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Reflection on Silent Epidemic
By fhernandez | March 26, 2009
The factors that lead to a student dropping out in my mind are:
1. Self-perception/Expectations for themselves
2. Home Situation
3. Parental Support
4. School Support
5. Support systems/ Friends
I read the section on slow disengaging and the thing that really rang true for me is the idea of absenteeism and that the school lets them get away from them. I think this idea falls into three categories of what I listed earlier and those are: Parental support (in that the parents are not making sure the student goes to school), school support (the school does not help when they are just letting a recording notify parents and often the students can race home and delete the message), and Support systems (the parents and schools that are suppose to be support systems for the students do not always meet eye to eye or communicate in a proper manner).
I also feel I cheated but for a while I have agreed with what is also on the other part of the page about having way too much freedom as a high school student. They lose a lot of the structure they had as middle school students. One example the article gives is that the students see it as easier to cut class, which to me is a troubling trend considering a lot of the schools in Portland Public pay security guards to monitor campus. Does this mean that they are doing their job? Also another interesting tidbit from the article was that with the freedom also comes the freedom of students deciding to do work or not do work. This to me has a big impact because students do not realize that they are hurting themselves until it is too late to stem the tide.
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April 4th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I agree. There is an idea that high school should create an atmosphere more like “the work world.” But the work world that I worked in was also pretty highly structured and had very clear expectations. I, too, think that the issues addressed in the article is an ongoing problem.
I am also surprised by the responses I sometimes get when I bring these issues up. Once when I suggested we should consider closed campus in a staff meeting, I was told that we didn’t have anywhere we could actually feed the kids, but I went to a school with more that 2 times the number of students we have and our cafeteria was actually smaller, not bigger. In addition, this same school used to be a closed campus and had a much larger student population at the time. It’s a hard line to toe…kids need choice and democracy, but they also need structure and responsibility. Gack, I sound like my grandmother. I have to stop now.