Hello everyone!
When I learned that I was going to be placed in an alternative school, I’ll admit, I was a bit unsettled. I had bags of biases. I remembered the ‘alternative kids’ from my own school experience, as well as various stereotypes from movies and popular culture. Basically I was expecting trouble – from students and teachers both.
I was greeted by an administrator, who immediately made me feel at ease – she was polite, welcoming and she went out of her way to make all of us feel like we were a part of the team. She explained that there were actually three schools within the one: an alternative education program, a learn at home program, and a continuing education program. My teachable areas are social studies and theatre. There are no social studies classes in the continuing education program, and the learn at home students were, well, at home, so that left me with the alternative kids. The alternative program was where I would be spending most of my time, and I was admittedly unsettled. These are supposedly the ‘worst of the worst,’ kids who teachers have nightmares about, but they provided me a huge eye opener. They were funny, generally polite, and definitely considerate. Sure, there were issues, but nothing dramatic, and truthfully, nothing more than you would expect to find in a group of “regular” students.
Looking around the alternative program, kids are aiming to graduate, not to gain skills. They want out of the system, and not much else. Anything that teachers present that is extraneous or even supplementary to this goal is treated as a problem to be overcome, or to run away from. That being said, there was no specific class dealing with computers in the alternative program. In fact, despite having computers in almost every room, access to the internet is generally restricted, because of the ample distraction it provides. There are semi-mythical Keyboarding 11, Business Computer Applications 11, Data Management 12 and Business Information Management 12 classes. These classes were offered to continuing education students, subject to demand. They are intended to provide increased employment opportunities to adults who are, for one reason or another, having a hard time getting work. I don’t believe they will be offered until next semester.
