Wise Choices by Schools
Improve Students’ Choices
By Jill Jenkins
Decisions made in youth affect the economic stability and
life-long quality of life. Many factors
affect young people’s ability to make effective decisions: socio-economic factors, supportive, involved
parents, available educational resources, perceived ability and sense of
self-worth. Educators may have no
control over socio-economic factors or involved, supportive parents, but there
are ways to improve their choices and thus their quality of life.
Lower Socio-Economic
Groups
Although teachers cannot change their students’ socio-economic status, there are ways to reduce its negative impact and enhance students’ ability to make productive choices. Many students from lower-economic groups lack access to computers and/or the internet. Since success has become tied to technology, lack of access to technology can inhibit their ability to be successful. To resolve this problem, schools can computer labs available to students before school, at lunch and after school. North Kansas City Schools and the Coquille School District Superintendent Tim Sweeney have another solution. Both school districts have put WiFi in their school buses so students can access the internet with Chromebooks. Many school districts in rural areas do not have access to internet providers and many students in urban areas cannot afford them. Providing this service is less expensive than many districts may imagine. According to the Kanas City Star, “Coquille School District Superintendent Tim Sweeney said that his district was able to convince the Oregon Department of Education to reimburse 70 percent of the equipment cost for two wireless routers, each one coming in at around $1,100. Sweeney said ODE regularly reimburses school districts for student travel-related expenses, since long-distance road trips are just part of the students' reality in rural Oregon. The district would be responsible for paying the approximately $80 a month bill from Verizon Wireless, the Internet provider used by the district.” Some internet providers provide low-cost internet connections and computers to low-income students. For example, Comcast Cable offers $9.95 per month internet connections and low cost lap tops for $149.00. Schools need to inform parents about this resource in their own language.
Supportive Parents
Most parents want to support their students’ education
regardless of their economic situation.
Language barriers and fear of being deported often prevents them from
being actively involved. To help parents
become more involved, invitations to parent workshops need to be delivered in
the parent’s native language either by telephone or in handwritten
invitations. The human touch will lessen the
parents’ anxieties. Workshops about how
parents might help their children with their academic lessons, resources that
might be available to help them, and the processes of enrolling in college and
finding financial aid would help parents be more proactive in their children’s
choices. Some parents will erroneously
believe that since they never received a college degree, their children
certainly shouldn’t require one. I
understand. My father supported a wife
and five children on an eighth grade education.
However, those jobs either no longer exist or pay so little that the
child’s quality of life would be significantly reduced. Workshops for parents about the economic
advantage of education should begin as early as preschool or elementary school
and continue through high school. Beginning
the process in high school is too late.
Resources
Resources need to be available for students during,
before and after school. This means that
communities need to financially support schools. At
South Jordan Middle School
in South Jordan, Utah, a group of teachers are paid to provide tutoring during
lunch hour (Lunch School or No Zeros Allowed).
Students who are identified by their teachers are given a sack lunch and
their classwork is collected in a centralized location. The student arrives at the location to eat
his lunch while working one-on-one on his/her assigned work with a qualified
teacher. The student gets the
individualized instruction he/she needs and completes assigned that he/she has chosen
not to complete. Both skills and understanding
are enhanced and his/her ability to make responsible decisions is enhanced as
he/she is not allowed to choose to be lackadaisical. Teachers are the greatest resource and
computers and the internet are available.
Students who feel teachers’ care about them and want them to be
successful are more likely to make more responsible decision in an attempt to
foster that relationship.
Perceived Ability and
Self-Worth
Students who do not believe they are capable will not
feel confident to make positive decisions.
According to Luis J Rodriguez’s book, Always Running, La Vida
Loco: Gang Days in L.A,
as a
student who spoke no English, he was placed in the back of the room and made to
feel inadequate and incapable. A positive, warm environment is essential for a
student to feel inspired and motivated to learn. As a result, teachers spend hours decorating
classrooms and bulletin boards. Classrooms
like those in Detroit’s City Schools
that are not clean, safe and appealing send a message to students that their
learning is unimportant to society. Education needs the support of the entire
community to instill in students that their success is a priority to the larger
community. Students not only need to
feel that they can be successful, but that their success is important. Teachers and schools need to make every
effort to support every student with the resources he/she needs to be
successful. Doing all of this to improve
students’ confidence (which means no negative language or insulting attitudes)
and self-worth will greatly enhance his/her ability to make constructive
decisions.
Natural Consequences
Every action has an equal, and opposite reaction; every
choice has a natural consequence.
Students should not be protected from the consequences of their action:
whether they are positive or negative.
In order to understand the consequences of hard work, students who
choose not to work must be given more supervision to complete the work or
suffer the negative consequences. Lunch
school, summer school or weekend schools all provide students with opportunities
and consequences. They get an
opportunity to complete work, but they lose the freedom of socializing with
their friends during lunch. Furthermore,
students who refuse to take advantage of the opportunity lose more freedom by
having to make up the class in the summer.
Parents should not be allowed to interfere with this learning
opportunity because teaching students to behave responsible is too
important.
Win-Win
Having an educated, productive community improves
prosperity, reduces those incarcerated, homeless or on welfare. Everyone wins. Urban areas are filled with homeless
populations who are not only disenfranchised, but a drain on resources. It is not their fault. When schools fail to provide students with
the skills to make good choices, those students become entrenched in poverty
and unhappiness. Their frustration
results in both drug use and increased crime.
Nevertheless, if these same people are given the skills they need to
make more appropriate decisions, they become an asset to communities. Wasting the resources of a bright, capable
individual is a travesty. Properly
funding education is an investment not only of the individual, but of the
entire society.
