Failures
One distressing archetype of student I've run across while subbing middle school is the one who refuses to do work and doesn't care about the consequences. A typical one-on-one conversation with this student will go as follows:
Me: "I'd like you to open your book and start the assignment, please."
Student: "No."
Me: "Well, I am going to collect this at the end, and I don't want to have to leave a note for your teacher that you refused to do the work."
Student: *Shrug* "I don't care. I'm already failing this class."
Now, I know there are various motivational strategies to take with a student like this, and it's especially a case where being a sub is particularly different from being a regular teacher, but it doesn't change the fact that grades only take us so far. Grades, and to an increasing degree test scores, have long been the primary tool of external motivation. Even if an assignment is deemed dumb by a student, he or she will usually suck it up and do an adaquate job to avoid the F. Bad grades are linked with all sorts of irritations, not the least of which are usually irate parents and the threat of being held back.
But what about when grades falter as a structural means? What about the students who for any number of reasons have reached their breaking point and are willing to suck up not the work but the negative consequences of noncompliance? None of the options are sound, as I've touched on before -- social promotion rewards apathy and sends along students who haven't learned anything; allowing students to stagnate and be held back is similarly fruitless, and most studies suggest holding back has few positive benefits; and giving up on the student is simply, in my book, an anathema to the entire idea of education and opportunity. But (always the buts) then there's the counter which says a teacher is responsible for two dozen students and at some point, isn't it unfair and unjust to focus so much energy on a problem case and deprive the others who appear to want to actually learn?
I'm not sure where the solution lies. My contemplations say that no student should be reaching middle school with such an attitude towards his or her education and that prevention, rather than treatment, is where the end game is hiding. I think that's true, but I also think that sounds like an abstract platitude. To dig below the surface, we have to know precisely what is creating and causing the profile of the student who has, for all intents are purposes, given up. For the moment, I'm going to focus only on the school, though I don't doubt that home and community must be engaged as part of both the problem and answer.
One of the best sources of information on this subject comes from the recently released Civic Enterprises survey of high school dropouts (PDF) themselves, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Presumably, the students who are failing and don't really care are those who are most suspectible to drop out. While surprisingly few high school dropouts in the survey had cripplingly poor grades (only about a third dropped out because they were failing), this is the profile that begins to emerge:
Another common theme is the lack of seeing any real-world use of education (a finding completely backed up by the High School Survey of Student Engagement, where half of all high schoolers didn't see a strong connection between their schooling and their lives).
Poor academic preparation, uninteresting classes and a lack of motivation -- what you would expect as the three major academic prongs of failing students, but also perhaps the beginnings of a roadmap. I would argue that all three of those threads are inextricably interwoven: Classes are a lot less interesting if you don't really understand what's going on, and if you're lost you're much less likely to be motivated. But there are individual issues within each domain also. The most prepared student might find a class that's completely lecture-and-memorization based utterly boring, and a student who finds classes esoterically interesting but can't for the life of him or her see the use might have faltering motivation.
By the way, we're not talking about small enclaves of students -- nearly 1 in 3 students nationally, and 1 in 2 minority students, don't graduate high school.
If you want to fix something, a good place to start is the part which is shaking violenty; that is, to focus on the system's worst failures and circumscribe your efforts around that end. Our dropouts -- our students who by age 12 or 13 have already given up in the most tragic fashion (and all the other students, for that matter) -- need an educational system which looks fundamentally and concretely different from the one that currently exists. If we truly stand for a democratic equality of opportunity, the mere fact that we're losing the most needy students should be enough to stir us to both anger and action.
Me: "I'd like you to open your book and start the assignment, please."
Student: "No."
Me: "Well, I am going to collect this at the end, and I don't want to have to leave a note for your teacher that you refused to do the work."
Student: *Shrug* "I don't care. I'm already failing this class."
Now, I know there are various motivational strategies to take with a student like this, and it's especially a case where being a sub is particularly different from being a regular teacher, but it doesn't change the fact that grades only take us so far. Grades, and to an increasing degree test scores, have long been the primary tool of external motivation. Even if an assignment is deemed dumb by a student, he or she will usually suck it up and do an adaquate job to avoid the F. Bad grades are linked with all sorts of irritations, not the least of which are usually irate parents and the threat of being held back.
But what about when grades falter as a structural means? What about the students who for any number of reasons have reached their breaking point and are willing to suck up not the work but the negative consequences of noncompliance? None of the options are sound, as I've touched on before -- social promotion rewards apathy and sends along students who haven't learned anything; allowing students to stagnate and be held back is similarly fruitless, and most studies suggest holding back has few positive benefits; and giving up on the student is simply, in my book, an anathema to the entire idea of education and opportunity. But (always the buts) then there's the counter which says a teacher is responsible for two dozen students and at some point, isn't it unfair and unjust to focus so much energy on a problem case and deprive the others who appear to want to actually learn?
I'm not sure where the solution lies. My contemplations say that no student should be reaching middle school with such an attitude towards his or her education and that prevention, rather than treatment, is where the end game is hiding. I think that's true, but I also think that sounds like an abstract platitude. To dig below the surface, we have to know precisely what is creating and causing the profile of the student who has, for all intents are purposes, given up. For the moment, I'm going to focus only on the school, though I don't doubt that home and community must be engaged as part of both the problem and answer.
One of the best sources of information on this subject comes from the recently released Civic Enterprises survey of high school dropouts (PDF) themselves, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Presumably, the students who are failing and don't really care are those who are most suspectible to drop out. While surprisingly few high school dropouts in the survey had cripplingly poor grades (only about a third dropped out because they were failing), this is the profile that begins to emerge:
Nearly half (47 percent) said a major reason for dropping out was that classes were not interesting. These young people reported being bored and disengaged from high school. Almost as many (42 percent) spent time with people who were not interested in school. These were among the top reasons selected by those with high GPAs and by those who said they were motivated to work hard.
Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) said they were not motivated or inspired to work hard, 80 percent did one hour or less of homework each day in high school, two-thirds would have worked harder if more was demanded of them (higher academic standards and more studying and homework), and 70 percent were confident they could have graduated if they had tried. Even a majority of those with low GPAs thought they could have graduated.
Forty-five percent said they started high school poorly prepared by their earlier schooling. Many of these students likely fell behind in elementary and middle school and could not make up the necessary ground. They reported that additional supports in high school that would have made a difference (such as tutoring or after school help) were not there.
Another common theme is the lack of seeing any real-world use of education (a finding completely backed up by the High School Survey of Student Engagement, where half of all high schoolers didn't see a strong connection between their schooling and their lives).
Poor academic preparation, uninteresting classes and a lack of motivation -- what you would expect as the three major academic prongs of failing students, but also perhaps the beginnings of a roadmap. I would argue that all three of those threads are inextricably interwoven: Classes are a lot less interesting if you don't really understand what's going on, and if you're lost you're much less likely to be motivated. But there are individual issues within each domain also. The most prepared student might find a class that's completely lecture-and-memorization based utterly boring, and a student who finds classes esoterically interesting but can't for the life of him or her see the use might have faltering motivation.
By the way, we're not talking about small enclaves of students -- nearly 1 in 3 students nationally, and 1 in 2 minority students, don't graduate high school.
If you want to fix something, a good place to start is the part which is shaking violenty; that is, to focus on the system's worst failures and circumscribe your efforts around that end. Our dropouts -- our students who by age 12 or 13 have already given up in the most tragic fashion (and all the other students, for that matter) -- need an educational system which looks fundamentally and concretely different from the one that currently exists. If we truly stand for a democratic equality of opportunity, the mere fact that we're losing the most needy students should be enough to stir us to both anger and action.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 14, 2006 at 2:04 PM.
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