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Passing kids along who fail is being disrespectful of them
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Evaluation, positive climate, questions teachers need to ask, The way I see it, underachieving students | 6 Comments
What are we to do about high school kids who fail courses in grades nine and ten and don’t seem to care? We are being told if a student doesn’t earn 16 credits by the time he is 16 years old, there is an excellent chance the student will drop out of school and not graduate. In the province of Ontario where I teach, high school students are expected to earn eight credits in grade nine and another eight credits in grade 10 for a total of 16 credits.
There’s so much pressure on teachers to do what it takes to get these kids to pass courses. At the end of the semester when teachers are writing report cards, sometimes teachers are called down to the office and told strongly encouraged by the administration to change a failing mark to a passing mark. The word rigor seems to have no place in these conversations. Small wonder teachers are disillusioned and discouraged.
High school teachers are always complaining about the social promotion that goes on in the elementary schools where students who fail subjects in a grade still get to go (are socially promoted) to the next grade even though they’ve failed . These students come to grade 9 with huge gaps in their knowledge and skill sets. These gaps set students up for failure. I think socially promoting students is morally wrong. We’re not doing students any favors by passing them now when they haven’t mastered course content just to fail them later because the gaps in their knowledge prevent them from mastering the next grade’s content. That’s not being respectful of our students.
I know, I know there’s a huge debate about social promotion, about a kid’s self-esteem etc. I actually haven’t seen any studies on the topic of social promotion. I can only tell you what I know from my own personal professional experience. Maybe this summer I’ll search the literature to see what research says and share my findings here.
I teach students who have been socially promoted, and I see many of these students continue to fail and be at-risk academically in grades nine and ten. They often do not earn 16 credits by the time they are 16. Academically at-risk students who continually fail courses are kicked out of regular high school when they reach 18 (legally they have to stay in school until 18) and sent to alternative schools to continue their education. Some of my students have come back to visit me and have told me that the alternative schools didn’t work for them either. Some students admit it’s their fault they didn’t succeed in high school, but some students blame the school system and certain teachers for their lack of success. They may have a point, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
I’ve been meaning to read Alexander Russo’s Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors for some time now and since school is out for the summer, I can. I’m enjoying it immensely as well as learning a lot about the challenges of school reform. Russo’s book is about school reform- a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately given my frustrations with 16 by 16. Specifically, Russo’s book is the story about the challenges Green Dot and its founder Steve Barr encounter while trying to reform Locke High School in South Central Los Angeles. Surprisingly, I hadn’t heard about the Green Dot story. It must have been on the news and in the papers. I don’t know how I missed it, but I did. I’m certainly going online to see what I can find to fill in my gaps about Green Dot and Barr.
While reading Stray Dogs, Saints and Saviors, I came across this passage that really spoke to me.
Letting a kid pass a class in which he’d barely learned anything, in the hopes that he’s catch up later and benefit from having moved along, or flunking a kid and making him dig in at least a bit, with the knowledge that such a might not happen? It was a difficult call- and an age-old question. Teachers-and schools-have been passing kids along for decades.( Russo, p. 93).
I naively thought this problem of passing kids along was a problem just in Ontario, Canada. I hadn’t realized that teachers in other jurisdictions are having to make the same difficult calls about passing or not passing academically at-risk students. What happens in schools in other countries like Japan, France, Germany, China, Scotland? What do they do with kids who really don’t pass? I’d like to know.
photo thanks to dullhunk
Jun
28
Teachers Can Transform Off-Task Behaviors into Powerful Learning Tool
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, motivating students, underachieving students | Leave a Comment
Keeping students on-task is a challenge all teachers face. I know I’m always looking for strategies to help me. Lindsey Wright shares some of her ideas for keeping students on-task in her post below. Thanks Lindsey.
Lindsey Wright is fascinated with the potential of emerging educational technologies, particularly the online school, to transform the landscape of learning. She writes about web-based learning, electronic and mobile learning, and the possible future of education.
Some educators specialize in teaching at-risk youth, while others may have only a few members of a particular class who they would deem at risk. How is an at-risk student identified? The most obvious criterion for at-risk students is their grades. If they begin a new school year or term with low grades, this may be a sign of a child whose focus is not on education. A sudden drop in grades can be another indicator that a child’s focus has shifted away from education to make way for other matters that may seem more pressing to the student. Consistent tardiness or absenteeism are also common indicators.
If you teach at an online school you are in luck, as this is an issue that you probably only rarely encounter, if at all. However, if you teach in a tough school, many of these signs are likely all too familiar. In fact, all, or the majority, of your students may exhibit these behaviors. Students whose main focus is not on education during school hours are notoriously difficult to teach. Their minds wander, they pass notes, they act out inappropriately, and generally disrupt the learning process. In these situations it is easy to quickly become frustrated. Despite your best intentions, on some days it may just seem as though it is impossible for the class to make any progress.
However all is not lost. There are actually a variety of ways you can minimize in-class interruptions when working with at-risk students. For instance, many such students are living in poverty. Sometimes they act out at school or find it difficult to concentrate simply because they are hungry. If you can ascertain that a student cannot concentrate in the morning because they haven’t had breakfast, you might consider checking into getting the child enrolled in a breakfast program so they can start the day off right. Alternatively, keep a few healthy, nutritious snacks on hand if there is a particular child you know will be coming to school hungry. You might slip an apple or a granola bar into their desk before the day begins, giving them a chance to fuel up and be ready to learn.
If there are hungry students in your classroom, and it is causing disruptive behavior, take the opportunity to teach the children about proper nutrition and how it can affect their overall health and energy level. Many students bring home what they learn and lessons about proper nutrition may start up a dialog in a student’s home that results in better dietary habits for the whole family.
Another useful technique for redirecting inappropriate behavior is to relate your lesson plans to something that the children you are teaching will find familiar and interesting. You might teach a lesson about physics by using dirt bikes as an example, or explore the connections between a social movement and a popular television show. However you decide to bring it about, showing your students there is a connection between what they are learning in school and the world that surrounds them outside of the classroom can be a valuable way to redirect their focus and keep them concentrating on the subject at hand.
You can also change disruptive, off-task behavior by catching a typically misbehaving student doing something right. If you notice that a child who generally has difficulty focusing in class pays attention well during a particular class segment, recognize that achievement, while overlooking a minor infraction of the classroom rules. The positive reinforcement will often be very powerful for at-risk youth who frequently do not receive any kind of positive feedback from anyone in their lives. A few kind words from you can help change that child’s pattern of behavior, perhaps even outside of the classroom.
Teaching at-risk youth is always a challenge. Their focus tends to wander because they may have other, more pressing matters on their minds. However, you can take this off-task behavior as an opportunity both to get to know the student better and to help turn their distraction to collaborative learning effort. By setting aside a little class time for fun, making certain that the child’s basic needs are being met, using positive reinforcement and relating lessons to real life experiences, you can help at-risk students succeed in school and in life.
Jun
13
Last month Elona wrote a post about the closing of school libraries and the cuts to librarians. It is no secret that library programs are the next to be cut. Over the past few years, arts programs including music and drama have been cut drastically to the point that they are entirely absent from some schools. Next they cut classroom aids and teachers that they deemed unnecessary.
How will our students become the next generation of successful adults if we continue to cut their education down to the bone and strip them of all sources of creativity?
With the librarian program cut it is more important than ever for teachers to take an active part in teaching literacy to their students. Reading is not only important for reading comprehension and literacy, but also for creativity, imagination, knowledge and language. The brain is an organ that needs to be exercised regularly. Reading is a great way to do this.
This is why it is so important to help our students learn to enjoy reading. There are tons of ways to help students become better readers. Correne Constantino uses graphic novels in her classroom to get students into a story and work them up to a full text version. Elona told me she has a colleague who obtained funding to buy each of his students their very own new book from Amazon. It’s the little things like this that help students become lifelong readers.
Laura works for Concordia University in the Master of Education department. She values reading and communication as the building blocks for education as a whole.
Image by librarianishish via Flickr
Jun
7
Independent time on the computer at beginning of class is helping my students stay focused for the rest of class
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Computers In The Classroom, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Learning Strategies, motivating students, positive climate, underachieving students | 5 Comments
Image via CrunchBase
I’ve had to think about student YouTube-use management strategies in my class ever since the Board unblocked YouTube. From the moment my students discovered YouTube was unblocked, they kept sneaking onto it instead of focusing on the online assignment I’d given them. (I’ve written about my frustrating experiences here , here and here.) Notice, I said my students “kept sneaking” onto YouTube. I can use the past tense because now my students don’t do that anymore- well almost not anymore.
What made the difference? I now give my students independent time on the computer for the first 15 minutes of the class to explore any topic that interests them. Students are free to access any site they wish during that time. My thinking here is that my students can meet their emotional needs (the need for undue attention, the need to feel important, the need for fun and the need for freedom) at the beginning of the class using their free time on the computer and then settled down and do the work I assigned to meet the needs of the curriculum for the last 60 minutes of class.
I can imagine that some of you at this point might be thinking that taking 15 minutes of class time to let my students explore what they will online is wasting time. Well, it actually isn’t. Let me explain. I teach struggling, reluctant students. Many of them are “at-risk” academically and find school offers them little. Usually my students will trickle into class for the first 15 minutes. I have to be pleased they come to class at all. I make my classroom as inviting as possible so students will come to class on their own accord. Mostly, it works. I don’t have many skips at all. Honestly, I’d rather they come to class a bit late than not at all. Since I’ve started letting my students explore their interests online at the beginning of class, they are coming to class earlier and earlier. They don’t want to miss out on the fun. Yes, the fun for most of them is YouTube. However, some students do choose other sites such as Wikipedia or coolmath games. We usually do have class discussions around what they choose to see. Mostly the discussion starts with me asking why they find the particular video they’ve chosen so interesting. I don’t ask this question to criticize their choices of videos, but to help me better understand my students. Believe me, I’m learning a lot about the culture of 14 and 15 year olds, and to think I have YouTube to thank for that. Who knew.
The other classroom management strategy I use to help my students focus on the assignment I give them is to block YouTube after the 15 minutes of free time. A large padlock appears on the screen indicating time is up. Students aren’t resentful that I do this. They get it. They know our tacit or perhaps not so tacit agreement. First I give them freedom and fun, then they settle down and do their work and give me completed assignments. We’re both happy. Our needs are met.
I’d like to thank Liz, teachermom, Sam and Melanie for leaving comments about their classroom experiences with students using computers as learning tools. I appreciate their suggestions and insights on the topic. I do appreciate all the help I can get.
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