The Importance Of The Transition From Middle To High School

The transition from middle to high school is a pivotal point for most Americans and what you decide to do after that determines how the rest of your life pans out. There is a recurring problem of students dropping of high school each year because of things that happen inside or outside of school, also known as push and pull factors. The most simplest things can push or pull out of high school and turn your life completely around such as a family death or you are getting bullied at school. The National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University conducted a study on why students dropped out of high school in 2006. They said that a pull factor was that 38% of of students dropped out because of failing grades or was failing school. Another …show more content…
In Concordia University in Oregon they talk about how teachers can prevent high school dropouts. They gave three examples that stood out to me. They were being proactive, encouraging the students, and paying more attention to the students. Being proactive is noticing the students that are struggling at an early stage. If you see that in middle school a student’s grades are failing and they are not at school as much be proactive and have a sit down with them and talk to them about things you are concerned of and how you can help to fix it. For example, when I was struggling in one of my classes my teacher came up to me and asked what was going on and what they could do to help me pass the class. Ultimately I ended up passing the class with a B because the teacher was being proactive and saw before that I needed help. This also ties into encouraging and paying more attention to the students. Giving hope to the students and saying you can do it and giving them confidence can go a long way for some people. Also teachers can make learning relevant. Furger says that, “In "The Silent Epidemic," 47 percent of dropouts said a major reason for leaving school was that their classes were not interesting”. This is astonishing because this number is close to 50%. So this means that students were sitting in class bored out of their minds not focused in the class that they were in. To solve this teachers can hand out an interest inventory or specifically what do you guys want to do in this class. I have seen this done at Rockhurst University. My teacher had sent out an email asking us to take a survey on how you felt about his class. Some of the questions was how could I improve my class, what should we subjects should we talk about in class, and what interest you. Things like this could go a long way and have classes that you take fun to go