A Bridge over Troubled Water: Reengaging Dropouts at an Alternative Christian High School

Abstract

This paper examines the efforts of an alternative, Christian high school to reengage dropouts by building expressive relationships between teachers and students. An analysis of interview and observational data illuminates the nature and extent of students' reengagement, the quality of their attachments to instructors whom youths credit for their reengagement, and the processes—an affirmation of self, surveillance and support, and self-work—through which these socioemotional ties foster reengagement. The strains engendered by personalistic bonds are also identified, with particular attention given to the disparate meanings teachers and students attach to their affectively charged relationships and to the inherent tension between expressiveness and the authority of office.