We have an attendance problem in Baltimore. For the past three school years, over 40% percent of Baltimore City public high school students have missed a month or more of school making them chronically absent1 and last school year 49% of 9th graders missed at least a month of school.2
Imagine what would happen if you didn’t show up for work a couple of days each month.
We know that poor attendance leads to course failure, which very often leads to high school drop out.
While City Schools have begun to address this problem in earnest, I believe something important needs to be added to their efforts.
In the study, Students’ experience of the first term of high school, researchers with Flinders University School of Education asked students transitioning to high school, “What makes you most happy?” Nearly half of the students responded, “Being with friends.”
Friendships matter—fostering them to improve school attendance is my audacious idea.
We know that teenagers want to be with their friends and we know that some teenagers have difficulty making new friends.
What if every high school had a comprehensive program to facilitate friendships amongst their incoming 9th graders? City Schools should consider creating opportunities for new high school students to become friends, during summer transitional programs, through increased after-school opportunities, and by providing socialization time during the school day while also ensuring that students have the opportunity to talk and learn about positive relationships.
In Baltimore our high schools should intentionally schedule students so that they share classes. High schools should also provide students time to socialize through field trips, group learning, peer relationship groups, and pick-up games and sports.
I have it on the best authority, my teenager and his friends, that these kinds of activities and opportunities result in new friendships in new schools; where students should be.
1www.mdreportcard.org
2 The Baltimore City Student Attendance Work Group Presentation
This kind of peer-to-peer mentoring works. But I would take it a step further. In addition to field trips and other activities designed for ninth graders only, consider up-and-down peer support.
Some private school networks with lower and middle schools create similar bonds through peer-to-peer programs between schools from time-to-time (so you don’t forget where you came from), and within the same school, with each incoming middle schooler having a peer in his/her final year (so you know where you’re going). My niece in Colorado is part of a group of high school seniors this year which makes certain that all ninth graders are welcomed. Maria Montessori recognized the value of creating small learning groups with kids of different ages.
I agree that activities for kids in the 9th grade would help them bond, though — like Echo Hill where kids stay for a week in an outdoor setting. Forty years ago, a family friend used her own farm in rural Howard County to give kids from an urban environment a chance to experience another way of life for a week at a time.
Susan Jones