Students having difficult life situations
When students come to me for advice about staying in school or dropping out of school to provide for their family? I have a hard time seeing them drop out of school.. I wish they was more help for our students....
Brooke,
I think you need to remind them why they came to school to begin with--typically it will be to better provide for their family. This is something that adult students often struggle with during the educational process. It is extremely difficult and they have a lot more pressures than they anticipated.
Susan Backofen
I find that in a lot of cases, sometimes school is a student's last resort, then when teachers are not attentive to their needs they are futher discouraged. In my opinion the first cooncern of a student is to feel safe and reassured. Students don't care how much you know until the know how much you care.
Love that saying! It is true that your students have to know you care. My students are very comfortable coming to me with issues or even to share issues that other students may be having that they believe I can help with.
Pauline,
You make a great point, especially with adult students. They enroll because they have a 'point of pain' somewhere in their lives that makes school a necessary action. It is a big step to commit to that and how we meet their needs and expectations plays a large role in their persistence.
Susan Backofen
Many of our students are jobless, have children and even in some cases homeless. We have partnered with many local non-profit organizations that we can refer our students to. We changed our Mission to include the statement "....we further strive to help our students grow and develop as individuals to become happy and productive members of their families and communities.".
Every employee believes that statement. All of our staff and administration have strong relationships with many of our students. We truly are a "School that cares" and we have seen retention grow because of the extra services, even outside of our institution, that we are able to help our students with.
This is very surprising to me, that some of our students are homeless! Actually, I had no idea......I'm very shocked but interested to know! This will definitely impact my way of thinking and how I approach students.
The first class period of each quarter I go over our Code of Conduct and syllabus with the students. The classes I teach are ofter third to fifth quarter students in which life has changed since they initially enrolled. I have each of the students introduce themselves and tell us why they enrolled - what is their driving force to make it to school, even when things get tough. I remind them that things do and will get tough and they cannot forget their dreams.
