Anne Miller, age 22, was a few weeks into her first real teaching job—a summer program teaching at-risk middle schoolers—when she walked into the classroom and found ten seventh-grade and eighth-grade boys shouting, "We're on strike!" over and over.

She thought they were kidding and waited for them to stop. But, they didn't. She asked, "What are you striking about?" and they just yelled louder, "We're on strike!"

Anne thought to herself, They'll do this for a whole hour, so I need to put an end to it right now.

Each week the students earned points based upon their behavior—coming to class prepared, having a good attitude, participating, not talking back to staff, coming on time, using appropriate language, etc. The students would lose points if they displayed negative behavior. At the end of each week, they would then receive a stipend of up to $25 based on how many points they accrued. If they lost points, they essentially lost money. Because almost all of them were at-risk, low-income students, this was a big deal to the kids.

With this in mind, Anne turned around and wrote on the board, "Points = 0." Instantly, a hush fell over the room.

"So, what is this strike about?" she asked.

The students shouted all at once: "This summer is bogus! We don't have any fun anymore. The teachers are so mean. We get all our points taken away for doing nothing. We don't do nothing!"

Anne saw the conversation was quickly disintegrating, so she handed each student a sheet of paper and told them to write their goals for the summer when it began. They weren't allowed to talk, only write. Then Anne had each student write their current goals, and why those goals had changed.

Most of the summer goals included, "Making money," "Having fun," and "Getting better at basketball," while the current goals included, "Dropping out of this program." Why had the goals changed? Because "the teachers are mean" and "we lose our points over nothing."

Anne said, "It seems to me that the problem is that your goals do not match our goals. While we want you to have fun, it is not our first goal; our first goal is for you to learn. Most of you can't read."

The students interrupted with, "We can read!"

"But you can't read on grade level. You are three to four grade levels behind. You cannot understand what you read. You cannot multiply and divide."

"Well, that's what school is for!" they shouted.

"No," she replied, "school is for those who can read on grade level. We have this program so that when you go to school you don't feel so lost, because I know all of you feel really lost when you go through your classes."

They didn't say anything for a long time. "All right," Anne said. "We have twenty minutes left to do social studies."