Summer 2008 Dropout Intervention Program
Martin, above left, is 17 years old and after three years at Hendrickson High School had accumulated 8 credits and a string of failures. Lilly, above right, is 16 years old and had a history of truancy and failed courses. Most of their previous teachers will be astonished to learn that Martin earned 5 1/2 credits and Lilly earned 4 1/2 credits in our 18-day intensive summer program and both are now on track to graduate. How is this possible? What will it take to repeat this experience with other under-performing students?
The fundamental question is, "How do we get under-performing students to buckle down and do their school work?" Tony Bertucci, the winningest robotics coach in Texas, is fond of saying: "Success isn't hocus-pocus; success is focus-focus." What follows is a point-by-point description of the areas on which we focused that we consider the most critical to the pilot program's success.
Teachers
Start with teachers who like feisty kids and can manage challenging behaviors. Teachers like Sue Bryant, an Intervention Specialist at the PISD Opportunity Center with a strong background in behavior management and an enviable record of getting high-needs kids to do the work required to earn the credits they need to graduate. Ms. Bryant was Team Leader for the intensive summer pilot program and recruited the other members of our Dream Team:
Front to back: Susan Murphy, Track Coach and Social Studies Teacher at Pflugerville High School; Erin McDonald, Behavior Specialist and Social Studies Teacher at the PISD Opportunity Center; Sue Bryant, Team Leader; and Frank Holder, AP Physics Teacher at Pflugerville High school; pictured at a Family Picnic for the students, teachers, parents, and veterans, organized by VeteranTutors.
All of these teachers like feisty kids, are able to manage challenging behaviors and are proficient enough at their craft to bridge gaps in students' understanding and to help students master the material at hand in spite of accrued academic deficits. But more than anything, these teachers demonstrated that they care.
At the graduation ceremony on July 2nd that marked the end of the summer program, we asked each student to stand up and tell the audience of parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, veterans, and visitors what happened that had sparked such a radical change in their academic performance. Their answers were 12 variations on a theme: "These teachers like us. These teachers encourage us. These teachers helped us to succeed."
Families
Family involvement and support is crucial to a student's academic success. Families can help make sure their students get to school; families can help their students avoid the distractions that can pull them off course. And if the family believes that we are doing our best to help their child, they will do their best to persuade their child to make the necessary commitment to succeed.
Family Nights are an excellent opportunity for students, parents, teachers, and veterans to visit and to get to know one another in a relaxed setting. Many teachers only get to meet parents during parent-teacher conferences, and the conversations too often focus on negative performance or behavior of the student. When parents and teachers get to know each other as people, they often are surprised to learn how much they have in common and on how much they already agree.
Veterans
Iraq veteran Alan Babin addresses the summer students. Frank Murphy, a VeteranTutor, listens. Alan described his fight to recover from wounds suffered in a combat action where he won a Bronze Star for Valor. Alan's story inspired one student to comment to another who was whining about her challenges, "I don't want to hear your stuff. If Alan can, we all can!"
Adding military veterans to the classroom does more than change students' perspectives. Increasing the number of adults in the classroom insures that high-needs students get the attention they need to change their behavior in positive ways. Veterans are effective teaching assistants, as well as modeling the focus, discipline, and determination to succeed that all students need.
Veterans Red Towers, Frank Murphy and Chuck Foote grill burgers and hotdogs for our Family Picnic. Veterans relate well to teachers, parents, and students and help build cooperation between home and school.
Online Access
Lilly, Martin, Ricky, and James are shown working in a Hendrickson computer lab. VeteranTutors provides live tutoring over the Internet, so we can tutor a student at home as well as at school. Students need Internet access at home if we are to fully engage them and extend the school day, week, and year. VeteranTutors solicits donated computers and trains students to refurbish and maintain them. Then the students take their computers home (another Family Night occasion).
Our overall goal is to help students to become active self-learners. We know that nobody who earns a good income can keep their job if they do not keep themselves informed of developments in their field of endeavor. The Internet is a pivotal tool in acquiring this information. Training our students to become discriminating consumers of online information is a central task for VeteranTutors.
Home Visits
Home visits are a meaningful form of outreach to solicit parent involvement, especially when the visit involves our performing a useful service for the family. George Cervantes, VeteranTutors' IT Director, makes sure Trevor's computer is properly set up to access the PISD network from home. Special permission was sought and granted to allow our pilot program students to access the school network from home. Knowing that they were receiving special treatment was a factor in changing these students' attitudes toward school.
While George works with Trevor, another VeteranTutor visits with Trevor's parents. We often are the first representatives from any of the schools our students have attended to visit the student's family at home. This not only serves to build rapport with the parents, it often provides important information about the student's situation that needs to be taken into account when working with the student.
"You can't make me; you can't stop me."
Too often we treat students as captives, not as equal partners in the learning enterprise. When students are not compliant, we punish them. When they do not do their schoolwork, we fail them. When they skip school, we take them and their parents to court and fine them.
VeteranTutors believes this punitive approach and the authoritarian attitude behind it are self-defeating. Instead of provoking adolescents' "You can't make me!" response, we believe it is more productive to help them develop positive goals and elicit their "You can't stop me!" response.
We believe kids want to learn. We need to get beyond trying to pound knowledge into their heads and help them become independent self-learners. The old-school saying, "If the student hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught", still applies. It is the student's responsibility to do the learning, but it is our responsibility to grab them by the imagination and help them see how what they need to learn is relevant to the future they want for themselves.
"We can't waste the students' time."
This epiphany from Sue Bryant leads directly to a global view of the TEKS and an integrated approach to curriculum. As Ms. Bryant puts it, "We do not need to teach students everything we know about a subject. We just need to make sure the student has a firm grasp of the facts and a clear understanding of the principles specified by the TEKS. There is nothing that says we cannot be efficient in how we go about it. Where work done by a student will satisfy requirements in more than one course, we must make sure the student gets credit in each course for which the student has satisfied the requirement for that piece of work."
Here Ms. Mac reviews Veronica's presentation on genocide with Veronica's mom. Ms. Mac is explaining that the research Veronica did for an oral presentation as part of her Speech credit could be used for an essay for English, for a PowerPoint presentation for Computer Applications, as well as for papers for World History and World Geography. We encouraged parents to visit the classroom whenever they wished to learn how an integrated curriculum works and to witness the progress their children were making.
"You can do it!"
All day, every day we heard teachers saying, "You can do it! You can do it!" Coach Murphy congratulates Veronica's mom on a great presentation by her daughter.
Spotlight Success
Alan Babin presents a Certificate of Achievement to Chris for completing 5 1/2 credits during our intensive summer program. Alan told the students, "Never, never, never give up!"
Parents, teachers, administrators, school board members, veterans, and visitors applaud the students for their outstanding achievements.
To be continued . . .
JUMPSTART
JUMPSTART is designed as a second chance for students at Hendrickson High School, Pflugerville Independent School District, who have not thrived in the traditional classroom but still want to graduate high school and go on to an interesting job or career. Jumpstart students start each day with a two-hour lab in Electornics and Computer Applications before going on to their other classes.
Mr. Carney kicks off the Jumpstart program with a rousing session on goal-setting. He uses the story of Emmett Smith, the great Dallas Cowboys running back, to illustrate how setting finite goals and working to achieve them can turn dreams into reality.
The first challenge Mr. Schwarze sets for the Jumpstart students is to design and build a structure from five manila folders and a length of masking tape. The structure that extends the farthest from the table surface without touching the ceiling or the floor will be the winner.
Each team takes a different approach to solving the problem. Their willingness to experiment and to try original approaches demonstrate the confidence the students have in themselves and in their own ideas.
The team that designed and built what proves to be the winning structure showed that the most robust design is often the simplest. In engineering, as elsewhere in life, elegance is simplicity and simplicity is elegance.
The next challenge Mr. Schwarze gives the Jumpstart students is to disassemble, then reassemble a desktop computer. We give ourselves six lab sessions to refurbish end-of-life computers contributed by the school district into machines the students can take home and use.
The students quickly learn which parts belong where and how each of the components of a computer relates to the others. Although these machines are five years old, they are not so different from contemporary desktop computers.
Learning to format and set up the hard disk drive is one of the more complex tasks students must master in getting their computer to run properly. We subscribe to the notion that anything these students want to do, they can accomplish. Motivation is everything.
We teach the students how to set up a master drive and clone duplicates from it. Students learn that when working with similar machines, cloning is a whole lot faster than formatting and setting up each drive individually.
We introduce the students to licensing issues right off the bat by asking if they were a programmer, would they want to be paid for their work? They all get the point.
At the end of each lab session, students place their computers in a plastic tub for storage. Tomorrow they will take out their computers, then disassemble and reassemble the machines before they proceed to the next task.
Each day we ask the Jumpstart students, "How many of your teachers can do what you just did?" We rarely see more than one hand raised, and when we do, the students usually are thinking of the same teacher.
We then say, "Every one of your teachers graduated college. That should tell you that you are not only smart enough to go to college, you are smart enough to graduate." Students cannot receive this message too often.
Students become proficient in dealing with computers the same way musicians get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. Each day the students disassemble their computers, reassemble them, test them to make sure they work properly, then do it all over again.
With each repetition they become more confident, more familiar with the machine, more capable of taking care of any malfunctions that may occur after they take their computers home.
Each time the students take their computers apart and put them back together again, they get a better idea of how the parts relate to each other. Each time they test the machine, they gain a closer understanding of how these machines should behave when they are operating properly and what to do about it if they are not. Each time they run into a problem, we guide them to a solution. We try to make sure that each student experiences more than one success every day.
Learning to format hard disk drives and install different operating systems are key skills in becoming a computer support professional. While we expect our students to be college-ready when they graduate, we also expect all Jumpstart students to acquire at least one professional certification in a digital technology before he or she leaves high school.
No matter what happens next, our graduates will be able to earn a good enough income to support a family and be able to afford to send their kids to college. Even for students headed for college, it make sense to acquire the skills to earn $20.00 per hour as a network support technician, for example, while they are still in college instead of $6.00 per hour waiting tables.
Students learn to clone multiple hard disk drives the way the professionals do it. We don't pull any punches in this class. We give students the full experience of failing and succeeding. They are learning disciplines and problem-solving skills that will stand them in good stead no matter what career they may choose in the future.
Less than two weeks into the Jumpstart program, parents are invited to come to school and see what their kids have been learning in Jumpstart. Mr. Schwarze describes the Jumpstart program while parents and siblings observe their students demonstrate their new skills.
Students answer questions from the audience about what they have learned so far and where they expect Jumpstart to take them. When all the questions have been answered and all the pizza is gone, the students and their families take their computers home with them.
Summer 2007 Dropout Intervention Program
Our Dropout Intervention Program at Webb Middle School in Austin last summer was a pilot project to see if we could motivate high school students who have fallen behind their peers and are deemed at high risk to drop out before they graduate.
The first challenge is to offer a program that the students find interesting enough to make them want to come to school every day. The second challenge is to provide them with instruction that will help them acquire the skills they will need to be competitive in the job market they will soon enter.
The Texas Workforce Commission has reported that the sector of the economy that is most likely to continue to grow comprises the technical service jobs that support the digital economy. Basic to any of these jobs is proficiency with computers and computer applications. We proposed a project to build a computer lab for the Webb Parent Support Center from donated computers.
Mr. Rico Gonzales, the Parent Support Specialist at Webb Middle School, recruited a group of high school students, all of whom are considered at-risk, to participate in the pilot. Mr. Tony Bertucci, a veteran physics and engineering teacher at the LBJ High School Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy agreed to help.
We spent the first couple of days picking up and storing the donated computers. Be careful what you wish for. We received more donated computers than we could easily accommodate.
Diego and Tony are shown disassembling a donated computer. The skills gained by the teens while refurbishing these computers are essential to anyone aspiring to professional certification for computer tech support.
Day 3:
Omar leads a class in rebuilding Dell GX-110 computers, which were manufactured seven years ago. Most large organizations consider these computers "end of life" models, that is, they no longer are worth the investment required to maintain them. To us, however, there is still a lot of life in these computers. If we can get them to run a browser, we have a window on the world. To people whose conveyance is a ten-year-old pickup truck, a seven-year-old computer has real value.
Day 4:
Omar, Diego and Antonia configure some of the more than 100 donated computers. The teens learn to build an "image", that is, install an operating system and appropriate software for a given model computer. We are restricted to software and operating systems for which we have donated licenses, which tend to be older versions. This is okay since the machines we have also are the older models for which the older software was designed.
Once the teens obtain optimum performance from a particular model, they "clone" (make an exact copy of the image on) the hard disk drives of all similar machines. When, inevitably, they discover different hardware installed on individual machines, they must go out on the Internet and find appropriate drivers for the hardware configurations they encounter. Repeating this dozens of times gives our teens a pretty good feel for the practical requirements of a tech support specialist.
By the time our teens have rebuilt and configured more than 100 computers, they will know more about the computers used in our schools than most of their teachers, and more than some tech support professionals. Support technicians do not always get rigorous training in the many different models, vintages and configurations of computers they encounter in the real world. The knowledge gained by our teens in working with a wide array of donated machines prepares them to go out and perform tech support tasks for their neighbors (and for their teachers, too).
Day 5:
Zaira is trimming the ends of the eight wires in a CAT-5 ethernet cable prior to crimping on the J-45 plug that will terminate the cable. Our teens are leaning how to network the machines that will be used in the computer lab we are installing in Webb's Parent Resource Center. How many of the people you know can tip and proof ethernet cable and network a computer lab? All of the teens participating in our summer program can.
Day 6:
Here is the computer lab our teens installed in the Webb Parent Resource Center using computers they refurbished. The Center is now equipped to conduct Adult Computer Literacy training.
In addition to basic computer literacy, we intend to use the computer lab for advanced computer instruction in network and data center support, automation, multimedia design and flight simulation.
Day 7:
Antonia is learning how to build a functional web site. We teach our teens how to write the underlying code that defines web pages and how the pages relate to each other within a site. Antonia is becoming familiar with HTML tags, Cascading Style Sheets and other advanced details of web design that she will need when she looks for a job developing commercial web sites.
Day 8:
Diego and Omar are designing the robotic mechanism to make a model automobile dance to music. We consider robotics a useful introduction to automation, the branch of engineering that powers modern manufacturing. Getting an automobile to dance to music is a sufficiently sophisticated problem to engage the imagination of our teens.
Day 9:
Omar cuts away part of the chasis of the model car that interferes with the free movement of the car body. The challenge is to choreograph enough movement to make the car really look like it is dancing.
Day 10:
Omar and Diego celebrate the solution to the dancing car problem. Note the ball mounted on the PVC tube. A mating tube adhered to the underside of the roof of the car effectively mounts the body on gimbals, permitting the body to move freely around all axes. Anchoring the corners of the body to the corners of the chasis with rubber bands keeps the body aligned. The gimballed body requires only two motors to actuate all four corners. An elegant solution!
Spring 2007 Dropout Intervention Pilot
The pilot program described below was conducted at Webb Middle School, Austin Independent School District, Austin, Texas, during the last three weeks of the 2007 spring term.
Day 1:
We had a GREAT first day at Webb Middle School. We started with 8 out of 10 of the targeted kids (those with the highest number of unexcused all-day absences). Other kids we hadn't targeted kept pushing their way into our class until we had 15, so we have a dropout group and a control group in the same bunch. 100% success: every kid tore a PC down to the motherboard then reassembled it correctly and completely by the end of the class. (!!!) A couple kids hung around after class to help us move computers from where we had landed them to the storage area we have been assigned. We got to talking about their situation and why they had been cutting school. It's pretty clear that these are really bright kids who can go a long way if we can engage them, and we are sure we can.
Day 2:
Fully engaged! Both teachers and students. I'll bet you can't distinguish our high-truancy kids from the controls. We couldn't, either, once they started working on the computers.
Day 3:
An almost great day. One of our high-truancy kids decided this wasn't for him. Everyone else buckled down and made a lot of progress. We had a race to see who was quickest to disassemble and reassemble a PC. Not everybody wanted to compete, but when the race was over, the group who competed helped everyone else to disassemble and reassemble the machines. We all got lots of practice.
It is interesting to watch the more confident students help those who are hesitant. It is clear they want everyone to get it.
Below is our Top Gun with the MP3 player we awarded as first prize:
Day 4:
Power up! We plugged in the machines and tried to determine what works, what doesn't. Working with end-of-life inventory is something of a treasure hunt. So far we have seven machines running and have started to set them up.
Today the kids learned how to "fdisk" and delete existing partitions, how to set a primary partition and how to format the hard disk drive. As soon as we had the drives formatted, we started installation of Windows98. We chose this operating system for its relative simplicity and because it runs well on a Pentium III/750. And also because Microsoft issues free licenses for Win98 to schools.
By the end of the 2-hour class we had three machines up and running and were working on the next batch.
Day 5:
We are starting to get feedback from the Webb Middle School faculty and staff. Ms. Marilyn Stewart, Dropout Intervention Specialist for Webb, reported that the students attending our afternoon program (2:45 - 5:00 p.m.) and who, in her words, constitute the "hardest of the hard core", have attended all their scheduled classes since they began our program.
Ms. Barnett, who has a number of our participants in her 8th period Language Arts class immediately preceding our program, reports that our participants "can hardly wait" to get to our program.
That's the good news. The bad news is this crowd has a low threshold for activities requiring patience. Some of the students are eager enough to learn computer mechanics that they forge on ahead regardless. Others reach their limit of boredom rather quickly. If we expect this group to concentrate on a time-consuming task during which not much is happening, such as loading Windows, we are likely to lose them. We need to offer more physical activity, such as building computers, to fully engage this group.
Day 6:
Today was MP3 and e-mail day. We started by showing the students where they could obtain a copy of Audacity, an open source music editor they can use to record legal music downloads. We then showed them how to obtain an open source MP3 encoder. Then we showed the students how to record songs from sites that make them available without charge, such as AOL's Music Radio service and use their encoder to make an MP3. Tomorrow we will show the students how to transfer their MP3 files from a computer to an MP3 player.
None of our participants had an e-mail account at the start of the session. By the end of the session they all did. The students experienced first-hand the computer world's requirement for precision when they discovered that matching password entries to open an e-mail account requires an exact match. We will send each student an e-mail daily to get them in the habit of checking their e-mail:
Day 7:
MP3s wall-to-wall. All participants have successfully recorded their favorite songs and encoded them as MP3s. We got so involved with making and downloading MP3s to our new MP3 players that we forgot to check our e-mail. We'll do that tomorrow.
As we get to know these students better, some surprising facts are emerging. Some of the kids who are the most chronic truants are also among the brightest kids in the school. They say that their usual classes bore them. Whether or not this is a legitimate complaint, they are not bored here. The challenge will be to sustain their interest.
Sustaining their interest is not a given. Several of our students have very low tolerance for activities requiring patience. Their threshold of frustration is low enough that getting them to persist in efforts to master a challenging skill requires patience on the part of instructors, who need to be deft in how they handle students. This is a crowd with well-developed avoidance mechanisms when faced with situations they don't like.
One-on-one instruction seems to be an effective way to help students conquer their frustration, but this will necessitate very low student-teacher ratios until the students develop the habits and confidence to become active learners on their own. We need to be aware that helping students to winnow information to find what they need to solve problems is not a habit many have formed. Convincing students that they really can do this successfully may be our most important contribution to their education.
Day 8:
Today has been a learning experience for students and instructor alike. To compensate for the differing rates at which our students learn, we would like the students who solve a problem first to help those who are still struggling for a solution. This is great in theory, challenging in practice.
It is very clear that our students are highly motivated to learn computer applications that are of immediate value to them, such as recording their favorite songs, converting the sound files to MP3 format and downloading the results to their MP3 players. All of the group are willing to help their neighbor, but at this point their own understanding of the applications is still tenuous enough that their help isn't always helpful.
Day 9:
This was a good day. All seven of our top truants were present and participating. We originally targeted the ten students at Webb Middle School who have the highest number of unexcused all-day absences this school year. The range is from thirty-eight to ninety-three days. Eight showed up for our first session two weeks ago. One decided within a couple of days that this wasn't for him.
Of the remaining seven, four have had no unexcused absences since the beginning of the program. One has had one unexcused absence, one has had three unexcused absences and one has had five unexcused absences. We figure that we are experiencing a success rate of 5/7, or about 70%.
As we get a better understanding of what interests these kids and how to deliver it, we expect our success rate will climb. What pleases us most is their classroom attendence and participation have improved substantially. Several teachers have noted improved classroom performance by our participants since the beginning of our program.
Day 10:
Today we took flight. Literally. Robert Youens, a world-ranked radio-controlled aircraft pilot brought several of his airplanes to Webb Middle School today and demonstrated for our students the type of aircraft we will build and fly this summer.
Here Mr. Youens is preparing one of the actuators that will control the tail surfaces:
This is one of the indoor aircraft Mr. Youens brought to demonstrate:
This is one of the indoor aircraft in flight:
Of all the students present, it was the girls who showed the greatest interest in flying. One of the girls who had been among the most reluctant to join our program asked if she could come to summer school so she could learn to fly these aircraft. You bet she can!
We are still batting 7 for 7, plus 8 kids from the control group.
Day 11:
With only two days remaining until the end of the term, the students are getting anxious to be out of here. In spite of the general antsiness, 6 of our top 7 were present and participating, as were 7 of the control group.
Unless you know who is who, you still cannot distinguish the high-truancy students from the controls once the class is under way, except that 3 or 4 of the former group are consistently the quickest to acquire new information and skills. The high-truancy group is generally less risk-averse and more willing to attack new problems than the controls.
It is very clear that we need to keep the currculum fresh and changing. When we repeat a lesson to make sure everyone gets it, the attention of those who already mastered the skill begins to wander.
The technology we are developing to permit home- or hospital-bound disabled veterans to tutor our students could also be used to deliver individualized curricula. This would let us implement individual education plans tailored to each student's needs. We should test this approach during summer school.
Day 12:
This was a GREAT day! All 7 of our top 7 were present and participating. We completed refurbishing 3 of the 7 computers the students will take home with them. We made enough progress on the remainder to be sure that they will be ready to take home at the end of class tomorrow.
Ms. Stewart, on behalf of Mr. Hunt and Webb Middle School, presented all of our participants with Certificates of Completion, recognizing our students' improved school attendance and participation in class during this pilot course. Ms. Stewart also presented each participant with a notice from the court dismissing the pending truancy cases against them and their parents.
It is true that these students have not thrived in the traditional classroom and have sought to escape it. It is not true that they are disinterested in education. They have just demonstrated that when they are sufficiently motivated, they do want an education and are willing to work for it. It is up to us adults to offer our kids opportunities that show them that their dreams can be realized if they are willing to work for them. They are all our kids. We cannot continue to write off so many of them.
End of Term:
We finished refurbishing the last of the computers today. Everybody got to take their computers home with them. The smiles say more than anything we can:
