My partner has started teaching at a small school on a military base and wonders how he can best support the kids to learn. He's found ever since he started that so many of them are already disengaged from learning and regularly misbehave or even leave the classroom (rural school, mostly military kids, with no security or spare teachers so he can't just go after them and they know it)
He's an experienced teacher but is floundering a bit with trying to get them engaged. They are mean to each other and to him (rude, throwing paper at him, breaking things etc). He's tried bringing parents in for meetings but it hasn't really helped and the school can't offer him much support (not enough teacher aides)
Can anyone offer any advice for things to try or consider? Is there stuff kids from military families deal with that he may not have come across before? We aren't in the US and aren't at war anywhere so I don't think we have large amounts of deployments or anything.
Thanks in advance, he really cares that they do well and is very academically focused and expects his class to be too.