me that things were getting worse and not better. One of the reasons students were overage for grade is because the district wisely decided not to pass students who were not academically ready, and part of the reason for that is so that underprepared students would not damage 8th grade SOL scores. I understood the reasoning behind this decision, but it didn’t lessen the stress of teaching these students. Most were cooperative, but there was a small core who were disruptive due to being unsuccessful in previous years and for some it was due to life situations that were beyond my control. So let’s address the elephant in the room: home life. As teachers and administrators, we cannot control what happens once a child leaves our buildings. We can do what we can to build a child academically and socially while we have them with us, but we cannot control the traumas that some students endure once they go home to their neighborhood. Some examples that my own students have endured include an alcoholic parent, a drug addicted parent, spousal abuse, child abuse, and parents who were in and out of jail. The aforementioned list is for the students who DID NOT disrupt class. These students came to school as regularly as possible, did their schoolwork, and got along well with their peers. I have taught other students with home life issues and gang related neighborhood issues that did manifest in behavior problems. I don’t have solutions for home, but I do have questions. What makes some students more resilient than others? What can we do as educators to help students become more resilient? We cannot control students’ home lives, just as we cannot control the unexpected events in our own lives; but we can help them cope better and respond differently to the unexpected events they face.