The Power of Showing Up

Goal: By the end of this session, I want my students to know that truancy often has far-reaching consequences, and to be more motivated to attend all classes.

Introduction
(Identifying the Reasons for Truancy)

Many of your fellow students are skipping school and skipping classes. Some of these may stop attending completely, which could hurt them in trying to reach their life goals. Could you help us to come up with some solutions? (Many students these days are service oriented – they like to help. By asking for their assistance, you show respect for them and can get across some information they need without coming across preachy!)

Let’s admit it, skipping an occasional class and skipping school can be fun and rewarding! Which of these provide the biggest temptation for you to stay home. (Put this up on PowerPoint, one bullet at a time, leaving it up for the discussion.)

• For some, there’s that exhilarating sense of adventure – of living life on the edge. Hey, who wants to be like everyone else?
• For others, why come to school and take that test you’re not prepared to take? Claiming illness can give you a couple of extra days to pass the test.
• For others, school’s a dreary existence. For some reason, you can’t seem to make the grades and complete the projects. Why show up every day, just to feel more and more like a failure?
• For others, school is a scary place – bullies on the bus and bullies around every corner. It’s safer at home.
• For still others, it’s about helping out the family. With both parents working, they occasionally need help with the baby brother or sister. Other times, your home life’s so stressful, that you don’t get any sleep. Why go to school when you know you’re not likely to get anything out of it?
• Then, of course, some days you just don’t physically feel like it. You don’t have a fever, but your sinus headache shows no signs of letting up. Or maybe your dead tired from staying up all night, defending your clan in World of Warcraft. 

Activity: Can you help us out? Lots of students are skipping school, and we’d like to know from you what you think the main reasons are. Without signing your name, could you write down:

1) the main reasons that you think students skip classes and school

2) if you were to skip school for a reason other than illness, what would the reason likely be?

(This is valuable information! If teachers could turn this in, you’d know more of the root causes for absenteeism.)

Reasons to Stay in School

Small Group Discussion: Get in a small group of about four with the students close to you. (Help them find a group.) Appoint one person to be your spokesperson. Now, imagine that you’re talking to a friend on the way home from school. She says, “I think I’ll just skip school tomorrow.” She’s skipping because of one of the reasons we listed above (keep it up on the PowerPoint.) What could you say that might encourage her to attend?

(After a few minutes of discussion, ask the spokesperson of each group to report. Write their ideas on the board. Use the below ideas to clarify or add to what they came up with.)

1. It’s habit-forming. Miss one day to catch up and you may find yourself doing it more regularly, thus missing out on some important stuff and getting further behind.
2. It can lead to other trouble. “A report compiled by the Los Angeles County Department of Education concluded that chronic absenteeism is the most powerful predictor of delinquency among youth.”
3. It can lead to dropping out of school. “…truants are the young people most likely to drop out of school.” And dropping out tends to hurt people in the long run.

·         Dropouts typically have significantly fewer job prospects.

·         Dropouts typically make lower salaries. (See chart below: high school grads, even those who get no further schooling, tend to make $7,000 more per year than dropouts.  What could you do with an extra $7,000 per year, or an extra $70,000 each decade?)

·         Dropouts are more often unemployed. (Some employers think: “if they stopped attending high school when it got tough, maybe they’ll stop showing up for my job when it gets tough.”)

·         Dropouts are more likely to face poverty. “In 1999, just over 14 percent of workers who had dropped out of school were poverty-stricken as compared with six percent of workers who had completed high school.”

How Yearly Income Levels Vary According to Education Completed

Solving the Problems of Truancy

You can see why we’re concerned to keep students in school. So how do we solve this problem? Could you give us input?

Since each truant student has his or her own reasons for missing school, we can’t solve the problem with a cookie-cutter formula. Here are some ways that other schools have attacked the problem successfully. (Put them on the overhead, or give it as a handout – where students could circle the ones they feel would be most effective.) Which, if any, of these do you think would work best here? Why? Do you have other suggestions? (If the small group discussion worked well here before, try it again here, having the spokesperson report back.)

1. Make students and parents/guardians feel welcome. Make a point to say hello to every parent/guardian or student you see in the halls and outside. Make it your business to know their names.
2. Create an environment that enables students to feel successful in something, no matter how small it may seem. Award academic and attendance "letters," as you do for athletics.
3. When students are absent, immediately talk to their parents/guardians -- not their answering machines. Make a personal phone call in the evening, or call parents/guardians at work during the day.
4. When students are absent, immediately talk with them about why they were gone. Let them know you are aware, and that you care that they are at school.
5. Forge a relationship with local businesses where youth may congregate when truant, and encourage them to keep students in school during school hours. Create a poster that states, "We support youth in school and will not serve anyone under 16 during school hours."
6. Forge a relationship with local law enforcement. Make them your allies in showing the community, families, and students that school is the place to be. Empower community police officers to return youth to school.
7. Don't provide the temptation for youth to be truant. Close your campuses during breaks and lunch.
8. Empower and expect classroom teachers to take action when they think a student may be truant. Ask teachers to make calls to absent youth or families in the afternoons or evenings.
9. Reward and recognize good attendance, not just perfect attendance. Post large signs giving the daily attendance for the day. Reward individuals, classes, and the school for increased attendance.
10. Make your school a place where kids feel safe and respected. Adopt a character education program that is planned and implemented by students.

Conclusion

Thanks for your input! We want you to be successful, both in school and in life. Skipping school is hurting some of our students. When you consider taking the easy way out and skipping, please think about these things. And please let us know any ideas (tell them how to get in touch with the appropriate person) for helping to keep students in school.

Sources: http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/training/truancy/problem_pg13.html
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/training/truancy/problem_pg3.html http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/training/truancy/problem_pg18.html

Short Stories with Discussion Questions for Following-Up the Above Lesson
(Use as “Intercom Insights” or in Individual Classes)

Your Life is Your Resume

To get interesting, well-paying jobs these days, you’ll need to separate yourself out from the other applicants in the stack. Here’s an idea: Attend all your classes and get quotes from your teachers saying that you show up every day. Then, use those quotes in your applications.

You see, businesses struggle when their employees don’t show up on time, or don’t show up at all. In fact, CareerBuilder surveyed thousands of managers and found 15 percent of them saying that, in the preceding year, they had fired an employee for missing work without a legitimate excuse. If that happens every year, that’s a lot of people losing jobs!

So after a manager fires someone for not showing up, don’t you think he’s thinking, “how can I know that the next person I hire is going to show up?” And don’t you think they’ll take notice when they see a quote from a teacher on your resume, saying that you showed up for class every day, on time?

Listen, getting a good job isn’t just about diplomas and degrees. It’s about your habits. One of the best things you can do for your career is to show up for class each day, on time. And don’t forget to get that quote from your teacher! It could make the difference when you’re trying to land that perfect job!

Discussion

1. Do you think businesses want to know about your work habits as well as your skills? Why?

2. What are some ways that a hiring manager can determine if you're the kind of person who will show up every day for work?

3. What can you do now to build your resume? 

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33209435/ns/business-careers

Led Zeppelin and Jack Welch Show Up, On Time, Every Time

Led Zeppelin took the 1970’s by storm, rising quickly to become, not only one of the most popular bands of their time, but of all time. Their song, Stairway to Heaven, remains one of the most played songs on radio. They’ve sold over 200 million albums worldwide. VH1 ranks them #1 on their chart of “100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.”

Although they got into their fair share of craziness along the way, they were professional when it came to their music. They determined that they would let nothing come before their music. Here’s an example: according to their manager, during their twelve years of performing, they never missed a performance. Never. Neither were they ever late.

Think of it this way, had they been performing throughout your school career of 12 grades, they would have never been late for a performance. Not once.

You’ll find this as a characteristic of many highly successful people. They show up. On time. Every time.

Jack Welch lead one the largest, most successful companies in the world – General Electric. GE is worth more than the total domestic product of entire countries. Because of Welch’s performance there, he’s considered one of the greatest business leaders of his time.

But before he became president, while he was working his way up through the company, he found ways to separate himself out from the pack. Here’s one thing he did: if he had a business meeting scheduled the next day in another city, but he was afraid that bad weather might delay his flight, he’d fly in the day before.

That attention to showing up, on time and prepared, was a part of what made people know that he could one day lead the company.

From Led Zeppelin to Jack Welch, success people find ways to make their meetings on time. Do you want to get a good education? Now’s a great time to overcome whatever hurdles keep you from showing up from school. Hey, it’s not always easy. But find ways to make it happen and it just might make you successful, whether you want to be a rock star or a business leader.

Discussion

1) Do you think that either Led Zeppelin or Jack Welch could have attained their degree of success without showing up on time?

2) Why is showing up on time so important?

3) Imagine that your friend is about to lose his job because of showing up late. Some people have a very hard time getting places on time. What hints would you give for overcoming this problem?

(Sources: Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin, Uncensored, by Richard Cole, with Richard Trubo, HarperCollinsPublishers, 1992, p. 377.)  

Top Athletes Show Up for Practice

Michael Jordan is considered by many to be the best basketball player to ever play the game. But it wasn’t all just raw talent. He trained relentlessly. Even at the top of his career, when everyone saw him as the best, most valuable player on his team, he didn’t use his fame as an excuse to get sloppy in practice. According to Stacy King, one of his teammates with the Chicago Bulls: 

“He came to work every day. He didn’t use his superstar status to skip practice. MJ was always at practice. For someone like myself, I couldn’t call in sick with a toe injury. If Michael Jordan could get pounded on every night and then come to practice to run sprints and go through a full practice the next day, guys like myself and B.J. Armstrong couldn’t  think about missing practice. He had tremendous talent, but he was ultra competitive and had a great work ethic.” http://newsok.com/article/3401884

In football, you see this work ethic in successful players like Quarterbacks Tom Brady for New England and Matt Ryan for the Atlanta Falcons. They show up for all the optional, off-season conditioning. They keep practicing plays after the regular practice. Ryan has the game plan sent to him before the first day of practice, so that he can start studying it early.

A part of success is simply showing up. That goes for school too. I know that you have those days when you can think of a million things you’d rather do than hop on that bus. But I challenge you to do it anyway. Keep showing up. For successful people, that’s a huge part of their success.

Discussion

1. How did Tom Brady and Michael Jordan show their dedication to their sports?

2. Do you think they could have achieved their degree of success without showing up on time?

3. Why do you think some people have such a hard time getting places on time?

4. What practical hints would you give those who have a hard time getting to places on time?

(Copyright November, 2009, Legacy Educational Resources, All Rights Reserved.)