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| Reflections-Dropouts |
Issue:
High School Dropouts
John Cribb, Chair
 We started out social senior action class, SSAP, with relatively easy and with a laid back learning attitude about what a social action is. We learned about all types of social actions, such as non-violence protest, charity work, using the government and law to create change, and violent social action. Later we learned about radicalism and how it relates to social action. Radicalism measures how extreme an action is and how much pressure it puts on those in power to make change. Sometimes the radicalism of an action can be a measure of how effective your action is in general. We also watched movies and read about some of the greatest social actions and the greatest activists of all time. Later in the year, we focused on the issue for which we were planning to create a social action. My group focused on the high school dropout crisis and retention rates. We spent months researching the topic. We read about the viewpoints and the opinions of experts. This gave us insight into the prevalence and causes of the high school dropout crisis. To further our understanding, we conducted our own survey and asked people around Boston about their knowledge of the dropout issue. The purpose of this survey was to compare the school experience of students living in high-income places compared to low and medium income locations. We later analyzed the data we collected and used it to write individual rationales.
With our new insight into the high school dropout crisis, we were ready to brainstorm effective actions to create long-standing change. As a group, we decided to attack the problem at its root. We created attractive plaques to hang up in schools and libraries in Boston. Unfortunately, two out of the three schools we were planning to work with did not let us hang our plaques in their school. However, I think just having our plaques hung up in a middle school will help keep some potential dropouts in school. We also chose to hang our plaques up in a Boston Public Library. We also gave a short presentation in the schools where were planning to hang up our plaques. To accompany this action we also spoke at the state house in support of the S.290 bill, which had the goal of lowering the dropout rate in Massachusetts by 50% within five years.
This social action would not have been possible if we did not do any research. Before you can have a solution, you have to understand the problem. Even though I had a kind of understanding of the issue prior to my research, the research helped deepen my understanding. The statistics were very striking to me. Even though I knew that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to drop out than Whites, I didn't know Blacks and Latinos were 2-3 times as likely to dropout than their White and Asian counterparts. Statistics also helped me correct my previous misconceptions. I previously thought that Asians did not really struggle with the dropout issue, but due to my research, I learned that Samoans are just as likely to dropout as Blacks and Latinos. Because of my intense research, I felt comfortable talking about the topic because I really knew what I was talking about.
Before we started to focus on our specific actions, we learned about different types of social action. We compared violent social action to non-violent social action. Even though violent social action can rank high in the beam of radicalism, non-violent social action also has the potential to create significant change. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi are two individuals who embody the effectiveness of non-violent social action. We had them in mind while designing our action.. Though our action was not extreme, it still put pressure on lawmakers to create change. When we went to talk at the State House, I felt like our testimonies were very effective. The representatives were attentive when we delivered our testimonies. If the bill passes through the House and becomes law, we can say that we had a hand in the passing of the bill. Our social action has potential to create long-lasting change. Our plaques at the school will be there permanently. This means that every year students will read the plaques and will be moved by the messages that are on them. Potentially these plaques will inform the students of the dropout crisis and the consequences of dropping out. Hopefully, this will help them to make an informed decision to stay in school. I feel like my social action was an overall success.
During the process in which we were doing research and designing our action, we encountered many challenges. The time constraint was the biggest challenge for us to overcome. We had a lot of pressure breathing down our necks at all times. We had to move very fast, at a pace that I was not comfortable with. The way we remedied the problem was by using our time more effectively.. During crunch time, we even stayed after school until study hall was over in order to complete our goal for the day. Another issue was the conflicting ideas of each group member. We spent a lot of time debating our action. We all had a hard time committing ourselves to one specific action. This taught me how difficult it is to work in a team, specifically being chair. I've worked in groups before but never on something this big or long. I realized that I could not just give orders and force my will on my group mates. In order for us to move forward in our action I had to get all my group mates on board with my action. The way we dealt with this issue was by splitting up the tasks amongst ourselves. Everyone was in charge of their tasks, so there were not any debates. We also had a lot of setbacks when we were designing our project; we had to find alternative ways to move on in our action. One our biggest set backs was not being able to get plexiglass donated. It was also too expensive for us to buy the amount necessary for us to complete our action. We had to go in a different direction, and I think it was a better move than getting plexiglass. Instead of plexiglass, we got picture frames. This took less time to create and was less expensive. Amidst these many setbacks, we had to re-design our action many times. These were the biggest challenges in the design of our action.
Everyone in our group has been affected by the dropout crisis, so we could relate to the importance of our social action. All of my group mates had brothers who had dropped out of school, and my best friend (who I consider a brother) dropped out of school. Therefore, we had some firsthand experience on the issue. Doing this action also taught me about myself. I learned that I do not have strong leadership qualities, despite being smart. I couldn't really guide my group in the process. There were a few things that I think held me back. Mostly, everyone in my group was my intellectual equal. Therefore, their thinking was on the same plane as mine and they wouldn't let me just force my ideas upon them. I also think that others in my group were natural leaders and are used to taking the lead. Since they were not in charge, they either had a rebellious attitude or were critical of my leadership skills. I also lacked the ability to see the big picture. While trying to lead my group to a successful action project, I spent too much time focusing on a tiny part of the action instead of seeing the big picture. That is the reason my group wasted a lot of time at the beginning of the action design process.
The social action help me realized how disadvantaged people in my community are. Prior to this action, I thought that most students, especially those in urban areas, dropped out of school simply because they did not value their education. A lot of the time I really did not pay attention how the school system fails them. This brought me back to my days at a regular public school, where the school administrators did not care about me at all. I would miss many days of school but nobody cared. The classes were packed, and teachers were not able to teach. Now I was able to see the issue from both perspectives.
I do not think going through this process made me more committed to fighting for justice. I simply cannot change the world; however, I do think I can do some small things. I will try to keep those who are close to me from falling victim to the hands of injustice. I will also try not to commit injustice towards others.
Looking back at this action in ten years, I will be in the state of shock. I will be shocked at all my accomplishments. I will be shocked by the boldness possessed in going to the statehouse and talking to an audience when I did not know how they were going to receive me. However, I will feel some sense of being cheap in my accomplishments because I did what I did because I had to not because I wanted to.
This action, more than anything else I ever accomplished at Codman embodies Codman's motto, "To lead, To learn, To serve" I had the privilege of leading my group to a successful social action, I learned extensively about the issue, and I also served my community by increasing their awareness about the issue.
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Jenna Marseille
 My experience with the senior social action project was a very rocky one. Going into this project I began to get very discouraged because I didn't feel as if my topic of High School Dropouts and Retention was as important as the many other dilemmas that people face on a daily basis. However, once I started researching information about high school dropouts, I realized how important it was for people to know about the impact dropping out of high school can have on the lives of dropouts and the people around them. I also realized that the reason a lot of people have dropped out of school is because the system has failed them. I had always thought that the only person to blame for a student's choice to dropout of school is the person who chose to drop out him or herself. However, I came to see how often it is the system itself which generates dropouts. The process of researching high school dropouts was an extremely long one. We had to learn all the basics about school systems and the reasons why people drop out of high school. In turn, we engaged in original quantitative research. Based on the information that we gained from our research, we came up with our own individual one- and two-variable questions. As a group we collected data about our group's questions so that we could engage in statistical analysis about public opinion regarding high school dropouts.
With all the knowledge we gained about high school dropout, we were able to come up with an effective social action to help reduce the rate at which kids drop out of high school. Based on what I learned about high school dropouts and the age at which people are forced to make the decision to drop out, I felt that a non-violent social action would be most effective action. Also given the sensitivity of our topic, an informative action seemed to be the most powerful. This was the logic that lay behind our choice to create a public art piece that would promote awareness about the dropout crisis and push students and school administrators to make choices that might reduce the dropout rate. After completing my social action, I realized that although violent social actions get the most immediate attention, a non-violent social action also has the capacity to receive lots of attention in order to create change. My social action consisted of putting plaques up in schools and libraries which consisted of statistics and testimonials of people affected by the high school dropout crisis. Further, my committee testified on behalf of a bill which was pushing to increase the age at which high school students can make the choice to dropout. The bill also made it a state goal to reduce the dropout rate by 50% in 5 years. It was very clear that a lot of people were influenced by my social action based on the amount of support my social action group received. I supported putting plaques up as my social action because I felt that this would attract the audience who is most at risk of becoming high school dropouts-young people of color.
Looking back at my social action, the most powerful part was the reaction we received from students when we presented our project to them. In our presentation we played a brief game of Stand up, Sit Down. We asked the students to stand up if they have a sibling who has dropped out of high school and when I looked up, everybody in the room was standing. I, too, stood up when this question was asked. Along with everybody else in the world, I, too, am greatly affected by high school dropouts. After playing this game with the students, I saw that they had learned something from our project. I think that the students who we presented to were the only ones to really gain anything from my social action. However, I would have liked to make the impact of this social action much bigger, so that more people might have a chance to gain knowledge about this crisis. This is a crisis that affects communities as a whole, because when one person decides not to finish high school, the community as a whole becomes victim to rising taxes, criminal activity, and lower levels of economic productivity.
I learned that even though I will be walking the high school graduation stage in June, I am still a victim of high school dropouts. Just as easily as anyone else, I could have chosen to dropout of high school, since inner city black kids so often are not offered curricula that are as dynamic as that of affluent white students. I learned that urban communities are the one suffering the most because of the horrendous rates at which students drop out of high school.
Working with my group to create this social action was also a very difficult task. From the start, we lacked a group leader to guide the group. It became extremely difficult for my group to stay on task, and as a result my group started falling behind in what needed to be completed. Along with falling behind, we had to continue changing our action plan since we had no adult there telling us that our ideas were almost impossible. I also learned that when working in a group there will always be some people who really slack off and you just have to be there to pick up the pieces because your grade depends on their work also.
After completing my social action, I still feel the same as I did about fighting for something. Although the topic of high school dropouts affects my life, it is still nothing I feel extremely powerfully about fighting to change. I believe that when trying to fight to make something just, you must first be able to deeply devote yourself to that issue and feel like it is something you would die in order to change. Therefore, I am not yet committed to fighting for justice in my life. If it was ten years from now and I was looking back at my social action project, I think I would be proud that although I didn't put a stop to the crisis of high school dropout, I tried. I also think I would look at the statistics and be glad that I didn't allow myself to become a high school dropout, but instead earned a P.H.D.
I embodied the Codman motto "To Learn, To Lead, To Serve" through my social action. I researched high school dropouts and retention to the point where I would be considered an expert on the crisis. Then, I took the knowledge that I learned through my research and served my community by creating a social action, which informed them of the crisis. By studying high school dropouts and then giving back to the community through my art display of plaques and the testimonies my group gave at the State House, I feel like I was demonstrating my capacity to be a true leader in my community.
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Stephen Santos
 In my senior social action project, our group had to do extensive research about our SSAP topic: High school drop out and retention. The research that I did was done in about a month's span. We researched two main topics. First, the group researched general information about the drop out crisis to get a basic understanding of the scope and causes of the problem. After realizing the severity of our topic, we went more in depth. Each member of our group chose a question that we personally wanted to investigate and research in more detail. We used our research to write a rational. The goal of this rationale was to persuade our group that our individual topic was the most important one around which to design our final action around. The next written assignment was the data analysis. We analyzed the data that we collected. We made graphs and looked at how our questions related to each other. After all of the research was completed, our group chose which topic would be most important to act on, and which design would make our action going the most effective. Amongst all of the delay and changing of ideas, we finally came upon idea with which that everyone agreed. Our action had two different parts. First my high school drop out team gave testimonies at the state house to show support for a bill to the senate that would hopefully cut the dropout rate in half in the next 5 years. In addition we constructed plaques that would display statistical information, about what we learned from the combined knowledge between all of our rationales and research. Also on the plaques were testimonies from school teachers, administrators, and actual high school dropouts The plaques that we created are on display in the Codman Square Library and the Solomon Lewenberg Middle School.
When researching our individual topics our group decided that a non-violent social action would be the most effective and would be the most informative. The high school dropout crisis is concerned with and, more importantly starts with, young adults. This knowledge backed up the decision to follow through with a non-violent action. The benefits of a non-violent action is that this type of action combats injustice with justice instead of any sort of violence. The reason that I wanted to make change around the dilemma of high school dropouts is that this topic directly relates to and affects me. My brother and father both dropped out of school and, having seen how this affected their lives, I know how important it is to staying in school.
During my experience doing SSAP, the most striking moment was seeing our group's ideas and hard work come to life. When I think about the struggles that my group had coming up with an idea, and the doubts that I had about our ability to complete our action, I am amazed that we actually were successful. When I think about my overall action, I think that since our group completed the action it is a success. However, there is a lingering question in my mind about whether or not the action will generate any lasting change. While we were attempting to tackle the huge issue of designing what type of action to complete, the concern of what will realistically make people change always pressed in my mind. I wanted to do something that would not put total blame and responsibility just on the kids that are really the victims of this crisis. I know that telling students about the negative effects about dropping out will just be the same rehashed stuff that they hear countless times from their parents, teachers and families. I wanted to do something that would change the school systems that perpetuate the injustices that make students drop out. From the beginning, I was thinking about doing something political. So when the idea of going to the state house was an option I knew that this would be in my opportunity to make the most effective kind of change.
During the SSAP work, I faced a lot of challenges. My challenges ranged from dealing with class work inside the classroom to dealing with people outside the school. With this class, there was a lot of research that had to be completed. This proved to be a challenge for me because I could never hand in assignments on time. On top of my typical struggles of passing in assignments on time, I actually had some problems with the difficulty of the work. The process of doing the research for the rationales and work for the data analysis was challenging to complete by myself. I had to learn that everything did not come quickly for me and that I couldn't just learn all I needed to know about a topic in a week or so. I had to ask for help. While doing SSAP, I learned that I lack a lot of social skills. When it came time to contacting people by phone for donations or setting up interviews with schools, I always told someone else in my group (mainly the females) to do the job. I had a terribly hard time communicating with people. Along with this lack of communication, I realized that the dedication to pull off an effective social action is overwhelming. If I didn't have the structure of the actual SSAP class, or the fact that this is a Codman Academy graduation requirement, I would have quit mid way through the process. On top of the huge workload, the rejection of our ideas was depressing. It seemed like every time our group asked for something, whether it was a donation of wood or permission to hang our plaques into schools , a lot of the time the answer was a no. These constant rejections made it difficult to continue and be enthusiastic about the project. When I look back at my social action experience in ten years, I will hopefully look at a city of Boston that has cut its dropout rate by 50% as proposed in the bill for which our group testified. In ten years the plaques that we installed will most likely have been long taken down, but I would hope that for whatever time that the plaques are up, the plaques will inform people and change their decision to drop out of school. If the plaques change just one person's decision to drop out of high school I would considered this a success. In ten years, I will look back at the amount of work and the determination it's taken to complete this project and I will appreciate all that we accomplished. In my life I am hoping to try and commit myself fully to fight the injustice of being a male student in today's sexist school climate. I will try to continue fighting for justice in my life and when I look at my experience from SSAP I only hope that this experience will help me in doing so.
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Tatiana Hurse
 As part of my graduation requirement, I completed a class called the Senior Social Action Project. In the class, four groups focused on different topics that affect the world. The topic that that I focused on was high school dropout and retention. The purpose of this project was to promote change and raise awareness to our young minorities about the high school crisis. In our social action, we created plaques that consist of testimonials and statistic that we hung at three different schools as well as a public presentation to classes at the school.
I have worked with three of my fellow classmates on a social action. Working on this social action was not the easiest thing. There were times when I walked into class knowing it was time for SSAP and just wanted to leave. The reason why I felt this way was that most of the tasks that were given to me were difficult and took a lot of time and patience. For example, there was a time when as a group we had to research information about our issue. Finding information was not hard, but analyzing the information and figuring out what information was useful was the hardest. At the time, my group was falling apart and everyone did what they wanted to do. As a result, we fell behind in the next steps we had to do to complete out action. Eventually, we tried to come up with a compromise that would benefit us all too both pass and create an effective social action.
While, working in my committee, I learned a lot about working in groups. Working in groups defines people in many ways. You have the people who are committed to doing their work, making sure, the work is complete, and then you have your slackers. Throughout the process, I fit into both these categories, but in the end I realized that my social action was more important than fooling around was. Working in groups taught me how to manage my time as well as made sure all my group members were on task including myself. When you have a group of people that is assigned to a project that is focused on raising awareness in young students of color you have to make sure people in your group understand that the issue that is affectecting our community. This increases its importance.
The way my social action connects to my life is that because I will be the first person in my family to graduate from high school and move on to a four year college. I know that my two brothers made some poor decisions about dropping out of school and they are fully aware of their decisions. They tried alternative routes such as going to G.E.D programs or Job Corps to get a high school diploma, but in general, the school system failed my brothers. My commitment to my social action reflects my commitment to young students of color ? their lives will be better if they graduate from high school.
The impact that my social action has on my community is that as a group, we want to help young kids understand the consequences of dropping out and what their life would be like if they drop out. The reason why my social action has a huge impact on my community is because not too many youth know about the high school crisis and the consequences of dropping out of school. I am happy to say that my social action was a huge success because eventhough we struggled as a group we came up with a great social action that will hopefully change people minds about dropping out of school. and each of my group members did their job about raising awareness about the high school crisis.
Everyone always looks at how students fail but never look at how the school system fails our students. The reasons for students dropping out of high school are varied and include limited materials for the students; teachers not committed to their job, or sometimes personal issues. I think that my brothers fall into all three categories, so in designing this project I was thinking about my brothers as well as friends that that dropped out of school. I wanted to inform students about the consequences about dropping out and hopefully this project will make them choose to go get a high school diploma. I am committed to fighting for justice on a crisis that affects me in so many ways. I know that our government needs to work with our young people as well to get them back enrolled in school and hire well experienced teachers that can teach our kids the education they need.. When students dropout of school they have no idea what their life will look like. Our social action was a beginning to inform our youth about the high school crisis.
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