The School Archive Project -
Students seeing their future
Student Motivation & Dropout Prevention
The best dropout prevention is a focus on the future. The School Archive Project does that with a 10-year time-capsule and class-reunion plan designed to provide a physical connection to each student's future. The goal is to help students understand their own natural ability to make the differences they want in their lives and communities, and the world as a whole, through their planning and work.
The first School Archive was a 350-pound vault, bolted to the floor of the Quintanilla Middle School lobby in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas in 2005. The Archive has 10 shelves to hold letters from 8th grade classes until their 10-year class reunion. Students write these letters to themselves before leaving the 8th grade. The letter is about their achievements and stories from their life. It will document their efforts toward personal growth and their goals. They seal the finished letter into a self-addressed envelope. They then pose for a photo with their Language Arts Class in front of the School Archive holding their letters. After the photo they each place their letter into the Archive themselves.
Bill Betzen said...
The first step in curing the US dropout crisis is to have a simple and accurate report on dropout numbers in every school and school district. An annually updated 10+ year enrollment by grade spreadsheet, with annual graduation numbers, will provide this. Such spreadsheets should be on every school and school district web site. While not as technically correct as the “experts” want, they will eliminate the manipulations common in dropout number reporting and expose our deadly dropout patterns. They will also track progress as dropout rate numbers go down from step two.
Second: bolt a 500-pound vault to the floor in every secondary school lobby to function as a 10-year time-capsule. Each new class will write their first letter to themselves for the vault as they enter the school. They will write about their history and plans for the future. Parents are also invited to write a letter to be placed with it with their own dreams for their child. Then, as they are about to graduate from that school, students retrieve those letters. They use them in writing a final letter with a clearer focus 10 years into their future. They place the final letter, possibly with another from their parents, into the vault, and plan for a 10-year class reunion to retrieve them. At that reunion they will be able to speak to the then current students in the school about their recommendations for success. They prepare for questions such as: "What would you do differently if you were 13 again?"
The first School Archive Project started in 2005 in a Dallas middle school with an 8th grade class that was the Graduation Class of 2009. Both of these old, inner-city high schools who received these students had the largest graduation classes on record with the Class of 2009!
The 11th and 12th grade enrollments in the 32 high schools in Dallas ISD went up 5% from 2005/2006 to 2009/2010. This is in spite of total district enrollment going down 2.5% during the same years! However 55% of this gain is from only two of the 32 high schools in the district, the two who received the 700+ students who had placed a letter into a vault in 2006 and 2007. See the details for this $2 per student dropout prevention project at www.studentmotivation.org
Second: bolt a 500-pound vault to the floor in every secondary school lobby to function as a 10-year time-capsule. Each new class will write their first letter to themselves for the vault as they enter the school. They will write about their history and plans for the future. Parents are also invited to write a letter to be placed with it with their own dreams for their child. Then, as they are about to graduate from that school, students retrieve those letters. They use them in writing a final letter with a clearer focus 10 years into their future. They place the final letter, possibly with another from their parents, into the vault, and plan for a 10-year class reunion to retrieve them. At that reunion they will be able to speak to the then current students in the school about their recommendations for success. They prepare for questions such as: "What would you do differently if you were 13 again?"
The first School Archive Project started in 2005 in a Dallas middle school with an 8th grade class that was the Graduation Class of 2009. Both of these old, inner-city high schools who received these students had the largest graduation classes on record with the Class of 2009!
The 11th and 12th grade enrollments in the 32 high schools in Dallas ISD went up 5% from 2005/2006 to 2009/2010. This is in spite of total district enrollment going down 2.5% during the same years! However 55% of this gain is from only two of the 32 high schools in the district, the two who received the 700+ students who had placed a letter into a vault in 2006 and 2007. See the details for this $2 per student dropout prevention project at www.studentmotivation.org