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QUESTION: I am Chanda, a student at Radford University.
Currently I am doing an internship at a middle school with an eighth grade
science class. As a future teacher, I am interested in ways to encourage
the "troubled" kids and those who do not receive" favor"
from the teacher. How can I possibly help these kids redirect their focus
and become positive, productive young men and women? Most of the kids I
am referring to are repeating the eighth grade for the first or second time.
I would like to give them something to look forward to (such as graduation)
since many of them are considering dropping out out. Thanks for your help
on this issue.
Dear Chanda,
My academic team has under taken an adventure to help the very child you
describe. We hand- picked 20 rising sixth graders who were 13 by Sept.1,1996.
We evaluated their ability to learn by using the COGAT SAS scores. These
were very high at-risk students who had been retained or placed incorrectly
when changing school systems . Many of them were bilingual (Spanish-English)
but with parents with little education and little English. We designed a
Success Program that would incorporate both seventh and eighth grade curriculum
objectives and the support to complete the curriculum satisfactorily.
The ultimate goal is to promote these students to the ninth grade with the
motivation to finish high school. The students are now motivated but it
took a lot of pushing , shoving and convincing to build trust and to help
them see the long term benefits of such an undertaking. My team had the
backing of the administration, and support will be provided these students
by some special teachers at the high school level. Of the 20 we started
with , 13 will make it to the high school this year. The others will at
least earn eighth grade promotion, which could have been a risky proposition
from the beginning.The students had to work harder than the other 90 students
in seventh grade, but they had a certain status among the regular students
and some became leaders because of their maturity.
The students will tell you that caring teachers have made the difference.
We stuck by them and disciplined them with firmness in the face of every
kind of antisocial behavior you can imagine. Its not what you do so much
as how you do it and that you try at all. God speed you on your adventure.
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