Students in Alternative Education tend to feel isolated well before they leave school. As Dr. Delia Baskerville states, they are “wagging-in-class,” or physically present but completely disengaged.

Despite the fact that most of my research took place at Teen Parenting Units, one might think that these girls are merely present because they are now teen mothers, and not because of other reasons related to truancy, disengagement, and school failure. Unfortunately, for most girls, this was not the case. It became abundantly clear to me through my focus groups that many girls in the TPUs I visited had felt marginalized, lost, and forgotten upon entering secondary school. In many cases, this was also due to experiencing trauma, and not necessarily having a trusted adult to support.

Here are some of their own words:

“It was because I didn’t feel as smart, so I wouldn’t do my work. I would be the only one who didn’t pass because I was embarrassed to fail? You know? So, yeah.”

“I was good at school when I first started, but I don’t know...As I got older, my reading turned bad and everyone kept going up and I feel like I stayed at the same level.”

Students in activity centres and other sites who have been excluded from their sites are in a different situation. As one school leader notes:

“In schools, there needs to be less strict boundaries for everyone, and they look at context a little bit. What has happened to this child? I don’t think that’s a question we ask often enough in schools...we need to contextualize more before we make big decisions about these children.”

This links to Dr. Delia Baskerville's theory about truancy, in which 'mattering' -- connection – is a necessary ingredient for re-engagement.

“Youth are who truant need teacher support to stay in class. They want to feel welcome; visible, respected, treated with kindness, and talked to... They need to matter to their teachers and their peers in classrooms. Mattering may well provide the necessary connection for youth who truant to belong in classrooms and reengage with education” (Baskerville, 2021).

This begs the question – is traditional schooling the best for ALL students? Is that the ultimate goal? Would AE exist in a perfect world?