The Answers For Struggling Teens

For struggling teens, it seems there is nothing that can be done, that there are no answers or solutions for assuaging the angst or minimizing the malaise that is adolescence. For struggling teens, the outer world of adults, expectations, demands, and disappointments is as alien and alienating as the popping and firing of synapses and hormones as they evolve in ways that bring depression, frustration, and fear. And with the contradictions and complications of social, familial, and political problems engulfing them, it is no wonder that many are at risk academically.

But numerous facilitators, teachers, counselors, and others do care and do go the extra lengths to help struggling teens. Some spend their lives devoted to the cause of seeing teens at risk into programs that empower and ensure at least a modicum of success. One such program is the outreach program. Another such program is like the one that was televised for a season (though I don’t know what happened to it) on reality TV: kids’ boot camp. And another such program for struggling teens is the academic acceleration program.

The latter enlists a small number of at-risk learners from a select number of feeder high schools, and enrolls them in a community college summer program. The teens come with histories of imprisoned parents, parents on drugs, divided families, and/or mental and social problems they themselves have but have no “cause” for… Their grades are way below average and their attendance and participation in their respective high schools is limited, giving way to truancy and absence.

But in the summer program—college for teens—the students come to enjoy a freedom of campus attendance, donated supplies, lunches, and sponsored field studies, and college-level studies. It seems arbitrary or awkward to enroll a flunking high schooler into a college course, but it almost immediately proves the worth and capabilities of the students who are at best bored with coursework in high school rather than incapable of grasping high school level concepts and strategies.
The students, that is, show up for classes, produce powerful products (journals, poetry, videos, CAD and Photoshop art, math projects, career boards, and counseling platform projects…and earn college credits legitimately and surprisingly. They start the summer with mothers in jail, fathers who have abandoned them, gang members who have indoctrinated them. They start the summer with actual or threats of criminal records, F and D transcripts, and acne and anger and animosity. They “graduate” the program with smiles, hugs, creative discoveries, skills, and goals. They have found, then, that returning to their senior years at high school, is, as one successful student said, “aint sh*t.” And they get back to college—taking night classes or transferring the following year—choosing the freedom and respect (self-respect, especially) they had first found missing or non-existent in their lives.

Struggling teens, then, should know there are alternatives to the kinds of struggling they have to experience. They can struggle with fighting against a system or strain in positive efforts towards goals of working within a system—that has their best interests and best practices at the center.