Q&A: How single-gender support groups help students at Spring ISD’s credit recovery school

Each week, “Pop Quiz” features an interview with a member of Greater Houston’s education community. To suggest someone we should interview with an interesting story to tell, email us at education@houstonlanding.org.

Meet the interviewees

The 225 students at Spring ISD’s Momentum High School are looking to get their education back on track. For some, it will take some extracurricular activity.

Two or three times a month, about 25 students at the credit recovery school gather during the school day in groups of boys and girls for programs ranging from breast cancer awareness workshops to mental health seminars. Two Momentum teachers — Aaron Boudreaux and Charlotte Manning — formed the groups several months ago to help students with jobs, young parents and other aspiring graduates complete their high school degree after a hiatus.

A math instructor at Momentum High with 15 years of teaching experience, Boudreaux started an all-male support group after seeing that most of the issues his students faced lay outside the classroom.

Boudreaux chose to make the group all-male because he felt he could relate best to their struggles and male students often struggled with reaching out for mental health help. His work touches on a unique challenge: According to state data, male high school students in Texas are more likely to drop out and never finish their degree than their female peers.

When female students wanted to join, Boudreaux asked Manning, an English teacher and one-time teen mom, if she’d like to lead a group of her own. She readily agreed, choosing to focus on her students’ career goals and preparing them for the working world after high school or college.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Can you tell me what a typical day in your support groups looks like?

Boudreaux: We meet on Fridays. I have a permission slip form that they’re supposed to carry out throughout the whole week, so that way, when I come to them at the end of the week saying it’s time for our meeting, they show that responsible factor of saying, “Okay, I still have mine.” …

We do about a 10- to 15-minute quiet time just to get out what’s been going on. … We have on nice, quiet music, and we just write in our journals. After that, if somebody likes to share, I give them the opportunity, but I don’t force anybody to share, because the main point of the goal of the journal is to express yourself freely. … After that, we go into whatever our weekly lesson is for the day. It could be motivation, it could be positive outlook, it could be meditation, whatever the goal is for that week. Then we go into that lesson for about maybe 15 to 20 minutes. Some days we have snacks and then they go back to class, so it’s probably a 45-minute session either twice a month or sometimes three times a month.

Manning: Lately, we’ve been getting into goals and how we keep being accountable for our actions. So they come in, but they don’t journal. No, with girls we like to talk. They want to talk about what’s going on that day, or what they’ve been going through that week. And we talk about it because it’s a safe space. What we say here stays between us. … Lately a lot of my girls are getting ready to graduate, so we’ve been talking about what our next goal will be. What will we be doing when we graduate from high school?

So it’s just the collaboration with them and to get them to that point of wanting to do things and liking to do things, and wanting to go to college or get a career. I also keep reminding them about accountability, because we have to be accountable for our actions.

What does accountability mean to you?

Manning: I’m accountable for my moves, because I’m a leader. So here, I’m in the dress code, because I talk to the girls (about dress codes). Young ladies want to dress fashionable, but I tell them they have to dress professionally. … You can wear your jeans, but make sure they don’t have holes everywhere. You have to follow the rules just like every other student, and you have to show other students, “We’re going to follow the rules.”

Boudreaux: The children that I deal with specifically here at Momentum have a lack of structure, whether that be home structure or school structure because they are where they are academically.  One of the things that I stress on is stability. I make sure that they’re able to see stability, feel stable, understand what it means to have somebody that you can depend on … (because) that level of uncertainty leads them to not get passionate about anything. “What’s the point of me caring when it’s going to change next week?” Seeing and learning and feeling what it means to have something that you can count on is one of my biggest joys. I love it when the child says, “Why you weren’t here yesterday?” or, “Where you was at? … I was counting on you, man.” That’s one of the challenges that I love to address. It proves that they care.

You mentioned before that in some cases, students have to be ready to be a part of this group. What do each of you look for in a student that you feel is ready to be part of the group, or will benefit most from something like that?

Boudreaux: One of the things that I enjoy doing is introducing myself to new students. If I haven’t seen the student before, I make a point to say, “Hello, my name is…” because the school is so small, you’re able to do that. When I see a new kid, I recognize the way we interact. I can tell if that child has some guidance at home that has shown him some of the things that I’m trying to expand on. If I can see that they have some type of structure, like they’ve already dug the hole and the seed has been planted. All I have to do is water it. … I’m looking to see if that seed has already been planted, so that I may be able to water it and fertilize it and help it grow into the fruit-bearing tree it’s supposed to be.

Manning: You can’t help but have a relationship with all the children (here). … I talk to them, see how they are, where they are, and I invite them. We have “Winning Wednesdays” where the girls dress up in professional wear, and some (students) have come up and asked me, “You ain’t asked me to dress up,” and then we talk. … I had one student I had wanted to be in it, and I went to her, and she’s like, “Well, who’s all in it?” … Well, I was like, “We in it to grow. We’re not in it to find out who’s in it.” I didn’t give her the paperwork at first, but once she came back and got that, she got in the group.

How do you know when you’ve gotten somewhere with a student, when you’ve had a breakthrough with a student?

Manning: When you see the attitude change from “don’t care” to “OK, I care about how I look, I care about making sure I’m in class, making sure that I’m doing my work.”  And they remind you, “Ms. Manning, are we doing Winning Wednesday this week? Ms. Manning, what are we doing next?” … That’s how they show they want to be a part and want to do it. You just see that attitude change.

Boudreaux: One of my biggest things is respect. You have to treat everybody with respect, including with the language you use. I feel like we have to begin communicating with people better. Speak love, not hate. Remind them, “That’s your friend. Why are you calling him those names?” When I can correct that behavior without having to correct it, that’s when I know.

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