Truth be told, there may be some indifference on both sides. That's what happens when students and teachers misread each other. Indeed, Duffrin's stories illustrate a lack of clear communication between students and teachers, who in some cases, even lack the knowledge about how to motivate adolescents. Both those problems can be fixed. For one, teachers need more time to get to know their students.
Researchers offer a number of ideas, such as block scheduling and four-year advisory programs.
The School Board has touted those ideas, but Chicago's high schools, like big, urban high schools everywhere, have proven to be exceedingly resistant to meaningful change. The board could stand to learn more about how to motivate high schools, positively as well as negatively. There, civic and community leaders banded together and asked the board to intervene and allow them to turn around the school. But the board's heavy-handed version of intervention nearly undermined the group's groundwork, as Contributing Editor Jody Temkin reports in this month's Intervention Chronicles. But until the board ascends the motivation learning curve, it can at least ratchet up its program to create more small schools, both within the regular system and as charters.