The Challenges of Facility Teaching
Where do I even start? As if teachers aren't facing enough challenges, teaching in a facility (like a juvenile detention center or a residential treatment center) brings a whole new banquet of challenges. Here are just a few... Turnover. Kids are in and out so often that, at least at my school, we're going to end the year with maybe only one or two kids we started the year with. This makes it extra hard to build skills with kids, cement relationships with kids, and even establish procedures in your classroom. Academics. The students are behind, they often have diagnosed or undiagnosed learning disabilities, and a huge lack of motivation to care about schoolwork. On top of this, most of these schools are given laptops and some sort of terrible online curriculum and that is supposed to be enough to get kids caught up. Because these facilities are small, teachers have kids in several grade levels in the same room. So attempting to teach creative, engaging lessons on each
