Three cheers for nerds.

I think the most "at risk" kids are nerds, specifically adolescent female nerds. I know, because I was one, and I have made it my personal goal to address the needs of these girls. No one ever pays any attention to them because they're generally well behaved, nice, smart, quiet, and don't pose a problem in the classroom. Ask any teacher - they spend the most time with the downtrodden or obnoxious boys who are generally going to choose to be downtrodden in the future.

Girls, smart ones, usually are at risk for the following:

A) dumbing down because they are insecure over the fact that they are smart
B) dumbing down especially in front of some stupid, ridiculous teenage boy that they have a crush on. And generally, that boy is not as smart as they are.
C) being ignored, being the nameless, the anonymous, the kid you never remember
D) being insecure about the fact that they like nerdy things and don't have tattoos or t-shirts that blurt out what they like
E) thinking that they are different (in a bad way)
F) changing the way they are (like Frank Zappa said, Dope=you are what you use.

So, I have made a point to show off how nerdy I am by telling my students the following:

A) I used to belong to a pen club (I even brought my pen collection)
B) I used to read a thesaurus, highlighting the terms I thought I may need one day
C) as a teenager, I used to bake and dreamt of being a baker, calling my company "Hye Pies" (Hye=Armenian (in armenian) I still make a kick-ass apple plum tart and plan on bringing some for my students.
D) my mom had to ask my prom date's mother (at 22nd and Irving Market) if he would go to the prom with me. I begged not to go, and then my best friend Mia and I ended up sitting at the prom and watching our prom dates dance with other girls. This discussion came about when some kids were 'bummed out" that they didn't receive valentine cards and weren't going to THE DANCE. I told them "when life has you chewing on life's gristle, just put your lips together, and give a whistle!" My best friend is now an attorney in SF.
E) At summer camp, I used to take a tool called "a do it yourself star finder" and would gather my armenian "nerd" friends at AYF Camp in the angeles forest mountains and created a star club at night. My dad made the star finder for me as he is an engineer and felt sorry for me that I was not so good at math. Perhaps studying constellations would help.
F) My best friend's father invented gatorade and we used to hang out at summer studies listening to leonard cohen sitting at emily diskinson's grave at parties in Amherst.

It felt so cathartic to tell my students this!!! Two of the students now come to my classroom to hang out during their free mod. Also, as the mom of two daughters, I am probably bringing up two more nerdy girls (my four year old just told me that she put her doll in a very inconspicuous place.)

I read an article on cnn.com that there is a movement to work with these girls. So, my way of working with these girls is to give them the attention they deserve (while not ignoring the needs of others) and make sure that they understand how much power they have. Even if they stay home on fridays watching TV while other kids are out, they will be a-ok and often, much better off than their peers. I am sick of giving so much attention to the kids who don't deserve it.