How Teacher Favoritism In High School Co-Curricular Leadership Hurts Teen Mental Health
The backpack hit the kitchen table hard enough to spill my 15-year-old Riley’s half-eaten bag of cheddar Goldfish across the folded laundry I’d been sorting. It was last February, a week after drama club announced their student director for the spring musical, and I didn’t even need to ask what was wrong. Riley, who’d spent every free afternoon after school for six months reorganizing the prop closet, running lighting workshops for freshmen, and drafting script changes to add more non-binary roles to the show, didn’t get the spot. It went to Lila, the drama teacher’s go-to favorite, who hadn’t shown up to a club meeting since the fall play’s opening night and only drops by to bring the teacher coffee and pose for cast photos.
Riley had been so sure they’d get it. They’d sat up with me two nights before applications were due editing their personal statement, talking about how they wanted to start a free ticket program for low-income kids in the district, how they wanted to make the club a safer space for queer kids who didn’t feel welcome anywhere else. I’d watched them skip hanging out with friends, skip their cousin’s birthday party, to make it to every work day. When the announcement came, they just stood in the back of the auditorium and walked out.
The next two weeks were quiet, the kind of quiet that nags at you as a parent. They stopped going to drama altogether. They started leaving their phone face down when I walked in the room, started sleeping until 1 on Saturdays, turned down my offer to get our usual mint chocolate chip ice cream on Sunday. One night, around 11, I knocked on their door to bring them a glass of water, and their laptop was still open. The search bar still read “what does it mean when you don’t want to be alive anymore.” I froze. I’d heard all the talks about teen mental health, but I never thought I’d walk in on that, over a high school club leadership spot.
I sat down on the edge of their bed, and they cried. It wasn’t just the spot, they said. It was that the one place they’d ever felt like they belonged, the one thing they’d worked harder at than anything in school, just proved what they’d always feared: nothing you do matters if the people in charge don’t like you best.
Before that night, I’d brushed off kid complaints about teacher favoritism as just growing pains, the kind of thing you get over when you graduate. I was wrong. Favoritism in co-curriculars isn’t harmless. For teens who are still figuring out their self-worth, who often cling to these clubs and sports as their safe space away from stressful academics and messy social hierarchies, watching an unearned spot go to a slacking favorite isn’t just disappointing. It’s a rejection of the work they poured their whole self into, and it can spiral fast.
The first mistake I almost made was opening with “it’s just a high school club, it doesn’t matter that much.” I’m glad I bit my tongue. The first concrete thing any parent can do in this spot is don’t minimize their anger first. Instead of brushing it off, say exactly what they need to hear: “That’s unfair. I’d be angry too.” It doesn’t fix the problem, but it lets them know their feelings are valid, not just overreacting.
Second, if you notice your kid pulling away and showing signs of a dark mood, don’t avoid the hard question about suicidal thoughts. A lot of people are scared asking will put the idea in their head, but it doesn’t. I just said, “I saw what you were searching. Are you thinking about hurting yourself?” It was awkward, it was scary, but it was the right thing. Riley said they’d had a lot of fleeting dark thoughts the past two weeks, but they didn’t have a plan, they just felt hopeless. That straightforward question opened the door to get them connected to a queer-affirming counselor through the district, which we’d been talking about doing for months but never prioritized.
When it came to the actual unfairness of the leadership spot, I learned pretty fast that most schools won’t reverse a public announcement just because a parent complains. I thought about emailing the principal, about demanding they redo the selection, but I asked Riley what they wanted first. They said they didn’t want to go back to that club, not after that. So instead of pushing them to fight a system that wasn’t going to change, we looked for an alternative that was fully theirs. I remembered our local community center has small youth arts grants for kid-led projects, we filled out the one-page application together, and got $500 for supplies. Riley wrote a 30-minute one-act play about being a queer teen in high school, cast all their friends who’d also left drama club frustrated with favoritism, and they’re putting on four shows next month at the community center.
For teachers who might read this, there’s an easy, low-effort fix to this problem that most people don’t use. If you’re picking leaders for your club, team, or performing group, don’t just pick the kids who hang around your desk after class or are friends with your own kids. Write down a clear list of requirements: attendance at meetings, completed tasks, contributions over the semester, score every candidate against that list, or let the whole group vote. It takes five extra minutes, and it pulls most of the implicit bias out of the selection.
It’s been almost a year now. Riley still rolls their eyes when anyone mentions the school’s drama program. The dark thoughts are gone, they look forward to rehearsal every week, and they already have plans for another show next year. We didn’t fix the culture of favoritism at the high school. There are still new leadership spots going to the same group of teacher favorites every semester, and there will be more kids walking home angry and hurt just like Riley was. Some days I still get mad thinking about how close we came to something terrible, all because a teacher couldn’t be bothered to look past their favorite kid. But for right now, this works. Riley has something that’s theirs, no teacher’s favor required. And that’s enough for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How Teacher Favoritism In High School Co-Curricular Leadership Hurts Teen Mental Health