Redemption

The question always comes up with what do you do when you have a senior that is failing. With the movement of a junior to a senior status two things happen. The first is the all important senioritis. This condition affects a lot of our kids on a daily basis. I am thinking about making a PSA, and starting a group to help fund research in this horrible disease. The second is a sense of entitlement. That is the worse one because at lease senioritis eventually goes away on its own. Entitlement likes to stick around. These two conditions are running rampant through the halls of our school. They are moving faster than herpes at a beer pong convention. Despite our pleas to stay with us and our assurances of a failing grade if they do not, kids are moving closer to the line every day. It was this reason that my school set out for a new program. This program allowed kids to earn credit back if they failed a six weeks. The predominant subject that pioneered this program was the English department. They spent long hours and helped kids right and left to prepare.
  The results of this recovery project, or redemption as I call it, were OK. It seemed that this program helped some of the kids to really embrace the chance. Some of them put the same effort into it that they had put into the last semester. The result was a few kids that even with a make up still did not make it. In this project the kids had to write a paper that was roughly two pages, and present their information in a PowerPoint. The presentation was given to a panel of teachers. Their English teacher did not sit on the panel, so their would be no argument for bias. I sat on a panel and listened to three presentations. The good thing was that we had a really good presentation. The bad news is that we had two really bad presentations. The two kids did not put anything effort into the project. They really fell flat in the presentation. This is disappointing because it really shows that even when we put a lot of work into a program to help them, that sometimes we cannot do anything but let them make their own way. That is the point, sometimes we have to let them fail on their own for them to learn. This is unfortunate because those two other kids actual needed the help did not take advantage of their opportunity. My hope for them is that they actually learn something from it at some point in the future. In the end all a teacher can do is give them every opportunity to succeed and hope that some take advantage of that before they fall off the edge.

Until Tomorrow,

Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever.

John Mason Brown (1900–1969) American drama critic and author.