Photography by Jesper Elgaard
In all her years of teaching, Ellen Wilke can remember only one student who became so withdrawn and disturbed, Wilke panicked. “This was 10 years ago,” says Wilke, chair of the science department at Parkway West High School. “He suddenly was looking more disheveled and starting to wear all black clothes, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He would come and stand near my desk at the end of class, maybe looking at the bulletin board, and he would say things aloud that sounded bitter, about life not being good. I went to the building principal, the grade-level principal, his counselor, and his parents.”
Eventually, the boy’s parents got a court order to have him hospitalized. They sent word that he wouldn’t be returning to school to finish his senior year. During finals week, he appeared in Wilke’s doorway.
“It kind of scared me,” she admits. “I thought, ‘Oh, and here I was instrumental in having him hospitalized.’” He was wearing a bright red shirt, though, and he looked immaculate, his hair neatly cut and combed. With a tentative smile, he stretched out his arm, and she saw that he was returning a physics book to her. Then he took a step closer—and gave her a big, grateful hug.
For most students, the words we’ve come to hear with terror—“isolated,” “withdrawn,” “loner”—signal a state of mind that’s temporary and manageable. Maybe they’re dealing with a serious but treatable mental illness; maybe they’ve just lost a family member, or their parents are splitting up, or their boyfriend used a Facebook post to break up with them. On one occasion, Wilke called home and a student’s mother told her, “Well, we had to have his dog put to sleep.”
But even temporary sadness can get in the way of learning and growth. So teachers have learned to stay vigilant.
Among Lutheran High School North’s student body of 315, everybody knows everybody, which makes the job easier. If Jim Prahlow, chair of the social-studies department, sees a student becoming withdrawn, he’ll casually stop the student at the end of class to ask a personal question about her interests or family, anything to engage her in quick conversation. He might ask one of his kindest, friendliest students to engage her in conversation, too. “The whole idea is to incorporate them in the body of Christ,” he says. “‘You are part of this, and we are part of you. This is a nurturing environment, not a confrontational one. If you want space, go ahead and take it. But you are also part of this larger group.’ We don’t give them much of a chance to withdraw.”
Wilke starts by quietly asking the student whether everything’s OK. “They usually don’t tell me, but it lets them know, ‘Hey, someone is paying attention.’ After that, I’ll go to the counselor and say, ‘I’m noticing something out of whack.’ Our kids have the same counselor from the day they come in until the day they graduate, so the counselor has a relationship with the child already and can ask all sorts of questions that would sound kind of strange coming from a science teacher.”
At Bishop DuBourg High School, a Catholic archdiocesan school in South City, an eight-member care team meets every week. “Teachers make referrals of just this type of child,” says Marybeth Krull, academic dean and learning consultant. “If there’s been a death, sudden grief, depression; anyone who’s a loner; a child who doesn’t eat lunch with anyone.”
First, the information comes out in bits—one teacher noticed the child coming late to class, another saw grades drop, a third heard the child voice a worried prayer that might be a clue. Together, they assemble as much of the story as they can. Then they ask the important question: “Who’s closest to this child?” Maybe it’s someone on the care team; maybe it’s the football coach or the principal or the janitor.
“And then that person is on it,” Krull says, “and they are talking to the child. ‘Hey, I kind of noticed… What’s going on?’ And it doesn’t stop there; it keeps going, and the person with the connection brings it back to the group.”
DuBourg works with a psychologist from West County Psychological Associates, “because a lot of times, you’re so close to the situation, you want somebody else to hear what you’re thinking,” Krull says. About 95 percent of the time, though, the outside referral isn’t even necessary. “We have guidance counselors here, and we have lots of support. The principal knows every child’s name, knows every family. We nip a lot of this in the bud.”
Don’t students just stonewall, refusing to divulge what’s troubling them? “It can happen,” Krull says, “but I’ve been here 20 years, and it doesn’t happen very often. We don’t give up. If you give up because a child said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ your feelings would be hurt every day. By the third time we ask, it’s, ‘Oh my God, you’re not going to give up!’”
Some clues are obvious; others are subtle. Prahlow notes a student who’s listless in class, putting her head down, coming in late or asking to leave. Wilke looks for “the student who doesn’t seem to speak much to his lab partner and just is not engaging with the students around him, or the student who’s always done her homework and all of a sudden, three or four days, nothing. Even when you’re seeing 125 kids a day, those things really do pop out at you.”
She makes sure to greet withdrawn kids in the hall, make eye contact, let them know she notices them and they’re not just fading into the woodwork. In lab, she doesn’t let her students choose their own lab partners, “because then you’re just setting it up for the kid to be left out one more time.”
If a student is transferring in midway through the school year, Prahlow takes steps in advance to be inclusive, because just trying to break in when the other kids have already forged bonds is isolating enough. He also keeps a sharp eye out whenever major projects are due or final exams begin. “They reach the limits of their personal resources, and it’s a lot easier to just become a wallfly or just sit back and stew,” he explains. “And prom is a special time of agony. It’s not just getting a date; it’s all the other stuff, three weeks out. Little things, like sitting at a table with so-and-so. The kids who might withdraw in that context are the ones who are initially difficult to notice because they’re pretty passive.”
Krull mentions other causes: “Bad self-esteem. Lost a girlfriend or boyfriend. Divorce. Terrible financial issues in the family, where they have nothing and they don’t want other people to know. And social media plays a big part. One tweet about not liking a particular child—and what kids don’t get is, tomorrow it’s going to be another child.”
Alerting parents hasn’t been hard, she says. “Parents want to know these things. In light of everything that’s going on in the world, they want to know that the school is an umbrella of care for that child.”
When Krull calls a parent, she asks, “What’s going on at home? Is your child coming home and sitting in the room by himself?” She might hear, “Well, you know what, she really doesn’t like school, but she has outside friends and interests.” Or she hears, “I’ve been kind of worried myself. He comes home and doesn’t talk; he spends the whole evening in his room.”
Wilke is grateful to the proactive parents, like the mother who wrote to say her son’s beloved grandfather was gravely ill. Advance warnings help, Wilke says, “because if the kids are already not feeling great, you don’t want to be yelling at them.”
A DuBourg student lost his father, and the sadness weighed so heavily on him, it was hard for him to slide out from under the bedcovers and get dressed for school. So Krull suggested that he arrive later in the morning, whenever he could manage it. “Just come,” she urged him. And when he showed up, his friends’ exuberant welcome helped ease him into the day.
For some teens, though, the anxiety and guilt of skipping classes or coming late makes it harder and harder to go back. Soon the absences pile so high, it’s easier just to withdraw, literally as well as emotionally.
Kathy Boyd-Fenger heads Logos School, an alternative school for students already facing academic and emotional challenges. “Kids will come with whatever label—de-
pression, Asperger’s—but no matter what, at the root of it, whether it’s labeled or not, is a lot of anxiety,” she says. “And anxiety manifests differently for teenagers than it does for adults.” She’s not looking for racing hearts and flushed faces; she’s looking for changes in a child’s typical demeanor and behavior.
“If they won’t make eye contact, they’re shutting down, they stop going to gymnastics,” you have to resist the adult tendency to correct the behavior, she says. Instead, “you tell them what you really like about them, and how it hurts or worries you when they’re sad. You try to give them some positives. Not just ‘Boy, you’re pretty,’ but something that relates to the relationship you have with them. You’re trying to make that connection, crack open that window, so you can find out what’s going on and begin to help them.”
What if the child isn’t isolated, just introverted, quiet by preference, interested in only a few deep friendships?
Wilke says that over time, “it’s actually pretty easy to tell the difference. You just get to know. With the withdrawn student, something is not quite right.”
“The quiet child, there’s a softness,” Krull says. “If you talk softly to them, and they’re responding, you realize they’re just shy.” She describes the process as “finding the carrot”—finding something that interests the child, that will engage him. Mention his favorite comic book or his new driver’s license, and even the most painfully shy kid’s eyes will light up.
“With the withdrawn child,” she says, “you can’t ever find a carrot.”
And then there’s the most worrisome question: When does isolation signal future violence? “At the point where that child doesn’t have a relationship with anyone, and you can see absolutely no affect,” Krull says instantly. “Things that should bring tears to your eyes don’t bring anything. And the person never, ever shares; you never, ever know what’s going on inside them. It’s very rare, but when it’s there, it’s there. I haven’t seen it here, but I’ve seen it in another workplace. And everybody knew it.”
After watching the heart-wrenching footage about the Connecticut shooting, Wilke told her husband, “All these shooters, I just know they have a teacher sitting at home going, ‘Uh-huh.’ Often things aren’t wrong enough. The one student who had to be hospitalized, the parents needed a court order with pretty darn good evidence. And it’s really tough when seniors turn 18: Then they’re adults, and it’s up to them, not
their parents.”
“When I hear about these tragedies,” says Boyd-Fenger, “I always think, ‘If I were going to tell people what signs they could have looked for, I’d say, ‘Are they functioning in their own daily life? Not by your definition of happiness—by theirs. If they don’t participate in any kind of daily-life stuff, that’s a huge warning sign. That’s not a kid who’s a loner; that’s a kid who has nothing in their life, and that can start to feel pretty desperate.
“Isolation is dangerous,” she continues. “As humans, all of us, even those who don’t thrive on lots of social contact, need to connect. We’re wired that way. When you feel like there’s no connection to anything, or to just one person and it’s tenuous, you feel like you’ve got nothing.”
And that’s when somebody close to you has to prove you wrong.
