I'm Really Not That Bad: Alternative School Students, Stigma, and the Alternative School as a Site of Identity Politics

Public schools in the United States are predicated upon some common, albeit contested, understanding of a “normal” child. Such an identity which comes with corresponding rules of behavior. In this study, we use identity politics as the primary lens through which to interpret the experiences of students at an alternative high school. With ethnographic field observation data and student interviews, we examine student narratives and circumstances during a fourth month period. Using a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Stauss & Corbin, 1990), we used the narratives to inform the theoretical framework for this paper and conclude that the alternative school, in this case study, was a stigmatized space for students with spoiled identities (Goffman, 1963). From this, we offer implications for alternative schools, in general, and suggest that their design, by definition, can not facilitate the remediation of students and their re-entry back into the regular school setting because that remediation and re-entry requires an elimination of the stigma.

I'm Really Not That Bad: Alternative School Students, Stigma, and the Alternative School as a Site of Identity Politics Academic Article