ABSTRACT
‘The fragile kid’ tells the story of the moment a teacher had to tell a student that they had failed an important assessment and the resulting discontent that followed. The story sets the scene to explore how there are unknown elements to ourselves and these moments of discontent can sometimes be our unknown self at odds with our here-and-now self. When we are in a moment of such tension, it becomes challenging to act—our agency is limited—and a reflexive gaze is required. The only problem is that the hard-line professional does not interrogate policy, they just ‘do’, but in this case, the teacher’s desire to nurture makes following policy tricky.
