When a Middle School Student Goes on Strike: Mapping Next Steps
How a new middle school vice-principal responded when a learner announced no more participation in a class.
I recently came across a challenging problem. A middle school student had decided not to participate in a particular class.
This wasn’t a case of being unable. One of the student’s parents told us that the issue was centered on the subject and the course: they just didn’t see the point of learning. From the student, we were hearing explanations related to negative experiences in the classroom. Either way, this learner had made the choice to be completely finished.
Still early in my administrative journey, this was a new challenge. Our middle school schedule structure doesn’t give us many options to pull students from classes, and we certainly can’t start offering unsupervised spare blocks to middle schoolers who are so inclined.
The student needed to remain in the class, but a student on strike presents a challenging problem for any teacher. The lack of engagement puts an obvious damper on just about any sort of collaborative learning activities the teacher might wish to introduce, and the negative energy has the potential to spread.
Something needed to change. How could I support an already-committed teacher while also…
