A teacher who teaches General Educational Development preparation to at-risk teenagers in a nonprofit alternative education program called FutureWorks conducted a study to identify those elements of FutureWorks that keep students coming to the program. The study included the following data collection activities: a consensus-building activity to identify what students considered most and least important about FutureWorks; an essay about students' backgrounds, goals, and views regarding FutureWorks' quality; and a focus group attended by five female students aged 18 to 20 years old. The factors that kept students coming to FutureWorks fell into the following three categories: (1) respect for individual needs (students can choose their own work and collaborate with the teacher to create individualized lesson plans); (2) supportive climate (the classroom's climate is informal, the program features an off-campus location and shorter-than-normal hours, and teacher patronage and advocacy are central to the program); and (3) alternative opportunities (FutureWorks gives students opportunities to accomplish their goals by traveling an alternative path, and it is designed to make students feel valued and respected). Students requested that more enrichment materials be included in FutureWorks. Students discounted many elements of FutureWorks that the instructor thought would be important (for example, no dress code). (MN)