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CAT Tracks for May 28, 2006
TEAR DOWN THAT WALL |
It's a little early, since the school year hasn't even officially ended...and high school graduation is still hours away.
However, reproduced below is one of those "battery charging" articles...the kind that you read when you are in a truly drained state of mind that reignites the fire to do it better next time...that there IS still hope for reaching the seemingly hopeless, no matter how determined they are to resist!
From today's Southern Illinoisan...
One size does not fit all: Educators stepping up to help meet the needs of students
BY BECKY MALKOVICH, THE SOUTHERN
Jacob Diefenbach was bored - really and truly and stiflingly bored.
So bored, he said recently as he remembered his freshman and sophomore years in high school, he couldn't face another day sitting in another classroom, listening to another teacher drone on about another subject he could care less about, that didn't seem to have much relevance to his 21st Century life.
"I got good grades all through grade school and junior high," Diefenbach, 18, said. "But my freshman year was different. The high school was so big, I bet they only knew about a quarter of the students who went there.
"I didn't give a rip," he added, "and I felt like they didn't care about me, either. I needed hands-on attention, not some teacher standing up there for 45 minutes to lecture at me and tell me this is what I need to know for a quiz."
Diefenbach's grades and attendance reflected his supreme boredom. "I was making 'F's.' I had more than 200 absences in my freshman and sophomore years," he said. "I had to go see (Williamson County State's Attorney Charles) Garnati for truancy. He said if I missed one more day, I'd be in a lot of trouble, and he's the kind of guy you believe."
Despite the more-than-shaky start to his high school career, Diefenbach walks tall today as a proud member of the Marion High School Class of 2006.
The Marion teen was not, and is not, alone in his struggle to earn a high school diploma. Dozens of students around the region face the same challenge, but as in Diefenbach's case, educators around the region have stepped up to the challenge of meeting the needs of the ever-increasing number of nontraditional high school students that come through their double doors.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
- Pink Floyd
Traditional high schools operate on the assumption that all students are college-bound, said Marion Unit 2 Superintendent Wade Hudgens, and continue offering a traditional college prep curriculum.
"The American educational model was based on the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the century. It's been around for a long time, so it's been very difficult to get educators out of the mindset that students are widgets on an assembly line and they all get stamped out the same," Hudgens said.
In other words, said Sue Easton, the district's school improvement facilitator, "That one-size-fits-all doesn't fit anymore. The same old methods of teaching are not reaching every student. A teacher standing in front of a classroom reading Chaucer doesn't engage a lot of today's students."
But have high school students really changed so much? Are they really all that different than students in previous decades?
You bet'cha.
Talkin' 'bout my generation
- The Who
Today's student enters high school with a whole host of societal concerns and pressures that most students from previous generations could not fathom - meth-head parents or no parents at all, homelessness, chronic truancy, full-time jobs to pay off staggering debts, extreme poverty, serious mental or physical health issues, childcare problems and way, way too much information.
"So many of our problems come from being in an area where the economy is so poor," said Cathy Stewart, director of guidance at Benton Consolidated High School. "We have so many non-working parents that there are a lot of kids who have no modeling whatsoever, no one to say, 'We have a schedule. I have to be at work at 8, let's go.' We are also seeing more kids who qualify as homeless, who stay a few days with this friend or that friend or are sleeping in cars. When they don't know where they're staying at night, it's real hard for them to focus on school or to see the relevance of an 18th Century poet."
Many nontraditional students, but not all, come from nontraditional families, said Lisa Smith, Marion Unit 2 assistant superintendent. "They come from single-parent families or families where the caretaker is a grandparent or an aunt or an older sibling. Many times they are the breadwinners of their families. And that's the reason why they sometimes don't fit in the traditional high school scheduling - because they have to work. They want us to give them what they need that will apply to their lives, because they have to get out there and work," she said.
Today's student is also bombarded by information from any number of high-tech gadgets - computers, cellphones and iPods, to name a few. Textbooks are often outdated by the time they come off the printing press and hardback encyclopedias are a learning tool from the past.
"Encyclopedias are online now and they're updated daily. Daily," said Hudgens, not without some awe. "The world is faster-paced. The Information Age is such that things change so quickly. We have to be able to give students correct information in a timely manner."
So perhaps it is not surprising that these students are a little more difficult to engage than in earlier classrooms where the chalkboard was the chief learning aid.
"I think, too, kids are used to instant rewards with video games. Everything is 'You can have it now.' It's very hard for them to have long-term goals. They want to be entertained and their attention span is so short," Stewart said.
For the times they are a-changin
- Bob Dylan
"We live in a time in the 21st Century where we recognize that all students are not the same. The educational product that we produce has got to be individualized," Hudgens said. "This is a business and our clients are the students and we have to provide a quality product for our clients that suits their needs."
When Hudgens became Marion schools superintendent in 2002, the district had a graduation rate of just 77 percent - it's now at 92 percent. "We studied and we surveyed and we came up with some ideas that would help us better serve our clients," he said. "I'd like to say our high school is not traditional already. I think we've got a school that tries hard to fill our students' individual needs."
The district began adding vocational classes that would offer real-life experience, experience that would make them employable.
"One thing we discovered is that there are many, many occupations that are not necessarily suited to a college-prep curriculum. We are trying to make the instruction more interest-based. We can still teach core subjects, but in a way that students are more interested and will better learn the material, especially if it is suited to something they have a career interest in," he said. "If an English class can be centered around medical writing and someone wants to be a doctor or a physical therapist then we are better meeting that student's needs than in the Chaucher-Shakespeare college-prep route."
The idea of interest-based education intrigues Hudgens so much, he is looking into the possibility of creating a five-academy high school if the school ever receives state funding for the construction of a new high school. Each academy would offer a seamless curriculum so that if a student wanted to move from the business academy to the science academy, the transition would be not be difficult.
"The idea is to have five academies under one roof that could offer the same core subjects but in such a way that they would engage the student," he said. "Students and staff could bond over the four-year period that they are in the academy together. They would get to know each other far better than they could in a traditional high school."
Benton also offers a variety of vocational classes as well as a work program option that allows students to work part of the day. Both schools work closely with nearby community colleges to offer more vocationally related programs to their students.
Stewart said teachers at the school use a variety of methods to hold the interests of their students. "It's nothing for the teachers to schedule four, five or six activities per class period to engage the students," she said.
Benton also has an at-risk program in place to try and stem the tide of troubled students. Led by Kathy Shurtz, the program connects with the district's feeder schools to get a heads up on which students may encounter more difficulty than others as they enter high school.
"I follow these kids throughout their high school years. If they need tutoring or materials for class or professional services of some kind, we get it for them," she said. "We try and provide the support they need to have a good experience here."
Shurtz works closely with the students. "When they get behind in classes and think they may not graduate, they lose hope and give up. I try and set them up with alternatives like correspondence courses or make-up classes at Rend Lake College. We try and intervene before they are completely overwhelmed," Shurtz said. "The goal is to get them their high school diplomas."
Come as you are
- Nirvana
One of the most successful options for the overwhelmed student is alternative schooling, Hudgens learned. About 30 seniors from this year's Marion High School graduating class attended the district's Extension Center - 30 students who may, like Jacob Diefenbach considered, have dropped out before receiving their diplomas.
The center opened three years ago. "This is not a dropping pit where they send students who they don't want to have to deal with at the high school," said Ray Huelsmann, the center's principal. "If you're kicked out of high school, you can't come here. These are good kids who may be bored, or lack motivation or have childcare issues. This is a second chance. They know we care about them, no matter who they are, and we have their backs."
Students at the school get to know their teachers. "All my teachers have to do is look in my eyes and they'll know whether I'm having a bad day or not," Diefenbach said. "We get to know each other really well and we learn about what's going on in each other's lives."
The school teaches the same core subjects as the high school, but in a smaller setting and in a slightly different manner than may be offered at a traditional school.
Georgia Lockwood, who formerly taught classes like advanced placement English in her 30-plus years at the high school, came to the center because, "This place intrigued me. I wanted the opportunity to develop a curriculum that would adhere to state standards but would have more appeal - be more authentic to these kids," she said.
For instance, when Lockwood teaches her students about the Vietnam era, she not only teaches the students about the war, but the entire culture of the time including music.
"If you ask kids what they like, music is really high on the list. On the other hand, if you ask them if they like poetry, you often get a very negative response, but, let's think, what are song lyrics? Humm, poetry. So we have a combination of contemporary music and we analyze the lyrics with each unit. After we've looked at a couple of song lyrics and talked about those in poetry terms, then we look compare to a couple of pieces of traditional poetry. Then they see how in fact a lot of modern song lyrics simply reflect thoughts that Shakespeare and Robert Frost were giving us all along. Somehow, when you put it in a more contemporary language, the themes come through more easily," she said.
Sandra McLain, 18, said she would have dropped out of high school had it not been for the extension center. "I wasn't being challenged. I could get by without studying, without putting in any effort," she said.
McLain graduated with her classmates last week at Marion High and will take part in another graduation in December at John A. Logan College.
"I already have 32 hours at John A. that I was able to take through the extension center," she said. "And I have a 4.56 average on a 5.0 scale. Two years ago, I didn't think this would happen, and now I'm a graduate of the Class of 2006."