Comments on: Spinning Wheels Got to Go Round

By: Linda Fonti

Linda Fonti — Tue, 22 May 2007 22:37:07 +0000

Wow. How far G-Town has come!THANK YOU KIM AND STAFF! However, there is always room for improvement. I think we need to get really creative. We know why kids drop out of school,most have jobs and the paycheck looks really nice. The challenge is, what can we do differently that we haven’t already done? Some ideas:Look “out of the box” start school at 9:00am or later, allow students to take their classes and leave? I truly understand the day to day challenges educators are faced with.

By: Carol

Carol — Thu, 17 May 2007 20:51:14 +0000

Yes, many of the above improvements have been for students who would have stayed any way. However, there are more of them than the ones that drop out. Gowanda is trying to build its reputation and turn out graduates that are ready for college and the future. All of the additions to the schedule are part of that. I have to agree with Kelly that school just isn’t for everyone. Some kids get jobs and see the fact that they are making money as more attractive than sitting in class all day. Many students are unable to see the big picture that illustrates a high school diploma is important.

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:15:47 +0000

Kelly–I always appreciate your thoughtful comments to this blog. We do interview our students, as they attempt to drop out, but I would say it’s more of an intervention than an interview in our strong efforts to dissuade them from the drop out decision. We also have a tri-district initiative where we’ve been interviewing our Native American students, for whom the drop out rate is the highest of any minority, on a number of issues from instructional strategies that work for them to attendance to reasons for dropping out. I would say that 95% of the time these interviews identify factors in the child’s life that are well beyond my area of control, for which we try to find solutions/connections to services who can help, but which seem too insurmountable to the students. Most often they identify factors from outside of school that are heavily influencing their decisions and even more often those influences are destructive. Kim

By: Kelly Christopherson

Kelly Christopherson — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:56:36 +0000

For each student that drops out the reason is a bit different. For some reason, the appeal to leave school is more than the reasons to stay. Have you tried interviewing or finding students that dropped out to ask them why? Don’t give up – you are doing great things and should be proud of how you’re helping those that decide to stay. And hey, school isn’t for everyone.