Several weeks ago our superintendent challenged all departments and grade level teams to come up with a series of goals around the idea of creating a “generous and welcoming” school community. We were asked to create thirty and sixty day goals, and goals for next fall. The notes from my department included the phrase “Mission Seek and Uplift” under 60 Day Goals. Someone added “Can someone clarify this?” to our shared doc. I’m not sure what we meant we originally wrote this, but here’s what I added:
Between now and June 1, we will seek out and reconnect with students who are currently getting a D or an F in our classes and develop a plan with the student to raise the grade to at least a C by the end of the marking period. This will include the ability for students to show proficiency toward essential standards to earn credit. We will exercise grace and exempt failed or missing work from early in the semester if the student can demonstrate proficiency now. We will give full credit for makeup work during this period.
I once sat in a meeting where third grade teachers argued vehemently that their students should not get full credit on a spelling test unless they can pass it the first time. They taught it—the kids should have learned it. A fifth grade math teacher and I disagreed with them; students earned full credit even if it took them longer to master material or a new skill.
Each week I print a grade check for my advisory students and we have the same conversation about any low grades: “Have you talked to your teachers? Do you have the missing work? Can you retake the tests?” In my AVID class we also do weekly grade checks, and I suggest that students bring questions about the classes they’re struggling in to tutorial. With some students I offer to talk to the teacher, but for the most part the burden is on the student to figure out how to raise their grade.
But what if we, as teachers, took on that burden instead? Of course, many teachers already do this, but what if the mission of an entire department, or an entire school, was to seek out struggling students and help them succeed during these final weeks of the school year? Not because an administrator is hounding you about graduation, or because you don’t want to deal with that one awful parent, but because our students need our help.
We all have students who have given up. Maybe they’ve missed so many days that they don’t know how to rejoin. Maybe they fear students calling attention to their return. Maybe you’re the problem. Have you ever greeted a returning student with a sarcastic, “Hey, nice of you to join us?” Maybe that’s why they don’t want to come back.
It takes courage to ask for help when you’re struggling, courage to try to pass a class that you’re currently failing. It’s much easier to act like you don’t care.
What are you doing to seek and uplift your students who have given up?
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