Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Why I Can't Get the 9th Graders to Stay After School
Apparently, at the middle school, if your average in any class is a D or F, you get assigned to "Extended Day". These students have to stay after school in a particular room for tutoring from teachers. There is a huge stigma around it. No one wants to even be seen near the extended day classroom at the end of the day. The kids are getting a message that "staying after school" = "you are stupid". This is probably the same reason we can't get kids to come to the Learning Support Center. They are afraid of being perceived as needing help. I wonder if any other schools have found a way around this problem. Maybe we should change the name of Extended Day to "Basketball Practice" and start calling the Learning Support Center the "Auxiliary Library".
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9 comments:
Funny how this phenomenon so often coincides with that of laughing and sharing with the entire class when they receive a D or F on a quiz or test.
Matt: That's often their way of covering up their insecurity over feeling stupid in general or just at math.
Kate, how much freedom do you have to make your after school sessions fun? Could you play music or bring in food and play it up as a big party where you'll just happen to get some work done? What about moving your after school sessions off campus, to a nearby fast food joint or some other place students would be excited about going to? I've heard of success from both cases. The best way to get your students to forget the stigma is, as you joked about, to cast your after school program in a positive light.
I'm not really interested in turning my classroom into a big noisy party where kids just come to hang out. We have enough places like that at this school. It would just be distracting for students who want to get some work done. The environment is comfortable and conducive to learning - I don't have trouble getting the older students to stay after when they need it. This problem is limited to 9th graders. I don't feel I have the power to overcome their perception of what is uncool. Shouldn't the fact that they are failing math, and I'm offering an opportunity to rectify that, be incentive enough?
Kate, you'd like to think that's the case, but I've got the same situation with my 9th graders. No matter how bad they're failing, none of them will take the initiative to come in and get help. I even offered once to let students retake a test within the week. I had 4 students retake the test and only ONE who came in for extra help before retaking it. It's not just your classes. It's an epidemic of laziness.
A colleague described our school as one where students are given so many second chances they don't realize that they're second chances. I think some of the attitude I see is less "lazy" and more "entitlement."
I'm sitting in my room 50 minutes after school. None of the students who signed up to come in to retake a quiz/get some help/chill are here. Apparently I don't have the solutions either.
One of my goals my students is to help them feel comfortable asking for help. I wish it didn't feel to them to run counter to my goal of teaching them to think for themselves.
Sean - My deal is even sweeter than that - I'm on the Dan Meyer assessment plan where they can come in and remediate any individual concept for full credit. And still only a handful ever take advantage.
Sarah - You said it very well. Sometimes I wonder if we accommodate so much that we are cultivating the laziness.
Also I have a quote from a colleague who described a certain administrator's consequences as "a warning and a hug".
Ideally your district would have afterschool for all kids, but in varying amounts, so that afterschool was normal, and just some kids got more.
But there is a question of $.
In our school, all freshmen have to stay after once or twice a week at the beginning of the year for an ongoing writing workshop. Different groups on different days, with some leveling going on.
We take away the requirement (I'm shaky here, not my area) from some, but not all, but make it optional. The kids who have to have it, they are still coming. And a few other kids, who just enjoyed it, they continue.
By the time the kiddies would have figure out that it is negative, it's already a positive.
It helps that we have lots going on after school, so that a kid may stay for tutoring while her friend practices for band... As long as you're there, you might as well do something.
Sorry, I think that this is not useful. But you are right about the stigmatizing. We have it too. But does your school have the capacity to make staying extra not be a special thing for poor performers?
(I owe you 25 things... I know...)
Jonathan
Middle school extended day is SO far outside the things over which I have control. But we need to do something for the freshmen. Clearly my innate charm and beauty are not luring them in.
And, yeah ya do. :-)
At our school we have enocore, on tuesdays and thursdays. Monday, Wednesday, and friday we have a 57 min period. On Tuesdays and Thursday class is 45 so we have extra time for this encore class. It is designed so that kids don't have to stay after school and get tutoring. Teachers nor students want to stay let, so this is an opportunity for kids to get tutoring from their teacher or another teacher is they are more comfortable with a different teacher. I've had kids that don't understand in the class, but I'm able to give a little bit of one on one and within a few minutes they get the lesson.
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