TEACHER TURNS LIFE'S TROUBLES INTO LESSONS FOR STUDENTS

At 16, he has perfected the stare, the blank look, the shrug of his
shoulders, and his favorite phrase:

"I don't even care."

He doesn't care that both of his parents are dead.

"That's old news."

Or that he's been arrested more times than he wants to remember, or
suspended from school more times than that. Or that he supports himself by
selling drugs.

"It's in my blood," he explains bluntly to his classmates, who make up the
toughest class at Olsen Middle School in Dania Beach, where their teacher
struggles to keep them in school despite the odds.

Hoping to waken something inside them, the teacher uses the students' own
troubles as a tool in this classroom, asking them to write about their
lives: the broken families, impoverished neighborhoods, alcoholism, abuse
and things beyond their control.

She asks, and the man-child, who is sitting in a tiny wooden school desk,
clenches his jaw and gets a look of determination in his eyes. He grasps
his pen.

I'm into a lot of things right now, but I'm going to calm down now because
I've got a 3-year-old son and I want to see him grow up. My father never
did nothing for me. But my kids are always going to come before me.

Therein lies her secret to reaching teens deemed all but unreachable, says
teacher Terry Preuss. Preuss has discovered the magic of the written word -
its power to strip the armor off the jaded students entering her dropout
prevention class.

If you were to look at these students' report cards before they came into
the program, you might think they'd be unable to string together simple
sentences. But for two years now, Preuss has inspired her students to tell
their life stories to the world through journal entries.

The school and students have requested that their names not be disclosed,
but they want their struggles known.

The result, Preuss says, is a book-in-progress of surprising depth,
complexity and heart.

"I thought, my God, the world needs to know what these kids are going
through. This is what they are seeing, and the next day they are in class
and we're wondering what's wrong with them, what's wrong with education,"
Preuss says. "The traditional classroom is failing them."

Dear World,

I really wanted to die. Every single day I woke up, and the morning was
horrible to me. And it hurt so bad because there was nothing I could do
about it. And nobody who cared.

Telling It Straight

The class is called DOP.

Officially, that's an acronym for Drop Out Prevention, although some kids
call it Dumb On Purpose, and Preuss says it stands for Doing Our Personal best.

Preuss, who was named Olsen Teacher of the Year for 2002 and likes to wear
blue jeans and her dark brown hair down to her waist, spends all day with
these kids.

The idea is that by having only 23 students for seven hours straight,
instead of the usual 30-plus who change classes throughout the day, she'll
have time to give them special attention.

"I'm trying to get them interested in learning, and to realize they can
apply it to their real lives," she says.

All of Pruess' students have failed the seventh grade, and many have failed
multiple times. A few are working at an elementary school level. Others are
reading college material.

The goal of the class is to get them to complete two years - seventh and
eighth grade - in one. It's a tall order, especially because many of the
students know they can simply drop out once they hit the magic age of 16.

If they make it through this class, however, the students will have a
better chance of surviving at a regular high school - both in terms of
academics and attitude, Preuss says. If not, they could be sent to one of
three alternative high school centers in Broward County that specialize in
handling students with behavioral and academic problems.

When Preuss took the job two years ago, she was told point-blank that the
class had already chased off two teachers. Since then, she's broken up
brawls, caught kids passing marijuana and played psychological chess with
teens who have perfected the art of pushing teachers' buttons.

"If you are not cut out for this, they will eat you alive," she admits.

But with Preuss, they are relatively well-behaved. She sets limits, gives
rewards and most importantly, has earned their respect, the kids say.

"She wants you to succeed in life," says one boy who looks as if he should
be in high school. "You can actually call her a friend."

Mrs. Preuss,

I wanted to say thank you for letting me be in your class even though I'm
pregnant. I know you could have said no, but you let me stay, so thank you.
I really want to finish my education.

Share If You Dare

On a recent Thursday near the end of the school year, the class works
quietly. Of the 23 students on her roster, only 10 show up.

A former DOP student who is now in regular eighth-grade classes stops by to
visit and offers some advice. She is a success story and will be moving on
to high school in the fall.

"I'm starting to build my life. You guys need to shape up," she says,
adding that DOP helped her gain the confidence to do just that.

"Here you can actually express yourself."

That expression is evident on the classroom walls, where students' stories
are posted. Some are fiction. Some are real. Sometimes it is hard to tell
the difference.

Dear World,

My father was a heroin addict. One night we got into a fight and I yelled
at him, 'I hate your guts and I want you dead.'.The next day my father went
to work and he never came home. My father had died of an overdose of
heroin. That fight was the last time we spoke.

Today, the students have been asked to write about a meaningful event in
their life. One boy raises his hand when he's done and gets up to sit in
the purple rocking chair that is in the middle of the room. It is the
"Share If You Dare Chair." He takes a deep breath, and begins.

Dear World,

My best friend got killed when he was 11. I cried. His parents were drug
addicts.and overdosed. He was trying to rob someone for money and they shot
him. He needed food to eat. He never had anybody to look after him and
teach him right from wrong.

As he finishes, Preuss' eyes fill with tears.

"That's amazing," she says, then turns to the rest of the class. "How does
that make you feel? What do you think of that?"

The kids study their classmate with a look of respect.

"That's straight," says the 16-year-old father.

"Devastating," agrees another boy.

By the end of the school year, three weeks later, four more boys in Preuss'
class will be suspended. One of the girls runs away from home.

No Time To Nurture

As pressure mounts for schools to score well on the Florida Comprehensive
Assessment Test, or FCAT, all-day classrooms like Preuss' are a dying breed.

"It used to be that we could nurture a kid for a couple years until they
got on their feet. We can't do that any more," says Peggy
Morrison-Thurston, the Broward School District's coordinator for
alternative education.

Instead, unlike Preuss' class, most middle school kids are left on regular
schedules where they change classes and teachers every period,
Morrison-Thurston explains. Schools use at-risk dollars - the county gets
about $60 million a year from the state - to lower class sizes, buy special
learning materials or hire specialists and counselors to help those falling
behind.

The district doesn't track data to see exactly how many schools use which
technique, or to see which approach works best. That's left up to
individual schools and principals to decide and monitor.

Some people think keeping at-risk students in rotating, regular classes
works better because it avoids dumping troublesome children into an all-day
class where, if teachers aren't properly trained or as successful as
Preuss, students can slack off.

Pruess, however, worries about regular teachers not having the time to get
to know their students - 35 of whom may come and go every period, replaced
by 35 more, multiple times a day. Pruess says her students need so much
more: consistent, prolonged attention from an adult for several hours at a
time.

That's why Olsen Middle has stuck to the self-contained, all-day classroom
for as long as the principal can remember.

"They don't know manners. They don't know you can't use profanity every
third word. They come to school completely unprepared to function, and then
we're surprised when they act up," Pruess says with a sigh. "We need to
fill the gap."

Dear World,

This book is a cry for freedom from a D.O.P. class saying how can we be
kids when we are doing things like: taking care of our mom who can't walk,
being without a father figure in your life, living on the streets, and do
things like steeling (sic) food to feed ourself.

We are saying that if you were to take care of us.we'd have time to be kids
and not have to be adults and do adult things. Because we just want to be a
kid.

Author And Audience

If you're looking for a happy ending, you won't find it in the book these
teens are writing with Preuss. The kids don't have the answers.

Preuss - who acts as a narrator of sorts in the book, helping to frame the
teens' stories - says there is no magic bullet to ease her students' hardships.

But if there is one thing that helps, she advises, it is something she
learned from writing:

To listen.

It's not just writing stories that has opened up her students, Preuss says,
but having someone to hear and care.

That's what one student says has made the difference for her.

After failing the seventh grade twice, the self-described "pothead" started
coming to class regularly and doing her work because of Preuss' encouragement.

"I tell her my problems, and she gives me advice. She says to try hard, so
I try hard," says the teen, who speaks barely above a whisper.

She plans to finish high school and dreams one day of either being a nurse
or a novelist. She keeps a private journal. It is there for her even when
the rest of the world isn't.

Dear Journal,

I was secretly going to drop out when I turned 16. I wasn't going to tell
anybody. But I've decided I'm going to stay in school and stop smoking weed.

I really do not want to be a nothing when I grow up.