Personal Experiences

PERSONAL EXPERIENCES RELATING
TO MY DISSERTATION

One of the most vivid memories I have of elementary school is walking into first grade for the first time. I was one of the fortunate, or maybe unfortunate, children that didn’t go to kindergarten because it was not required. But, first grade was an extremely exciting time in my life. The first day of school was exciting but scary. I remember walking in and seeing twenty-four faces that I had never seen before. These were my new classmates. After surveying the class I can still see, sitting in a corner, conspicuously, a young man with pale blue eyes, ragged clothes, and blonde disheveled hair, a young man with the name of Buddy. Buddy stuck out from the others because he was older than everyone else in class, he had been retained, held back, or in his words failed first grade last year. In Buddy’s mind he was an outcast, a loner, or someone who was just in school because he was required to be there.
As the year progressed and we settled into first grade, I remember our teacher assigning students to reading groups, and how we were so excited to be placed in groups with others learning to read. At that time the reading books were the old Dick and Jane books. I can still see the pictures of Spot running after Jane and Jane running after Dick, and they were all having a great time. But, in those reading groups it was evident we were placed there based on what we could do, how smart we were, how economically advantaged we might be, even though in the small elementary school I attended there was very little difference in the economic condition of the families represented. The deciding factor was those parents who had jobs and supported the family, and then those families who didn’t and allowed, as my dad would say, the government to take care of them.
It was evident, even to a first grader, that the groups that were assigned were pretty much the red birds, or high fliers, the blue birds, those who were fairly average students, and then the buzzard group, the ones who had little or no chance of success, students who were not given the opportunity to be involved with regular activities, and were mostly placed in the corner, given a worksheet, and told to be quiet and only to disturb the teacher if they had to go to the restroom. My friend Buddy was in the Buzzard group. He was always the last to complete assignments, the first to find ways to get out of the classroom, and always at the top of the at risk chart.
The teachers only called on Buddy when it was absolutely necessary. When they called on him to read a passage in our round-robin reading time we all tried to help Buddy by giving him words, whispered to him. For a sentence of about 5-6 words Buddy would take about 2 minutes to read it. As you can imagine very little opportunity was given for Buddy to read, but that didn’t bother Buddy. Throughout our school experience Buddy just tagged along, as we went from one grade to the next. In his words, “I’ve been failed too many times to hold back any more.”
In the school I attended we only went through 8th grade, and the 8th grade graduation was a big event and the last time I remember seeing Buddy. Our small class of 8th graders went to the high school the next year and it was obvious that Buddy didn’t show up at high school. Buddy wasn’t in any of the classes, did not have a student number or student locker, or a home room class. Buddy just didn’t show up, and sadly no one seemed to care, nor did anyone go looking for Buddy. In 1974 that was not a problem.
There were many Buddys around our county and many jobs for those Buddys to do. A high school diploma was only for those who wanted to go to college or were not being pressed into finding a job by their families. Buddy got one of those entry level, dead end jobs and is still there barely making ends meet with a large family and no possible way to advance himself. His family is the perfect example of generational poverty and the tight grip it has on its victims.
The Buddys of the world are the main reason that I wanted to become a teacher. I felt like I could do something to help, something to make a difference, something to inspire young men and women such as Buddy to stay in school. I held that dream through under-graduate and through teaching math to high school students. I still remember the conversations I had with students in high school who were turning 16 and had made up their mind that they were dropping out. I would continually ask why and I would get numerous responses, but none of them made any logical sense to me. I remember begging and pleading and offering almost anything to keep the students in school. Sometimes they would stay a day or two and then finally they just wouldn’t show up again. I still think today about some of those that just didn’t show up, and wonder where they are, and what their lives are like. Was there anything that I could have done or said differently that would have kept them in school?
Not only did I watch students from the vantage point of a classroom teacher but I also coached several sports. I did notice quickly that the students that were involved on the athletic teams or in the band, or in other extra-curricular activities usually stayed in school. I didn’t have as many conversations with those students about staying in school, as I did about what they were going to do when they graduated. It was evident that a large group of students that I had the opportunity to work with were making bad decisions because we allowed them. We very seldom connected with the students or their parents about the resources they needed to help them make good decisions. Those conversations prompted me to become a school administrator. As a high school assistant principal and principal, my desire to keep students in school went from those I taught or coached to every child in the school.
I remember, as if it were yesterday, two young ladies walking into my office and telling me they were going to quit school. I had really tricked the students at the high school to believe they had to have my permission to quit. They didn’t know that when they turned 16 they could just leave, even though many of them figured it out. I still tried to convince them that they had to have my permission and their parent’s permission and anyone else’s permission that I could think to tell them. Those two ladies were good students, from middle class families, who had every opportunity to be successful. They were students that if you talked with them or watched them interact with others, you would have said they had tremendous potential. They didn’t fit the model of the average at risk potential drop out.
For what seemed to be hours I used every argument and every piece of logic that I could to convince them to stay in school. I gave them the fifty-cent speech, the quarter speech and even pulled in counselors and every piece of ammunition I had to keep them in school. After all was said and done their response was “God has told us to do this”. In my mind I couldn’t figure how to argue with God, even though I knew that was not His directive and couldn’t understand how these young ladies, who seemed to be well in tune with the high school experience, could be thinking this way. They had given me all their reasons for dropping out. They had a great plan all mapped out and had envisioned a wonderful future with a great family. However, I do know that those wonderful plans never materialized because they didn’t have an education.
How sad those days were when students left my office deciding to drop out. I continually ask myself, “what did they drop into? Where are they today? Where did the school fail? Where did I fail? Where did we as a society fail?” Those questions drove me from the school itself to the Central Office where I hoped I could help answer those questions and develop initiatives to keep students in school and for 14 years that has been my goal. I still run into so many obstacles and so many roadblocks, and so many unanswered questions about why students drop out, that I am now driven to research the topic and try to develop answers to questions about drop outs, and design programs that will prevent young people from dropping out of school.
From my experiences I realize that most students decide to drop out at a very young age. Most of those students, I believe, decide that school is not for them around the second or third grade. My desire is to find a way to impact students, at that age, to prevent the idea of dropping out. Not only should we develop prevention programs, we must develop intervention programs. We already have students in the pipeline who are well on their way to dropping out. What can we do to intervene; what strategies can be used to prevent them from dropping out? What can we do to involve collectively: community, parents, and every individual who cares about the future in the drop out prevention program. It is reasonable to expect that the answers to these questions will not come easy. The research will be difficult, and the subjects I talk with will evoke past memories that will not be easy to deal with. I believe deep within my inner being that if we work hard enough, care enough and believe enough, we can make a difference with drop-outs, positively impacted the drop-out rate. I am hopeful that the plans I have, coupled with experiences in my life, will do something not just with the drop-out number but with the individual students as we do all that is possible to help each child to become successful.