With the end of the year approaching and spring teasing us three days a week, students and staff alike are getting excited with the prospect of warmer weather and freedom has students and staff alike excited for the next several weeks to pass quickly. Within those few weeks, though, comes the most exciting extra-curricular events of the year: Prom and Graduation. How the students and the staff are preparing for these events are completely different.
Unfortunately, I've overheard many students excitedly discussing the less than approved of sides of Prom and Graduation: The After Parties. They are careful not to say too much, of course, so that no teachers or administrators really know where to point the cops...However, the authority figures aren't going down without a fight.
First and foremost, students cannot graduate or attend prom if they are not passing. Thus, the D and F List. This week has been an endless stream of students rushing in during seminar, advocacy, and even taking time during their pass cards to try to make up their missing assignments or even retake failed tests. We are gracious, accommodating, and understanding...up to a point. Anything done after Spring Break that is still part of the unit we are studying is fair game. However, if they didn't participate or turn in assignments before Spring Break, they are tough out of luck and unable to make those up. Redoing assignments from Spring Break up til this point MAY get them into Prom, but they will have to turn in every assignment from here on out in order to graduate. This is not to say that we want our students to fail; but they need to realize there are consequences for their mistakes. Maybe if their grade is so low that they can't make it to Prom, they will realize the seriousness of their situation and focus on graduating.
Secondly, none of the teachers are naive enough to think that there is no underage drinking going on, especially on these particular nights. As a result, the school's SADD organization hosted it's first Mock Crash in ten years! My old high school used to do this every year and it was extremely successful and had a lasting impact. Unfortunately, neither school has video recorded their efforts, so I've found this Mock Crash Example. Each school does it a bit differently, but I think that given the visual world we live in where students are so desensitized to reality, this is a great idea. I know it always made a huge difference on the students' decision at my old high school.
It's so hard sometimes to just let the students reap the consequences of their actions. (It's hard with your own children, too, by the way.) But it's so important to let them fail when they're young so they learn how to fix it when the stakes are lower. Obviously we don't want this to happen when it comes to graduation. This is high stakes!
ReplyDeleteI like Lara's take on what you said. I agree that you did a fine job of illustrating both the relatively minor consequences, such as grades and passing, with the major consequences that can come right around prom time. I will say, though, it almost seemed like prom was an afterthought where I currently am. There were very few rumblings or announcements made by the teachers and even many of the students were talking about how they weren't even sure if they were planning on going. Quite different from the hullabaloo that I am used to seeing this time of year.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any seniors this year so I'm just hearing some rumblings out of my juniors and a snippet here and there from my sophomores about prom. The Mock Crash was done really well, with a pretty massive impact. With the prom occurring on 4/20, there are some side jokes about drug use, but like Theresa mentioned, there isn't enough information to do anything about it. However, with the end of the year approaching, I do have more students getting serious about turning things in. I'm trying to be lenient with accepting late work, at least for partial credit, but I had two assignments turned in today from before spring break. Wow.
ReplyDeleteThis is so different reading about the life of a high schooler. These are things I wouldn't have thought of. I never attended prom, I graduated early, I hated high school and I teach middle school. I was never interested in dating and I was taking flute master classes from Dr. Shelly at WSU starting my freshman year of high school, I went on the evenings it was offered.
ReplyDeleteHow sympathetic are you to those who try to care at the last minute? Do you work with them to make them go away, maybe because you think they only want to go to prom and they don't care about the class work? Or, have you seen students that are truly interested in improving their grades for the right reasons and prom is the push they needed?
I like the crash information. Again, this is something I wouldn't have thought of. I think the students see you as more of a person if you include the items that aren't just strictly curriculum based. Nice work!