Recidivism—Bah, Humbug!

Well, that was certainly a long day, wasn’t it??? I promised a blog entry “tomorrow” about 9 days ago…yes, the days sometimes feel that long here with all the demands!

Anyway, I will still speak about “recidivism” since that was on my mind 9 days ago and then the consuming nature of KA went into high gear…the definition of "recidivism” is sort of funny since I failed to come back and pontificate as I had promised…

In the first year of KA, our headmaster, Dr. Eric, often warned our students about the perils of recidivism—he loves great words and this was a doozy of a word that not only our Arab friends weren’t sure about, but many of the English-speakers were unclear about. Recidivism is a noun that means “repeated or habitual relapse,” and on dictionary.com they also add after ‘relapse,’ the words, “as into crime.” (!!!)

I started thinking of the word recidivism on Thursday a week ago when the seniors met in the Lecture Hall for a special speaker arranged by one of our counselors. The counselor had invited a friend of hers to speak about breathing techniques and exercises and how these might help reduce stress, especially as seniors came into the month of May with all of the AP exams and the attendant emotional stress of graduation.

This was a 40-minute presentation, and I discovered the speaker does many of the techniques and exercises I have done over the years with actors before performances. It was not a gathering where adults urged them to attend classes (seriously—we have to do this with our seniors!) or follow through on their obligations or show respect to the adults in their school world. That is what other class meetings are for. This was a man from an organization called “The Art of Living” who hoped to help students breathe their way to peace and harmony. Well, many of the seniors acted like…I don’t know…seven-year olds? They couldn’t sit still. They couldn’t follow directions. They laughed at everything. They could hardly focus for sixty seconds. They spoke nastily to the counselor when she asked them to pay attention. Their poor behavior took me back to the first months at KA when many of the adults here decided that these students acted more like “wild dogs” [see those old blog entries from the fall of 2007—I am sure I commented on it then!]. In our minds they acted in those early days exactly like immature middle school children. We had our work cut out for us, back in the days I called “Scratch.”

Here we are—30 months later, 5s on AP exams later, free trips around the world with His Majesty later, free trips to conferences around the world later, acceptances to Ivy League colleges and elite universities and scholarships proffered over and over…and we are back at the beginning. We aren’t at Scratch, of course—too much water under the bridge to count for that. We are in the Sea Change known as Senioritis. Yuck.

This is hardly the first senioritis I have endured. I have taught seniors 18 times over the years, in all four of my schools, and this icky phenomenon rears its head everywhere…I guess here it feels worse…it feels more recidivist.

In a school where so many came from so far away, and we worked so hard to train them to elevate them from their “middle school” status, it just feels a little more hard-hitting. I receive about a dozen emails a day from teachers of seniors (remember, I am their dean, and oh, the glory of the position certainly feels exalted these days!) asking for advice about the rudeness, the irresponsibility, et cetera. But I could change the names from Arab names to Wasp names and it could have been really any of my other schools in terms of how a churlish-senior attitude can transform a happy school into a tense showdown, hmmm…shades of the OK Corral? But the students here skip classes in a wave I have never seen. There is even a deeper malaise of “I am into college so what do I care?” that pollutes the scene. There are some fine scholars in this class, yes, but there are some ill-equipped as well, who need to sharpen all their skills before they face their American counterparts in a few months in university.

Many of these seniors have been the oldest grade here three times, a luxury/curse almost never afforded anywhere else. The school opened with 9th and 10th graders, and this class was the “top dog” three times. But they never got to watch a class go through the motions of struggling and learning to lead, and emerging as mature young adults at the end of the process. Some of them have—please know, but many are still just bigger 10th grade babies, unenlightened, ungrateful, and unwilling to reflect.

It has become standard from some teachers to “wish away” the seniors—indulging in the countdown until they are out of our sight. But whenever that happens, and I am tempted, believe you me, I am reminded of some wisdom from my father many years ago. I was a junior in high school, and there was a crush of assignments and deadlines coming my way before Thanksgiving, and I created an elaborate countdown to “wish away” the days until I felt some peace. How normal is this! It is our impulse to wish away the rough times, or simply to be in the dead of winter and wish that spring could come a mite faster.

I hear my father’s voice saying, “Don’t wish you life away. If you live always counting down, you’ll find yourself at the end of life having counted it all away.” What a smart guy that former firefighter. In longing for some future good, we forget that every day—regardless of the weather or our circumstances—is a gift from God. I guess that we are where we need to be and learn what we need to learn. As my father would advise, we must stay the course because the things we experience today will lead us where we need to be tomorrow.

My grandmothers would chime in and remind us of the exhortation in Ecclesiastes 3:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under Heaven….
A time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away….
In every season there is a reason to rejoice and an opportunity to do good.”

Of course, the challenge for each of us every day is to find something to rejoice about and some good to do—and then to do both.

So, that same Thursday when the seniors challenged our sanity and proved themselves deft recidivists, about 9 hours later another group was in the same Lecture Hall—a group of sophomores and juniors recently chosen to lead their hallways as proctors in our dormitories for next school year.

Julianne and her crackerjack team of deans planned an extraordinary weekend of leadership training for these 60-some students. Over that 48-hour period they led them in initiative games, exercises, discussions, movies, fun, speeches, and planning for next year. These students were marvelous. On the first night, after a rousing opening speech on leadership by Julianne, we watched the movie, We Are Marshal so as to explore and analyze various styles of leadership. I was leery being in the Lecture Hall again since earlier that morning I simply couldn’t believe the recidivism of the seniors. I also remember when the whole school watched a movie during Orientation last September and our student body just couldn’t sit still and focus. It was like going to a movie with 400 7th graders…

But see, here is where the hope springs eternal…maybe some of the seniors never learned some of the lessons or internalized the guiding principles of the school’s mission statement, but there is another class awaiting their chance to lead. They have been in second place three times now, and they have watched and grown. These 60-some students represent only about 15% of the student body, so I am not naïve to think that all the underclassmen will assume the mantle of leadership easily or maturely, but this group is ready. Those deans planned an incredible weekend—giving some of the best hope in a long time.

This fall I have 16 students signed up for a course where I made the pre-requisite that you have to have survived at least one AP course with me. They know what they are in for—and they are ready for that challenge to continue to grow. They know what I stand for, and they believe in the value of laboring over something. They remind me of that great Oliver Wendell Holmes quotation: "The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."

Yes, there has been some recidivism, but no, it is not choking the school. These leaders to-be will plunge in, and hopefully be the tipping point that allows the school to thrive and grow.

I remember a student in the class of…well, I won’t say, but early in the 21st century, and I remember how everything changed on a December 8th. That was the day he received the acceptance to the college about which he had dreamed and worked. He had been a poster child for hard work and charisma in the classroom. Well, the day after that important letter, he began to slack off—he was “entitled,” he said, and sadly, the charisma, and the persuasive powers he held over the rest of his class created a wave of recidivism. It just isn’t as much fun to teach them then. But you don’t give up over a couple of recidivist bad apples! And I guess you don’t wish them all away. That would mean you might miss the glorious moments with the students whose curiosity and enthusiasm and thoughtfulness propel your day with excitement and wonder.