Still Searching for Alternatives

The bell for first period rings and students start to come into the hallways from outside. Most of them are celebrating that it’s Friday while others pay no attention as they have their iPods blasting in their ears.

Already found sitting in the junior high classroom 110 with a chess board set up waiting for his opponent is Tim. Around him in the old classroom are posters of athletic icons such as Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan encouraging students to strive for achievement.

Tim is noticeably smaller than his peers – shorter, thinner, more fragile. Tim wears to school every day an oversized brown leather jacket with a white fur collar that looks like it came right out of an aviator movie. His glasses have a thin frame and fit his face tilting a little to the left.

Tim’s hair is all smothered on the backside, probably bed head, but he was the first one to get to John Marshall today, he always is and eager to play whoever wants to challenge him first.

Tim’s first challenger is his “behavior modification program” teacher Jabril Rashid, Tim strategically moves his little army around the board, taking Mr. Rashid’s pieces one by one. “You’re not going to beat me this time Tim,” says Rashid. “That’s what you think, check mate!” Tim shouts out with enjoyment. “So can we go to the lake later?”

Tim is part of one of the few programs left at John Marshall Alternative school after Seattle Public Schools granted them a reprieve year in Feb. 2007 to give the district time to decide where to place all the programs that John Marshall supported after the decision was made to close the school was final in July of 2006.

John Marshall is located in the neighborhood of Green Lake, just a few miles away from the very popular Green Lake Park. The school is one of the oldest established schools within the Seattle Public School District, although it has not always been an alternative school. The building will now be closed and the district is still to determine what will happen with the relic brick building.

This time last year there were almost 200 students now there are about 50 and that’s on a good attendance day.

John Marshall used to house traditional high school and junior high classes as well as their GRADS program for teenage mothers, an evening school, and their re-entry programs for grades 6-12.

After the announcement of the closure in 2006 the district stopped enrollment to Marshall causing most of the programs to dissolve and others to shrink dramatically. The re-entry program for junior high students now combines grades 6-8 and they have at most 15 students.

“This year has been tough here at Marshall, we have hardly been a ‘school’ in the traditional sense at all,” says Susan Knutsen, who has been teaching language arts for over 10 years now. “We’re teaching the students we have left and trying to deal with the reality, it’s sad.”

The re-entry program is designed for students who have been suspended or expelled from their regular high school due to behavior or truancy problems. After completing 48 days of the behavior modification program, or “behavior mod,” the students used to be given the option of returning to their high school/middle school or staying at Marshall.

The choice of staying has not been available this past year. There is no regular track for the students to return to.

Five programs remain but the numbers are small. The alternative school only houses ten students. This has made this year difficult for both the students and the teachers.

Integrating students use to be one successful way that the teachers would get students to cooperate. “These kids are fighters they’ve had tough lives. This year they’ve just been butting heads, it just takes time but they listen,” says Knutsen. If there is one qualification that a teacher needs before beginning work here at Marshall is patience. Between the bickering and the lack of concentration of the students, patience seems to be the quality that every teacher has.

“These kids come here not because they are bad but because they need a good example.” Says Mr. Rashid, “they need those ‘well behaved’ students to show them that they can sit down and write quietly, they need positive examples.”

The behavior modification program gives students who have recently been in conduct problems at their mainstream schools. The conduct issues vary with the students at Marshall from fighting, poor attendance, to disruptive classroom behavior.

Behavior mod., consists of activities that give students alternative ways of dealing with frustration and anger. The students are sometimes presented with situations and they discuss how to handle them without resorting to fighting or disruptiveness.

“You never know where these kids are coming from; you don’t know what’s going on at home.
We just have to understand that and the kids will listen if you just listen to them,” says Rashid.

The majority of the students are minorities – mostly African American and Hispanic. Tim is an exception as being one of the two white individuals in the junior high behavior mod program.

He may look sweet as he shows up early to challenge his favorite teacher at a game of chess but upon arriving at John Marshall just three months ago it was a completely different story.
When Tim arrived at John Marshall he was living in a homeless shelter, fighting everyday and pulling out his own hair from anxiety.

Tim came to John Marshall because he had no other choice – he has been kicked out of every other school he’s been to. “He’s got a mouth on him and he’ll talk back to anyone,” says Mr. Rashid. Tim would get bullied and attempt to fight back. Inevitably, he would get beaten up or start an even bigger brawl and end up out of school time and time again.

The counselors had no other choice but to grant him passed the closed enrollment of John Marshall as a last resort.

Today Tim lives with his social worker in West Seattle and sits quietly in class playing chess. Students try to get a rise out of him but instead of attacking them he walks away.

John Marshall has been coping with the fact that the programs will have to be relocated. At this point the only thing the teachers can do is reassure the students and continue to teach under the circumstances.

“It’s sad that the school’s closing… not only are teachers losing their jobs but students are losing a place to be,” says Knutsen, “a lot of us are very concerned that there’s not going to be a lot of support out there,” she adds.

Over the past year students at John Marshall were able to register for different schools. Because of the closing, students were granted first pick into mainstream schools by Seattle Public Schools. However, this does not guarantee that the students will have the same success rates as John Marshall had before.

The support that Knutsen is referring to was the students’ option to return to Marshall as an option for their mainstream schooling. Most of the behavior mod students struggle after they re-enter to uphold what they have learned and regress back to old behavior.

“That worries me because there will be re-entry that they’ll go back to, but it won’t be a school it will just be a program,” says Knutsen.

The trend is that the students wind up back in a re-entry program of some sort only a few months after going back to a mainstream school.

Students who do not graduate from the re-entry program by the end of the year will be moved to the program at Wilson Pacific, just 6 miles north of John Marshall. Other programs such as the GRADs program will go to South Lake. The evening GED program has already been moved to Franklin.

As the school day ends the kids get more and more anxious for the weekend. “I’m going to the movies,” says Tim, “maybe we can go to the lake next week.” He might not be ready to face the changes of a mainstream school for next year, but right now that’s not what’s important. Tim just wants to focus on being a kid.