Inquiry
High school dropout is a serious social and educational issue. In a school of 2000 students, 167 (8.5%) are dropping out of school. My inquiry was on school-associated causes of student dropouts. You can click on Inquiry to see my research.
Interesting fact I discovered in my research was that teachers’ perspectives of why students dropout of school differed from why students actually dropout. Most teachers pointed to lack of parental support as core problem of student dropout; however, contrary to teachers’ predictions, the most frequently identified causes of dropouts were school-related factors.
Students were dropping out of school, because of following main factors:
1) Boredom
2) Absenteeism (which was caused by boredom)
3) Relationship with Teachers
4) Relationship with Peers
5) Lack of Counselling Support
I am only beginning my journey as an educator, but I want to begin my journey as a teacher whom the students can relate to. I want to be a teacher who thinks in the perspectives of her students.
There is nothing I can do as a teacher once a student drops out of school. But, there is so much I can do when the student seats in my class. To keep students in my class, I plan on carrying out the following:
- Making my classes engaging and fun
- Building healthy student-teacher relationships with my students
- Creating a comfortable learning environment
I believe the above three plans are essential in getting students to come to class to learn. Boredom was identified as the starting cause of student dropouts. Once student feels bored, they start skipping classes, and eventually dropout because they cannot catch up.
I majored in Marketing and Marketing was my favorite subject to teach during my practicum. Because I enjoyed teaching the subject, I could see the students were engaged as well. I always tried to connect my marketing lessons to real-world examples and keep the content current. However, I struggled to keep more academic subjects, such as Economics 12 and Financial Accounting 12, as engaging and fun as my marketing class. Because the content was heavy with difficult mathematical components, it was difficult to keep Economics and Financial Accounting classes “interesting.” I plan on working on this weakness through brining in personality into the lessons. My SA suggested making lessons relevant, such as doing journal entries for the school store or putting in students’ names in economics problems. On top of this, I plan on being creative with my lessons; for example, I want to get students to keep journal entries while playing the Monopoly.
Relationship with the teacher was identified as an important factor in keeping students in school. Many students who dropped out of school said their teachers were “unfair” to them. I plan on building connections and healthy student-teacher relationships with my students through on-going communication. My SAs wrote in their final reports that I have great rapports with my students, and identified it as one of my main strenths. Because I did not have much age gap, I could relate more to my students and and think in their perspectives. I am aware that, in a high school setting, I will have over 100 students in a semester. However, I believe I am responsible for keeping all of my 100+ students in my class – in school. I also believe that once I build connections with my students, I will able to create comfortable learning environment.