One student’s universal story

An item from the folks at the Digital Learning Collaborative.

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By John Watson Brian (name changed for privacy) was a star student in elementary school. He was engaged, and excelled. He read often on his own, fueled by his curiosity. Then around age thirteen, before and as he was transitioning to high school, he lost interest in school. His lack of interest got to the point that he and his friends would compete to see who would do worst on assessments. When his school sent report cards home that his parents had to sign, he would forge their signatures. He felt that his teachers didn’t really know or care about him. In fact, the first person in high school who showed interest was a track coach, who saw something in Brian. The coach said he wanted Brian on the team, but that he needed to do better in his classes. With that push, Brian became motivated to do well in school, for the first time in years. In his telling it seems that two items were important: making the track team, and the simple fact that an adult connected with him and pushed him. As he became re-engaged, he realized two things. One was that his teachers could only teach in one way to the entire class, but everyone learned differently. The second was that he could figure out how he learned best. His method was to read the books at his own pace, and to engage his teachers as tutors. As he put it, “there were no concepts I couldn’t understand when I had the freedom to learn on my own, with teachers as tutors to support me. Once I figured this out, I had tremendous confidence.” He graduated and went on to a university, where he continued to excel. Once he went back to his school to share his university report card with his track coach, showing his gratitude for the role the coach had played. Brian also saw a teacher and showed that teacher the university report card. The teacher said “whose grades are these? They can’t be yours.” Years later, he was well into a career after graduating from the university and getting an MBA, as well as becoming a CPA, and working at well-known companies. Around this time, he saw another teacher at a restaurant, a teacher he had appreciated although he hadn’t done well in her class. He offered to buy her a drink, and to pay pulled out a high-limit credit card. The teacher was surprised by his offer to buy her a drink, and even more surprised at his financial success as signaled by his credit card. Later, the teacher told him that the experience convinced her that she would never again give up on a student. Brian described his parents as working class. His mother in particular tried to support his education, but having little formal education of her own, she didn’t know what to look for, what to do. Brian’s low social and economic status in general didn’t provide markers for how to excel. But one caring track coach gave him the spark to find his path. Brian could be one of the millions of students who found their way to a better future in an online or hybrid school in the United States. But that’s not his story. He was in school in the 1980s and ‘90s, pre-Internet. He grew up and went to school in Barbados. I met him by total chance at a random bar in Bermuda. He didn’t know anything about my background when he told me his story, although he may have found my questions to be a bit more persistent than one would expect from a stranger at the next bar stool. One data point doesn’t prove that themes we see in the U.S., such as student disengagement and potential success in different learning modalities, are common around the world. But it’s still telling that Brian’s story sounds exactly like so many of the students we hear from in the U.S., searching for options because traditional school isn’t a fit for them. How many Brians have been lost because there was no track coach? Too many, I’m sure. But the better question may be: How many Brians have succeeded because of the dedicated educators in innovative schools, providing the push, or the light, that faltering students need? Many blog readers are running these schools, teaching in them, or supporting them from the outside. If that description includes you, you should be proud to tell your story, maybe even to a stranger at a pub in a random country. It may resonate more than you expect.

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