Can This Kid Be Saved ?

I had Trylor in some classes last year (2007-2008), and then again in a class a few days ago. He is an African-American young man, fairly good-looking, very short hair, medium dark complexion, about the average height of the other 12th-grade students. He has a pleasant smiling, even joking demeanor, and doesn't radiate nastiness or bad intentions like some of the students I have met. And he doesn't give the impressioin of someone who is consciously scheming to get over on a substitute. But he is a serious behavior problem.

Traylor's classroom behavior is the problem., He may sit down at his desk for a minute, but thge next thing you know he is out of his seat, wandering around the room, joking and talking with other people. He seems unable to settle down and do any work, and his constant talking with other students prevents them from doing classwork, too.

The number of write-ups he has received is lengthy. These started well before high school, but since he goit to high school they increased. Most are for classroom disturbance or for wandering the halls without a pass.

His family contact information doesn't work. No one answers the phone. Records list a moither or other female parental figure -- an aunt or a grandmother ? -- but whoever this person is, she seems never to be at home. No father is listed.

Traylor's grades are not good -- Ds and Cs at best.

The kicker in all this is that although he is in the eleventh grade, he is old enough to have graduated, but failed to do so. He has repeated one or two years. In a few months he will be 18.

At that point he will undoubtedly not go on to adult school, but will simply drop out. The most frustrating thing is that one senses in him a kid who, if he had been set on the right path, could have achieved a great deal. Now he has before him a life of poverty. And I don't think he understands this.