By examining specific examples of how teachers at an adolescent treatment centre interpret the day to day challenges that shape the lives of their students, insights can be gained about how schools can effectively re-connect even the most difficult students to a school environment. This article describes a story about an adolescent treatment centre/school where teachers work side by side with youth who have been diagnosed with severe emotional and behavioural challenges. Although each student's cumulative file may include such identifiers as attention deficit hyperactive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, fetal alcohol syndrome/affects, among others, a common characteristic across all students was that they have experienced enough difficulty in their mainstream schools to warrant placement in an alternative school setting. In students' previous schools, underlying issues such as poor self-esteem, substance abuse, depression, or severe learning difficulties have often been unacknowledged or avoided. The challenge for teachers at the treatment centre becomes one of finding ways to recognize how these underlying issues influence students and their performance in school. Their goal is to build relationships with young people in a climate that is often wrought with all kinds of merging, unpredictable tensions that are expressed throughout the school day. When a student's attention strayed from his or her work, teachers use gentle interventions to refocus attention back to the task at hand. (Contains 1 endnote.)