Retention (16)

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Retention

A1. What practices make a difference in retaining students (x8)?

• Students completing the High School at American Hispanic School PAY their tuition. Later on, most of them are reimbursed by their employers; but payment effort is one of the reasons to continue.
• Practices that make a difference are those that perceive learners as individuals (human beings with feeling and ability to think…) rather than robots. Practices that see learners and teachers as equals (an administrator or a teacher should not be labeled or perceived as superior than a student, but as individual with different skills willing to learn from each other). Practices that make a difference focus not only on educational needs, but also on personal, social, economic and cultural needs of all who are involved in the process of “real or true learning”…
• Setting a climate conducive to learning could be using soft music when students are coming into the classroom.

A2. What factors influence retention? (x5)

• Our Adult students make the Independent Study assignments “handwritten” and are tested at least once a month; it’s really harder but they are building their own portfolio, they can see and show evidence of their hard work and achievement.
• Some factors that influence retention could be: location of program, program scheduling /class atmosphere and class size. Other important factors, reasonable pay for both full-time and part-time staff (not all under-paid teachers care enough to devote time into preparing meaningful activities for a class). I also think that good rapport (good communication) between teachers and learners are factors that influence retention.
• A number of things:
  • Treating everyone as individuals and really trying to meet their needs and tailor the curriculum to them personally
  • Having fun in class while learning
  • Realizing adults drift in and out--and not taking it personally or penalizing them for it (today, a student borrowed a GED book to take to India for two months)
  • A classroom culture where it is not a big deal to have a learning disability, brain injury, be on psychiatric medication, speak another language better than English, be homeless. As we Quakers say, "There is that of God in every person." This creates an atmosphere of trust.
  • Getting to know each other as people and learners-- group work seems to really promote community in my class
  • Education versus training (I've been thinking a lot about this one) A true education is learning how to think. Training is being told how to do something. Figuring out different ways to solve the same math problem results in education and telling someone one set way to do each kind of math problem is training. I want my students to be educated, not trained. Then, when they leave me, they can learn anything on their own. For me, at the moment, critical thinking is one of the most important skills I can teach my students. Well, OK, I admit this has been one of my hobby-horses for some time now. I'll be seeing many of you (I hope) at the CALPRO training on critical thinking in Napa, birthplace of the California Critical Thinking movement, in March on this one. I want a bumper sticker that reads "Baloney Detective."

A3. What affects student achievement so that they stay?

A4. Why [is it that] (ESL/ABE/GED) students do not attend regularly?

A5. What are the essential components of intake and orientation that influence students staying more than 12 hours? ""A6. Setting a climate for learning could include playing soft music while the learners are coming into the classroom.