Maintain a clear expectation – We want to see you! So show up!
We hope to be sympathetic to the sound reasons students and/or their families give to the school for another absence. We want to be fair.
However … and I hope even the most sympathetic observer of those chronically absent can believe there is a however – given the current figures. The Colorado Department of Education reports 28% of students – over 240,000 — missed more than 10%
|
% chronically absent Colorado 16-18-year-olds |
|||
|
Grade |
2022-23 |
2023-24 |
# of students |
|
11 |
36.5% |
33.9% |
24,016 |
|
12 |
42.7% |
40.1% |
29,141 |
|
# of juniors & seniors chronically absent: 53,157 |
|||
Seriously, such numbers are stunning. And yet how do we convince our
young—age 7, or 17—that they will be better off if they attend school most
every day of the year?
I doubt logic will work: “The opportunities that will be available to
you if you just...” “You must realize you will be even further behind if you…” It
won’t do.
I’ll try a different tack. I will speak to the heart. Excerpts from three
news stories in war-torn countries. To provide some perspective. To show the courage
needed to show up. To see how these young people, in hellish circumstances, value
their education. With “a message for kids around the world…”
Nothing is taken for granted.
Less true here in America, and in Colorado.
Where it does not seem to matter if you show up.
Gaza – “a message for kids around the world”
From The News Hour, Sept. 5, 2024
By Nick Schifrin
Schifrin: In Deir al
Balah in Central Gaza, the classroom is a tent and the students displaced
children of war, proud to contribute, eager to learn in a class, rather than
from the conflict they have been forced to endure.
Schifrin: Taha Ibrahim is an
elementary school teacher, himself displaced, and a volunteer with a
French-sponsored program for kids.
Taha Ibrahim, Volunteer Teacher (through
interpreter):
“We're trying to provide
relief for children through education and play so they feel better mentally. As
educators, we're trying to help students remember what they have learned and at
the same time try and cheer them up and relieve them from the pressure they're
under, despite ongoing bombing and displacement.”
Schifrin:
In a neighboring tent, 8-year-old triplets Lana, Batul and Line Abu Asee, with
their younger sister, Bisan, have a message for the kids around the world
starting school this week.
Batul
Abu Asee, 8 Years Old (through
interpreter):
“We're
supposed to go to school. Everyone is going back to school, except us in Gaza.
You're so lucky.”
Schifrin: They have lost their
home and been displaced multiple times, but have held on to their dreams.
Lana Abu Asee, 8
Years Old (Batul’s sister):
“I wanted to be a
doctor because I want to help people who aren't feeling well.”
Batul Abu Asee:
“When I grow up, I want
to be a teacher so I can teach kids and they can learn.”
Schifrin: And
so the triplets leave their canvas home in the Al-Zawayda camp, which has been
their refuge for months, and cross just a few steps over the sand to arrive at
their canvas school.
Tent classrooms like these are all that
Gaza's children have in a war where the U.N. says more than 9,500 children
enrolled in schools have been killed. Gazans say the entire educational
infrastructure has been eviscerated. The U.N. says at least 85 percent of
Gaza's schools have been directly hit or damaged.
And in this war and in every war in Gaza,
U.N. schools transformed shelters for nearly two million displaced, … classrooms
once filled with students now home to families with nowhere else to go…
Schifrin: Onana
Abu Al-Khair (a
university student) was studying to be a dentist at one of Gaza's top schools,
Al-Azhar University, … The U.N. says all of Gaza's 12 universities have been
damaged or destroyed…. Despite it all, Onana Abu Al-Khair tries not to forget
what she's learned or what she's lost.
Onana Abu
Al-Khair (through
interpreter):
“Gaza was beautiful, with its people, busy
streets and food. We want to go back to that because we cannot get used to the
situation we're in right now… We are forced and obliged to live this way.”
Her
mother, Suhair Abu Al-Khair, Mother of Onana (through interpreter):
“It's as if we're dying slowly while still
alive. We want these young kids and students whose life was taken away from
them to be able to live again, so they can get up, get dressed, wear their
uniforms, eat breakfast and go to school, see their teachers and their friends,
study and excel.”
Schifrin: But those are dreams deferred.
UNICEF estimates all of Gaza's children, one million people, need mental health and psychosocial support. They have seen too much and had to grow up too fast.
Maryam Al
Nabahin, 4 Years Old (through
interpreter):
“Our home was bombed and there were injured people everywhere. There were rocks, little tiny rocks. I wish I could go to kindergarten, for the war to end and have a new home.”
Schifrin:
But, for so many, there's no going back, back home, back to school, back to
what childhood is supposed to be.
The News
Hour, PBS,
Sept. 5, 2024. Used with permission from PBS News. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/teachers-struggle-to-educate-gazas-children-with-many-schools-reduced-to-rubble.
Afghanistan
– Secret school for girls
From
The Economist, Feb. 26, 2024
By
Neggeen Sadid
“Maryam told me she had heard about Azimi’s school through friends, and asked her mother if she could go (she was scared to ask her father directly, she said). Her mother said no, and told Maryam that it was safer to stay at home. When she raised the subject again, her mother shut her down. ‘That’s enough,’ she said, ‘you’ve studied enough.’”
Maryam
protested. She contacted Azimi and finally gained permission, from her mother
first, finally from her father, too, to attend the school.
“Maryam told me how scared she feels on her
walk to school each day. ‘They don’t support us outside,’ she said. When I
asked who she meant she said, ‘You know, ordinary people. The shopkeepers, the
street vendors.’ It would take only one of them to report her to the Taliban
for Maryam and her family to face arrest.”
Azimi understands the pressures her girls are under, the challenge to focus on their studies.
“One has a brother who rips up her books.” But Azimi “won’t let her
students give in to despair.”
“You
might need 20 years,” she says, “but this is Afghanistan.” She encourages her
girls to see the long view. “Be people who know something.”
FOR FULL STORY, go to https://www.economist.com/1843/2024/02/26/why-i-opened-a-secret-school-for-afghan-girls?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source - “Why I opened a secret school for Afghan girls - When the Taliban cracked down on girls’ education, one woman knew what
she had to do,” The Economist, Feb. 26, 2024.
Ukraine – teens in final year of high school “grappling
with the realities of war”
From
the Associated Press, Sept. 2, 2024
By
Hanna Arhirova
Oleksandr Hryshchenko, 16, and his family have stayed in their village, even as many have left. His father has joined the military. When Oleksandr is back in his village, he will attend school online.
“The impact of the war is a constant worry, he said. ‘You
think about it every night before bed. You mull over it all day, wondering what
comes next.’
“Despite the turmoil, Oleksandr feels he is taking
control of his destiny, concentrating on his final year of school, preparing
for entrance exams and choosing a university.”
Kseniia Kucher, 16, of Kharkiv, also studies online. She “dreams of her graduation day [next spring], envisioning a celebration or a trip with her classmates.” She knows it might not happen. Frequent Russian strikes on Kharkiv might cause her family to flee to the west.
“I live in the moment and don’t make big
plans for the future because, understanding the current situation … I don’t
know what will happen in a year,” she said.
Valerii Soldatenko, 16, and his family left their home in the east after months under Russian occupation. One reason for their departure: the Russians imposed their curriculum on the schools.
“I really didn’t want to conform to the
Russian education system,” he said. “So it was clear that I was at the greatest
risk and could put my family in the most danger.”
He manages
to look ahead. After graduation, he plans to attend university. He would like
to become a journalist or a history teacher.
FOR FULL STORY, go to https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/09/02/three-ukrainian-teens-begin-their-final-year-of-high-school-holding-onto-hopes-for-the-future/
- “Three Ukrainian teens begin their final year of high school
holding onto hopes for the future,” The Mercury News, Sept. 2, 2024.
