Replacing Defeatism with Self-Empowerment

“…I fundamentally think that the reason there is violence [in the schools] is as much about people not loving the kids as about lack of capacity or the spillover from the outside." --Dr. Andres Alonso

This quote from the recent Baltimore sun series on the CEO really struck me. It was so in line with conversations I have had with administrators at the high school where I work and with my recent experiences helping seniors with their HSA Bridge projects. While Alonso was referring to school violence, I believe that this care, concern, and love for the kids can significantly change not only a student’s behavior, but also his or her achievement and self-worth. As a student of public policy but also an employee of a small high school, I have come to realize that research, policy, and reform ideas often fail to incorporate what is not quantifiable. We can count how many violent incidents occurred or how many students passed a test, but we cannot put into numbers how life experiences have changed a student’s outlook, or as I have seen repeatedly, how a defeatist attitude can truly prevent academic success.

This defeatism became apparent to me when, after encouraging a senior to try to spell a basic word without asking for help, she said, “How do you know I can do it when I don’t know I can do it?” She and other students create self-fulfilling prophecies by telling themselves (and others) that they can’t do it or don’t understand… but when they are persuaded that this is a negative and false mindset, they do great things; most importantly, they are proud of themselves for doing what they thought was impossible. In the past few weeks of working with these students on their projects, I have learned how far sincere encouragement can go and how much the students truly appreciate it. While I can only imagine how difficult it would be to erase such a detrimental mentality from an entire class, I know that I will be cognizant of it in my own classroom when I teach next year. I hope that educators and reformers acknowledge and incorporate some of the less tangible but crucial aspects of an effective education into their own ideas and practices.