Stop the presses – having just one teacher who cares about them can stop a high school student from dropping out.
Obvious? Sure. But how many obvious things aren’t we doing in schools?
Among the conclusions:
- Students generally like school and want to graduate.
- Some feel financial pressure to drop out and get a job.
- Some are driven out of school by a fear of violence.
- Students believe that some of the challenges they face are caused by a lack of resources in their school.
- Students who believe a teacher or coach cares about them are more inclined to stay in school.
Here’s the full report from the California Dropout Research Project. You can download the entire report or a condensed version there, and see a series of video clips of student interviews here.
I think these are similar to the reasons teachers drop out of teaching.
Students are people like us, which some teachers forget.
We have to find ways that students can display talents in different ways so that the students who don’t take to paper and pencil activities have other ways to shine and build self-confidence.
This report only reinforces the concept that education is more about making a connection between people than it is about test scores. However, the current thinking in the US, largely driven by NCLB, puts far more emphasis on the courses a teacher has taken and the information they’ve memorize than on how well they are able to communicate with kids.
Mathew’s right that this is one of the big reasons for so many good teachers leaving the profession.