CHAPTER 1

Reaching for the Reins

I believe every great teacher starts as a student who had a great teacher.In my experience I encountered two of these great teachers. I metMr. D in seventh grade. Up to that point, I had come to recognizethat school didn't come without a hard-won effort. Throughout mygrade school years I struggled with academics. Mr. D showed methat I was capable of accomplishing anything to which I appliedmyself. He did not disguise that I would have to work harder thanmy peers, but he taught me that with motivation and hard workcomes the joy of success. With this perspective, I applied myselfwith a tenacity that eventually led me to my second great teacher.

My introduction to Ms. K occurred toward the end of my bachelor'sdegree in an education methods class at Western Michigan University.Her approach to defining the boundaries of education blurred thelines between standardization and abstraction. Ms. K possessed arare view of education that allowed her to see her teaching from theperspective of those most affected by it—her students. During oneof her classes, she told a story that forever changed the way I solveproblems as an educator.

One evening while cooking dinner, her year-old daughter beganfussing as she played on the kitchen floor. Instead of becomingfrustrated with her, Ms. K got down on the floor and looked at thesituation from her young daughter's eyes. She noticed that from herdaughter's perspective, the only stimuli in the child's world were thedrab cabinet doors and Mommy's feet scurrying about the room.Her solution was to remove a few of the cabinet doors and install afish tank at floor height. As I transitioned from being a student toa teacher, I always told myself that I wanted to instill motivation inmy students and use the fish tank philosophy for solving problems.

In August 2005, I married my high school sweetheart and startedteaching mathematics at Cedar Lane Alternative High School lessthan a week later. My induction into the world of teaching wasswift and clarifying. As I walked into class the first day, I wasgreeted by two of my students comparing ankle tether bracelets,each bragging about the distance they could travel without settingit off. This was my introduction both to education and alternativeeducation. When I reflect back on this, I'm truly grateful for thiscontext, as it provided a shock that I naturally associated with theterm "alternative." The word means a million different things to amillion different people. In the context of education, it might onlymean five or six things to a million different people. It is with thisunderstanding that I'll explain what my eight years of teaching theseremarkable students has taught me about who alternative studentsare and what they're capable of when pulled back from the cracksthey've been allowed to slip through.

Cedar Lane

Cedar Lane Alternative High School was established in 1990 asan alternative means for students who don't fit into the traditionalhigh school to obtain their high school diplomas. Perhaps the mostnotable difference between alternative education and a traditionaleducation is that alternative education attracts a broader spectrumof students whose difficulty assimilating into a general educationformat challenges their ability to obtain an equitable education.It is this quality that gives them a unique commonality with eachother, an alternative perspective on how they might most effectivelyinteract in their education.

Our students come from exceptionally diverse backgrounds. Someof the circumstances surrounding their journeys to Cedar Laneinvolve the death of a parent or parents, living in foster care, parentalabandonment and complications from living with family members,health issues, rape, poverty, trouble with the law, and pregnancy andparenthood. For many of these students merely getting by from day today is a struggle. Although all schools are comprised of students whocome from these circumstances, Cedar Lane serves approximatelyninety of the surrounding districts' hard-luck students who fall intoat least one (and usually multiples) of these categories.

The vision of Cedar Lane is to help students earn their diploma andencourage them to integrate into their communities in a positiveway. The school's mission statement is to ensure that every student

• succeeds academically;

• gains knowledge and skills needed to be a responsible,productive citizen;...