Memo 2

There are very few constituents who consider The Program as “normal.” Those who come to The Program as students do so unwillingly, placed by DCF or by court order having been diagnosed with emotional or behavioral disorders. Those who come to The Program as staff come for a variety of reasons. Some genuinely want to help those who most need consistency and care, and others just want a job. The turnaround for both students and staff is alarmingly high. One must constantly be on guard at The Program, because any sense of “normalcy” is a thin veil loosely covering underlying chaos and dysregulation. Any lapses in vigilance may have disastrous outcomes. Behavior management comes first, and education comes second (if at all). This is the culture of the community.

Educators at The Program face a daunting task. Their students often have significant lapses in their formal educations and binders full of documented physical and emotional trauma. Many have emotional and behavioral concerns that preclude them from participating in anything resembling a mainstream classroom. Nevertheless, the end goal for students is rehabilitation and reintroduction into society as functioning adolescents. There are many behavioral and clinical procedures to ensure that students at The Program are able to control and moderate their own behaviors when faced with concrete, consistent, and clear consequences. Education is always secondary to this (a belief espoused and enforced by administration) and educators must be willing to let their pedagogies take a back seat to discipline and the standard operating procedures of The Program. Protocol trumps best practice. Student learning and engagement is secondary to behavior management.

    The physical space of The Program reinforces the focus on behavior management. The common areas of the most restrictive building are adorned with spit masks and bite guards. Outside of the classrooms, decor is at a bare minimum. There are no trophy cases or honor roll placards, only cheap carpeted floors and placid blue walls. The clinical atmosphere is in stark contrast to the colorfully and eclectically decorated classrooms. Hand-crafted visuals and growth mindset charts are posted throughout the classroom spaces, and each room has a varied assortment of teacher-selected libraries for student use. Per program directives, classroom spaces are filled with ordered rows of student desks, a whiteboard, a teacher’s desk, and a dated Dell PC.

    In less restrictive buildings, classrooms occupy the first floor of retrofitted Victorian houses. Many students reside in the same buildings they attend school in. On many days students do not leave the buildings all day, especially in winter. On certain occasions, students have supervised visits with friends and family at The Program; there are even times when students leave the program for overnight visits. Unfortunately, the rarity of excursions outdoors leads to a pervasive feeling of claustrophobia for both students and staff.

    Throughout the school day, students remain in the same classroom with the same teacher (again, per program directive), and attend class from 8:45am to 3:00pm on a 215 day school year. Unlike most public schools, students and teachers here are graced with a 45-minute lunch period, though this is heavily supervised and regulated. After the school day ends, students are expected to work on homework for at least one hour every night, with an additional “Slow Hour” for reading or additional homework. After this, students have a bevy of chores to attend to before nighttime routines. The heavily structured and moderated days can often be quite taxing on some newcomers, especially those who have lived with minimal supervision or consequences for misbehavior. Still, many of the students here have been in and out of programs such as this for much of their academic careers. The cases in which the constraints and expectations of The Program are “normal” are the most disheartening. These are students who have been wards of the state for longer than they have lived with a nurturing family. These are the behavior cases that drive the restrictiveness of The Program. Nevertheless, it falls to the teachers to find a way to strike a balance between behavior management and pedagogy.