Student Engagement Part 1: What if All Really Meant All?

Of the 55 students who attended our week of Freshman
Academy their average daily attendance is approaching
94%. This is a huge victory and 14% up from the 9th graders
one year ago.  But what do we do with those kids
that are not attending, are not engaged and are not a part of the
community? We pursue them and teach them! 

The major question the I believe all schools and teachers ask is "what do we do with that kid?" The one who won't attend, who won't engage, who won't comply. What do we as educators do with those kids who do not follow our scope and sequence, our graphic organizers and our pacing guides? We tend to keep them in school, perhaps hoping for a transfer or determining that the way our school operates is just simply not the best fit for that particular student. What we do with these students often says a lot about our belief in our own systems and that, if they have somehow fallen through the cracks, they are the anomaly to our system and not the norm - we simply chalk it up as an inconsistency. This is an accepted practice and an unopposed norm but what if all schools had the audacity and the creativity to teach every kid - even that kid? 

We have roughly 65 freshmen at Manual High School, a number that ebbs and flows at this time of year as school choice is settled and paperwork is finalized. Of that 65  as many as 50 students are doing what is asked. They are attending, they are participating and they are passing. Five more students are on the fringe but are making it through this transition into 9th grade with a quiver of interventions and then there are the five. Habitually disruptive, absent, defiant and seemingly determined to fail. These are the students that are often acceptable casualties; students who left as quickly as they came and are often non-factors in the legacy of their class. These are the kids that as a team we are working to capture. 

To retain these students goes beyond the alphabet soup of interventions. No RTI, PBIS or RJ will engage. Only creative and personalized plans will work for these students and this is the tedious work that must be done in order to make all students successful and to shift the culture of some kids succeed to the culture of all kids succeed.  For our small but important number of fringe students, the team at Manual High School is taking the following steps: 

• Life Coaching Caseloads: Teachers and school leaders with the innate ability to build strong relationships with students are given a small number of students that are on their "Life Coaching Caseload." As a life coach responsibilities include home visits, data checks, mentoring and time spent with that student. 
• Personalized Learning Plans: Students are given high interest assignments that are standards based with grade-level rigor. However, these assignments carry the content that the student decides to learn about. Student can still master their Common Core standards in each content area by learning about topics that are of high interest and in which they choose themselves. 
• Flexible Scheduling: Students that are struggling with the capacity to sit for extended periods of time are given 1-3 "alternative work zones" in which they can access up to three times per week to continue their classwork in a new environment. 
• Daily Monitoring: In my office I have the pictures of every at-risk 9th grader at Manual. They are laminated photos with every intervention, IEP or behavior plan and intervention written on the back. They have magnets and sit on a continuum of 1 (low-risk today) to a 4 (high-risk today). I look at the photos each morning and tailor my discussions with kids accordingly and then adjust the photos each night. This is essentially an triage that allows me as the Dean to make sure I am talking to the right kids each and every day. 

These are the new interventions we have in place in addition to our RTI and PBIS systems. These are personalized, nuanced and fluid but that is exactly what it takes to engage and retain every student. The lift is heavy to do this level of intervention but once these outlying students are engaged then the culture of the building starts to shift because students know that their support is strong, stratified and intentional. In the quest to make all students mean all students this is the level of work that has to be done. We are just starting on this endeavor but I am confident that, as the class of 2020 walks across the stage those who we initially never thought would make it will join their peers and celebrate their accomplishment. This is the work that has to be done because all kids means all kids.