The Disintegrating Student

by Jeannine Jannot (Citadel Press, 2019)

Smart but Struggling

The Disintegrating Student is subtitled "Struggling but smart and falling apart… and how to turn it around." Published just before the COVID-19 pandemic, it focuses on students with a history of strong performance who have "hit a wall." The book describes pressures that converge during the teenage years, rooted in biology, cultural trends, and parenting norms. These students fly under the radar while their struggles compound, because they have a history and identity of success. The author focuses on seven areas: organization, time management, study habits and skills, lack of growth mindset, stress, sleep, and screens.

Our Students' Wider World

As Foothill shifts to community-based funding and focuses on serving local students, the students in my Calculus I classroom are more tightly clustered around age 19 than past groups, such as cohorts of online students. In this context it is useful to review the pressures that affect every teenager in our community. Of course, community college students frequently face serious issues beyond the author's seven, such as immigration issues, parents' health problems, poverty, caring for younger siblings, transportation difficulties, and non-optional paid work.

A Manual for Living

The Disintegrating Student is largely a compendium of modern parenting advice: encourage enough sleep, adopt an authoritative style, and follow its list of 77 tips for becoming happy and productive. The book could come in handy for anyone wanting to share an "instruction manual for living" or cite good basic advice. However, it does not offer a new perspective that cuts to the heart of the matter in our community college classrooms, where students' challenges often extend well beyond the ones it addresses.

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