Still in Middle School at 17, and Out of Hope

Laura Klein

“Forget high school, I’m gonna get my G.E.D. You know what that is, Miss?”

“Yes, I know what a G.E.D.is.” It was 2008, my first year teaching, and I knew that this seventh grader was trying to goad me.

“G.E.D. -- Good Enough Degree!” The students were delighted by their own wit.

They weren’t being entirely serious, just trying to undermine my motivator that moment -- that they would need the information I was teaching to be prepared for high school.

Four years later, a student walked into my middle-school class hours late, and told me that she was at G.E.D. class.

“G.E.D. class? How long have you been doing that?”

“This was my first one.”

“Why are you doing that? You’re doing so well -- why wouldn’t you try high school first?”

“Ms. Klein, I’m going to be 17 this year. I’m too old.”

Kiara -- like all the students I write about, her name has been changed to protect her privacy -- looks 17. She carries herself with a lot of maturity and poise, and is always dressed fashionably, with her hair nicely styled. She works hard in class, though she is years behind where she should be.

She’s sweet and well behaved, but the fact that she’s 17 in eighth grade makes me wonder about her life. I talked to her after class, trying to understand why she felt that this was the best option for her. She asked if she could write it down for me.

“I want to get my G.E.D. because I feel that it’s going to be too late for me to graduate. I’m 17 in eighth grade. Yea, I know, it’s very embarrassing. Sometimes I cry about it because it really bothers me. The reason why I am in this position is because when I was young, I struggled in school, and my mother moved around multiple times. I have moved schools 12 times, so I got held back three times. It was even harder for me when I got older because I was surrounded by younger people and I didn’t get the work, but they did.”

I asked what was so bad about graduating at 21, the age by which students must finish high school. I count the years in my head and see that, conceivably, she could do this.

She replies, “It’s not that I have a problem with graduating at 21, it’s that I’m afraid I will fail again.”

Last year, Kiara requested that she be classified as “special education,” despite her solid performance. My husband, her math teacher at the time, went to the meeting to protest the change, arguing that she was capable of achieving the same things as the other kids, if she could be motivated to catch up.

Kiara wants to be a nurse -- something that is much harder to attain with a G.E.D., rather than a diploma. While it’s sad to think of her giving up on high school, what is really upsetting is watching her give up on herself at such a young age. By eighth grade, she had already encountered so many obstacles to success that she felt hopeless.

Unfortunately, this is not a one-time tale. My students, still so young, have had little control over their lives. That makes the injustice of their situations all the greater.

For some kids, a G.E.D. will end up being their best option; I understand that, of course. But to feel like you have lost at something before you have even begun is a hopeless sentiment.

In eighth grade, all of life's options should still be ahead of you. The world should be opening before your eyes. But for many of my students, there are blinders already narrowing their vision.

What was meant as a joke that first year later became a sad truth. While we want them to reach for the stars, too often they are already resigned to "good enough."