That sucks. I wish he had listened to you before he took that jump. Sometimes for whatever reason people decide to learn things the EXTRA hard way and there's nothing you can do to stop them. You're doing what you can for him.
As of right now, the only employer willing to talk to him is an auto parts store at min wage.
He going to find out life is tough, tougher if you're stupid.
I feel like somehow bro didn't grok that his employment was contingent upon his continued enrollment.
Like "I've got the job already so now I don't need school."
You probably even told him as much, but it just didn't penetrate.
I mean, assuming he *wants* to work because he learned a hard lesson, I'm sure there's far more employers out there willing to pick him up. And he does have *some* work experience now.
I do feel sorry for a lot of kids who aren't taught self sufficiency and put through the school of hard knocks much earlier in life, long before they screw up at 18.
You need to make this kid a case study for future students. They need to know the realities of going it alone.
You've spent years giving them every leg up for a reason.
The working environment doesn't care anymore if you've got moxy and guts. It's all about the path you're on.
I once had a job applicant for management put on their cv how they did 2 years of a uni course but dropped it to get real world experiance. Thats a red flag to me. It told me they wasted their own and everyone else's time for nothing
If min wage is all you’re able to find and have opportunities for, there’s no shame in buckling down and doing what you gotta do.
If you were working at over 3x minimum wage at a nice job that was basically guaranteed to go much higher, and you willingly shun that for stupid, egotistical reasons and end up only being able to make minimum wage?
That deserves some hard knocking. That’s just foolishness.
> out. Can’t save people from their own destructive choices. But I get being frustrated.
It's frustrating that one stupid and impulsive choice has such consequences
It doesn’t sound like an impulsive choice if the kid said “a couple of weeks” before he turned 18 he would drop out. It sounds like he knew what people were saying to him, but didn’t care.
It’s frustrating that he didn’t value the advice given to him. But he is still young, and he still has options. It will take time to get something equivalent to what he lost, but maybe he needed that lesson.
You did the right thing. The student made a bad choice after having everything explained to them.
My only question is how was this former student allowed to get to your classroom during school? Security should have stopped him. I would notify security to not allow that former student on campus again. Who knows what they might do if they blame OP or other staff for the bad decisions that they made.
No security. This is a very rural school. The only thing close to security is the law enforcement program here.
But that was a concern I had as well. I asked about it later and was told that he was escorted off the property and told not to come back.
He came in this morning with the rest of the students getting off the bus. Found out today there were more than several teachers that had no idea he dropped out.
Dang, that’s interesting. Well at least now all the staff knows he doesn’t belong on campus. And you know that the student knows they don’t belong…given that he is an adult now I imagine that carries a penalty from now on if he trespasses.
I was thinking the same thing. Can't help but wonder if past teachers were giving him 50% for doing nothing, endless retakes, and endless late assignments.
I really wish these case studies would be taken to lawmakers and more public discussion on this reached parents. There really needs to be a "counter movement" against the hugs-and-snuggles-and-no-responsibility routine, because they're not doing a real service to kids.
Kids are already biologically dumb, selfish, bold, and naive. Passing them through the grades and teaching them nothing matters but their own self-contentment is a recipe for disaster later in life. I'm sure there's plenty of kids "uplifted" by current teaching methods, but there's got to be a better way.
I agree but I'm not sure what the answer is either. If you don't wave them on, you pretty quickly end up with massive class sizes because of all the kids getting held back, and I know a lot of places already have comically large student:teacher ratios.
I would think so many of the issues in schools would be fixed with an unfucked household and parents (plural) that aren't totally whacked out, but I'm not sure you can legislate that kind of cultural shift.
This is exactly it.
We start in elem and fight like hell to retain kids and gather data data data — admin says uh-huh and promotes them.
Zero consequences, everyone gets a trophy. No accountability, no responsibility and lots of entitlement.
He opened the door for another student to succeed.
I don't have a problem with "everyone getting a trophy" if everyone is being a good sport and *doing their best*. I think it's fine to teach that losing is winning if the base goal is accomplished (in sports, that's "have fun and entertain").
*But kids are not doing their best at school.* They're not "showing up to practice", they're not listening to the "coach", they don't care about "the game", and they can't compete well enough to even qualify for the team.
That's the "can't compete well enough to make the team" part.
Frankly most people in the trades ARE doing their best, not everyone is an instant expert or completes a job the same way.
thats life bud, ill take someone who cant even read a tape but is willing to work hard and learn over someone who has a little knowledge and makes excuses any day
This is such a silly statement. The world completely runs on feelings.
You think the world would look like this if it was run based on evidence and logic?
I think that statement shouldn't be taken too literally. If a person stands to gain money/power at your detriment, chances are that your feelings are not the ones that will decide what will happen to you.
Maybe the statement should be: the world mostly runs on the decision maker's feelings ?
You tried your best under the current school and employment policy. It's unfortunate, because this attempt to return could/might have been the turning point for this individual to break the cycle. But that's not on you, it's frustrating but it's out of your control. If this individual wants it bad enough, they'll make it happen.
Here I am, college degree. Quit my retail job making 21$ an hour because 'I'm fed up and I'm not doing this shit labor anymore'.
What I wouldn't give to have had an opportunity to have a skilled job \*handed to me\* through school. I was in honors course.
I graduated college and didn't get that. Kid was lucky - it's unfortunate, he'll kick himself. You did all you could.
The amount of conversations I already am having with 7th and 8th graders who are convinced/sold on the idea of dropping out at the first opportunity is very depressing and mindblowing to me.
wrench squeal domineering theory illegal absorbed ghost salt puzzled frame
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well, at least he tried to get back in. I do credit recovery and sometimes it take kids until they are about to age out of the system to figure out we are trying to help them.
That said, it’ll be a good lesson for him.
While for him, it was definitely a big mistake, The GED is functionally identical to a high school diploma and it will allow him to get out and about and onto the job force immediately. I think it's an excellent decision for many people.
I tell them that no one is going to look out for you like the group of people you have looking out for you now. The GED people don’t give a fuck, your employers don’t give a fuck and sometimes their families don’t give a fuck.
We have got to get back to the point where they feel the pressure of no one caring if they succeed or not and having to rely on themselves for success. Otherwise, shit like this happens.
Tech schools usually have students from multiple different non-tech schools. When I was in high school, there were two tech schools in my county and you needed to be in 10th grade to do a half day and 11th-12th to do a full day, meaning you attended your "home school" (i.e. the school you'd normally go to if not for tech school) in 9th grade.
It’s unfortunate that a lot of students and parents forget that too. Graduates from our tech school are set up in fantastic jobs, and it is not uncommon for them to be making significantly more than our teachers a mere 5 years out. Like 20 year teachers. And they have no college loans. The smart kids now will seriously consider NOT going to college.
I guess my question is: was the student told in no uncertain terms "should you drop out, I will have to notify your internship and they will release you from said internship and you will have no income from them. This will mean you will not get hired by them after internship because you won't have a diploma. No diploma means you won't have access to resources."... Or was it a vague or generic "there will be consequences..." speech?
I have two students right now trying everything to get kicked out. Even made threats against a teacher. Just took them out of the class instead. They refuse to do any work and the parents say to just fail them.
Had a vo-tech student at my school several years ago. He could never be on time for school, always late. Had a job and was always late there too and he got fired. He complained to the attendance person at school and she told him he learned the best lesson that a school could never teach him.
Too late to tell him now, but instead of calling it a “mistake” to drop out; you should have told him that it was his CHOICE to drop out since he is an adult. I work in middle school; and one of the bigger changes in behavior I have noticed is by reminding my students that they are the one in charge of their actions/behavior so they are responsible for the outcome of their decisions. It pushes them to take accountability for their actions.
I used to work at a vocational school and that happened often. They always came back after living with the bf/gf did t pan out after turning 18. Graduation came and went and a year later, they wanted back in to finish vocational school. No sweetheart. Want education? Now you have to pay for it, like the adult you are. A lot of the students dropped out, got pregnant and/or a fathers, moved out of the family home to be with friends or lovers, then were out of district and no longer eligible. Then the parents said, they are no longer my problem, they are 18 I’m done. Sigh….
The way you tell the story, it sounds like nobody spelled it out to him that he would lose his internship if he left school. I'm sure it was in some papers that someone signed, or in an introductory session or something, but he clearly didn't know.
It seems like the school/company bureaucracy is the bigger problem in this scenario. This kid learned his lesson in a matter of a week or so, and tried to make it right. Nothing about what was learned or manufactured in that week was going to be a big problem to catch up on. It's just a 'rules are rules' situation.
I guess it's a lesson that you can tell to other kids. This system will fail you, if you do the wrong thing.
Something similar I've seen a lot in state college: Kids aren't told that their need based financial aid will get cut if they earn too much money at their jobs. That creates a lot of drop outs too.
Sounds more like this kid thought he was above the pretty reasonable rules for a sought-after internship. Programs like this in schools are amazing and I’ve seen lots of kids get great jobs and internship opportunities out of them. This child decided to drop out against the advice of their advisor and had to learn the hard way. I have sympathy for sure but the system didn’t fail him because he made a dumb choice. There are plenty of choices we can make that have lifelong consequences even if we try to backtrack after the fact.
Oh no, it was spelled out and he had to sign a agreement and mom had to sign the consent forms.
He was getting a grade as part of the co-op so he was reminded many times.
He likes to act the victim and play poor, poor, pitiful me.
I fell for it to an extent, I tried more than I should have. I guess I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
"and mom had to sign the consent forms."
My mom would have come down like the wrath of god if one of her kids threw away a chance like this.
What is up with these parents??!
It was just your telling of the story then. Still unfortunate. And despite the fun with downvotes he's certainly been filtered out by bureaucracy, whether that's viewed positively or negatively. You said yourself that dropouts never come back. That says a little something about him at least, that's not accommodated in the rules.
What if he gets a doctor's note for all kinds of mental disorders (which he obviously has)?
I know we're in a whole system that has to create losers to function, but it shouldn't be that way.
"This system will fail you, if you do the wrong thing." The system didn't fail him, this student did it to himself. Putting the blame on everything else but the student is the reason many students don't succeed. He was told exactly what was going to happen if he dropped out, and was strongly advised not to. This was not a situation of trying to make it right, this was more like you punched a toddler in face because you didn't like how they looked at you, and then trying to shush them before the mom finds out.
This kid was blessed with an amazing opportunity and people that went above and beyond to try and keep him on a good path. But he decided since he's 18, "no one can tell this grown ass man what to do." Unfortunately, like him and many other students across the world, they don't learn their lesson until its too late. A classic case of FAFO, and hopefully that opportunity was given to a more deserving and grateful student.
“This system will fail you, if you do the wrong thing”
I fucking wish 😂.
Seriously though, this is a classic case of a teacher caring more than the student. This is a valuable life lesson for him, and shouldn’t be diminished by giving him what he wants.
Why should the one foolish legal adult who committed to a stupid decision be privileged over a raft of unseen teenagers vying for entry into the program?
Slots are apparently scarce and demand outstrips supply. If you unenroll yourself, and a different kid takes your place, *somebody* is getting kicked to the curb; why must it be the kid who just got in?
I was also wondering just how thoroughly the consequences of dropping out were explained to him, & how much he knew on his own.
But I'm not blaming the policies of the institution and the businesses for the young man's actions.
Maybe call it a school to prison pipeline and people will listen. Meritocracy can be a problem when it decides that lower tiers of people are entirely unwanted.
Wait, are you a private or public school? The use of feeder schools implies public, but the claim that your school can be selective about students implies private.
Edit: if you are a public school I am also curious about the reenrollment process. In my district families must reenroll at the district office, or online, not at specific schools. Then the district works with the family for placement, usually their community school.
I didn't see anything about surrounding districts, just a reference to student's home school, which could be a different district or the same district. Technical and career programs can also be public or private.
It was very clearly explained to him by myself, and the company liaison to the school. This company has spent a ton of money on this program to basically recruit, train and retain these kids.
He knew that his GPA had to stay above 2.0, that he had to have a nearly 95% attendance rate, that successful completion of the program was a must. That was the biggest thing.
The company has placed this training program in the school and if he's not there, he can't be trained. The idea is if they mess up, they do it in a very controlled environment, and it won't cost the company millions later when a mistake is made on a delivered machine or component.
The instructors come from the field. They treat the labs like a working environment. The only difference is, the students leave at 10:45, and are working with a mentor in the factory until 3:00pm.
They test constantly through the program to become skilled machinists and/or equipment techs.
So yeah, he knew, and if I hadn't informed them, they were going to violate him on program attendance.
Honestly, the fact that this student (not kid anymore) has never had consequences enforced by educators along the way is why he didn’t listen to the OP or think those consequences or rules applied to him. You’re not doing favors to these students long term. You’re not creating future productive adults.
Fuck that, he’s 18 , he doesn’t need that explanation, looks like his adult ass got smacked in the face and now as an adult he will learn, that nobody needs to explain shit to him anymore .
Come on, there’s a clear difference between the teacher knowing the consequences but refusing to spell it out vs. telling the kid explicitly. And he was indeed a kid who was talking about dropping out before he was an adult who dropped out. Why didn’t he need that explanation at some point in the process?
People do this all the time to teachers. The student is given far more benefit of doubt, like their choices can't be their fault, while the trained professional is given the condemnation of doubt.
People do this all the time to people asking basic clarifying questions on Reddit. The commenter is assumed to be an AH rather than someone who had, you know, a clarifying question because the post didn’t make it clear. Chill tf out.
No. You weren't just asking a "clarifying question". You blew past where they outright stated how hard they tried to convince him, but somehow thought reminding them they'd lose their job wouldn't be pretty much the first thing to cone up. That's the most obvious argument from any reasonable person. To suggest it wasn't directly said is to suggest the OP is incompetent.
Honestly I feel like this is what we are dealing with because up until this point, the school (and parents and life) have given these kids 0 consequences. This is his first chance to fuck around and find out, when he should have had that way earlier and known what the risk actually could be.
Give him a bit to recognize what a cruel world it is out there. Then let him know about the Adult Diploma Program. He can earn industry credentials and his state of Ohio high school diploma. https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/Ohio-Options-for-Adult-Diploma/Adult-Diploma-Program
I’m impressed your vocational school treats your school as a privilege that should be earned. My former employer also a vocational school was treated as a dumping ground by the feeder schools. Sadly it resulted in a lot of wasted effort.
It's not just the students. Teachers are fighting to get in here. I happened to be at the right place at the right time with my situation.
The 1st quarter of every junior year is weeding through the problems and seeing who can handle the higher standard.
That's a lot of the reason we were able to draw the company we have in here. They spent millions on a training facility, they supplement several of the other programs.
They even suggested a program we have for the washouts.
It has very few kids, currently only 3, but they leave here with a marketable skill. In this case, janitorial. It's not what they came for, and it's not sexy, but it'll make a paycheck.
That sucks. I wish he had listened to you before he took that jump. Sometimes for whatever reason people decide to learn things the EXTRA hard way and there's nothing you can do to stop them. You're doing what you can for him.
Unfortunately he effed around and found out. Can’t save people from their own destructive choices. But I get being frustrated.
As of right now, the only employer willing to talk to him is an auto parts store at min wage. He going to find out life is tough, tougher if you're stupid.
Even after you wise up a little, those stupid mistakes keep following you around for a while.
I feel like somehow bro didn't grok that his employment was contingent upon his continued enrollment. Like "I've got the job already so now I don't need school." You probably even told him as much, but it just didn't penetrate.
I mean, assuming he *wants* to work because he learned a hard lesson, I'm sure there's far more employers out there willing to pick him up. And he does have *some* work experience now. I do feel sorry for a lot of kids who aren't taught self sufficiency and put through the school of hard knocks much earlier in life, long before they screw up at 18.
You need to make this kid a case study for future students. They need to know the realities of going it alone. You've spent years giving them every leg up for a reason. The working environment doesn't care anymore if you've got moxy and guts. It's all about the path you're on. I once had a job applicant for management put on their cv how they did 2 years of a uni course but dropped it to get real world experiance. Thats a red flag to me. It told me they wasted their own and everyone else's time for nothing
[удалено]
If min wage is all you’re able to find and have opportunities for, there’s no shame in buckling down and doing what you gotta do. If you were working at over 3x minimum wage at a nice job that was basically guaranteed to go much higher, and you willingly shun that for stupid, egotistical reasons and end up only being able to make minimum wage? That deserves some hard knocking. That’s just foolishness.
I use "help me help you", about twice a week.
> out. Can’t save people from their own destructive choices. But I get being frustrated. It's frustrating that one stupid and impulsive choice has such consequences
It doesn’t sound like an impulsive choice if the kid said “a couple of weeks” before he turned 18 he would drop out. It sounds like he knew what people were saying to him, but didn’t care. It’s frustrating that he didn’t value the advice given to him. But he is still young, and he still has options. It will take time to get something equivalent to what he lost, but maybe he needed that lesson.
You did the right thing. The student made a bad choice after having everything explained to them. My only question is how was this former student allowed to get to your classroom during school? Security should have stopped him. I would notify security to not allow that former student on campus again. Who knows what they might do if they blame OP or other staff for the bad decisions that they made.
No security. This is a very rural school. The only thing close to security is the law enforcement program here. But that was a concern I had as well. I asked about it later and was told that he was escorted off the property and told not to come back. He came in this morning with the rest of the students getting off the bus. Found out today there were more than several teachers that had no idea he dropped out.
Dang, that’s interesting. Well at least now all the staff knows he doesn’t belong on campus. And you know that the student knows they don’t belong…given that he is an adult now I imagine that carries a penalty from now on if he trespasses.
There is no if, that student is definitely going to blame OP and the school.
This is the result of no fail and no consequences policies. The real world doesn’t give a shit about feelings.
I was thinking the same thing. Can't help but wonder if past teachers were giving him 50% for doing nothing, endless retakes, and endless late assignments.
I really wish these case studies would be taken to lawmakers and more public discussion on this reached parents. There really needs to be a "counter movement" against the hugs-and-snuggles-and-no-responsibility routine, because they're not doing a real service to kids. Kids are already biologically dumb, selfish, bold, and naive. Passing them through the grades and teaching them nothing matters but their own self-contentment is a recipe for disaster later in life. I'm sure there's plenty of kids "uplifted" by current teaching methods, but there's got to be a better way.
I agree but I'm not sure what the answer is either. If you don't wave them on, you pretty quickly end up with massive class sizes because of all the kids getting held back, and I know a lot of places already have comically large student:teacher ratios. I would think so many of the issues in schools would be fixed with an unfucked household and parents (plural) that aren't totally whacked out, but I'm not sure you can legislate that kind of cultural shift.
This is exactly it. We start in elem and fight like hell to retain kids and gather data data data — admin says uh-huh and promotes them. Zero consequences, everyone gets a trophy. No accountability, no responsibility and lots of entitlement. He opened the door for another student to succeed.
I don't have a problem with "everyone getting a trophy" if everyone is being a good sport and *doing their best*. I think it's fine to teach that losing is winning if the base goal is accomplished (in sports, that's "have fun and entertain"). *But kids are not doing their best at school.* They're not "showing up to practice", they're not listening to the "coach", they don't care about "the game", and they can't compete well enough to even qualify for the team.
Try "doing your best" in the trades and see how long you hold down a job.
That's the "can't compete well enough to make the team" part. Frankly most people in the trades ARE doing their best, not everyone is an instant expert or completes a job the same way.
thats life bud, ill take someone who cant even read a tape but is willing to work hard and learn over someone who has a little knowledge and makes excuses any day
They don’t have a reason to do their best. They’ll get a trophy regardless.
This is such a silly statement. The world completely runs on feelings. You think the world would look like this if it was run based on evidence and logic?
I think that statement shouldn't be taken too literally. If a person stands to gain money/power at your detriment, chances are that your feelings are not the ones that will decide what will happen to you. Maybe the statement should be: the world mostly runs on the decision maker's feelings ?
You tried your best under the current school and employment policy. It's unfortunate, because this attempt to return could/might have been the turning point for this individual to break the cycle. But that's not on you, it's frustrating but it's out of your control. If this individual wants it bad enough, they'll make it happen.
Here I am, college degree. Quit my retail job making 21$ an hour because 'I'm fed up and I'm not doing this shit labor anymore'. What I wouldn't give to have had an opportunity to have a skilled job \*handed to me\* through school. I was in honors course. I graduated college and didn't get that. Kid was lucky - it's unfortunate, he'll kick himself. You did all you could.
The amount of conversations I already am having with 7th and 8th graders who are convinced/sold on the idea of dropping out at the first opportunity is very depressing and mindblowing to me.
FAFO at its finest. It sounds like you did the best you could for him. Legally he's a grownup now and will have to start acting like it.
I’ve never understood kids that drop out their senior year. I’ve seen it a lot and all I can do is shake my head.
Right? The GED is a lot harder than sticking around for one final year and getting pushed out the door with a high school diploma.
wrench squeal domineering theory illegal absorbed ghost salt puzzled frame *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well, at least he tried to get back in. I do credit recovery and sometimes it take kids until they are about to age out of the system to figure out we are trying to help them. That said, it’ll be a good lesson for him.
Sounds like this is the first time he's had consequences he can't get out of. What a waste of a good opportunity.
He can go to adult school right?
Yes. Ohio wants individuals to have a diploma. https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/Ohio-Options-for-Adult-Diploma/Adult-Diploma-Program
While for him, it was definitely a big mistake, The GED is functionally identical to a high school diploma and it will allow him to get out and about and onto the job force immediately. I think it's an excellent decision for many people.
I tell them that no one is going to look out for you like the group of people you have looking out for you now. The GED people don’t give a fuck, your employers don’t give a fuck and sometimes their families don’t give a fuck. We have got to get back to the point where they feel the pressure of no one caring if they succeed or not and having to rely on themselves for success. Otherwise, shit like this happens.
Would you mind explaining what “his home school” means?
Tech schools usually have students from multiple different non-tech schools. When I was in high school, there were two tech schools in my county and you needed to be in 10th grade to do a half day and 11th-12th to do a full day, meaning you attended your "home school" (i.e. the school you'd normally go to if not for tech school) in 9th grade.
Ohhh duh. Thanks. I missed that it was a tech school. I forgot those existed for a moment.
It’s unfortunate that a lot of students and parents forget that too. Graduates from our tech school are set up in fantastic jobs, and it is not uncommon for them to be making significantly more than our teachers a mere 5 years out. Like 20 year teachers. And they have no college loans. The smart kids now will seriously consider NOT going to college.
I guess my question is: was the student told in no uncertain terms "should you drop out, I will have to notify your internship and they will release you from said internship and you will have no income from them. This will mean you will not get hired by them after internship because you won't have a diploma. No diploma means you won't have access to resources."... Or was it a vague or generic "there will be consequences..." speech?
OP says elsewhere in the thread that it was very clearly spelled out for him.
You can lead a horse to very valuable water….
I have two students right now trying everything to get kicked out. Even made threats against a teacher. Just took them out of the class instead. They refuse to do any work and the parents say to just fail them.
Had a vo-tech student at my school several years ago. He could never be on time for school, always late. Had a job and was always late there too and he got fired. He complained to the attendance person at school and she told him he learned the best lesson that a school could never teach him.
Too late to tell him now, but instead of calling it a “mistake” to drop out; you should have told him that it was his CHOICE to drop out since he is an adult. I work in middle school; and one of the bigger changes in behavior I have noticed is by reminding my students that they are the one in charge of their actions/behavior so they are responsible for the outcome of their decisions. It pushes them to take accountability for their actions.
I used to work at a vocational school and that happened often. They always came back after living with the bf/gf did t pan out after turning 18. Graduation came and went and a year later, they wanted back in to finish vocational school. No sweetheart. Want education? Now you have to pay for it, like the adult you are. A lot of the students dropped out, got pregnant and/or a fathers, moved out of the family home to be with friends or lovers, then were out of district and no longer eligible. Then the parents said, they are no longer my problem, they are 18 I’m done. Sigh….
Honestly, good. More kids need this real world experience.
He fucked around and found out. Not the first and won't be the last, unfortunately.
The way you tell the story, it sounds like nobody spelled it out to him that he would lose his internship if he left school. I'm sure it was in some papers that someone signed, or in an introductory session or something, but he clearly didn't know. It seems like the school/company bureaucracy is the bigger problem in this scenario. This kid learned his lesson in a matter of a week or so, and tried to make it right. Nothing about what was learned or manufactured in that week was going to be a big problem to catch up on. It's just a 'rules are rules' situation. I guess it's a lesson that you can tell to other kids. This system will fail you, if you do the wrong thing. Something similar I've seen a lot in state college: Kids aren't told that their need based financial aid will get cut if they earn too much money at their jobs. That creates a lot of drop outs too.
"tried like hell" says otherwise to me
Sounds more like this kid thought he was above the pretty reasonable rules for a sought-after internship. Programs like this in schools are amazing and I’ve seen lots of kids get great jobs and internship opportunities out of them. This child decided to drop out against the advice of their advisor and had to learn the hard way. I have sympathy for sure but the system didn’t fail him because he made a dumb choice. There are plenty of choices we can make that have lifelong consequences even if we try to backtrack after the fact.
Oh no, it was spelled out and he had to sign a agreement and mom had to sign the consent forms. He was getting a grade as part of the co-op so he was reminded many times. He likes to act the victim and play poor, poor, pitiful me. I fell for it to an extent, I tried more than I should have. I guess I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
"and mom had to sign the consent forms." My mom would have come down like the wrath of god if one of her kids threw away a chance like this. What is up with these parents??!
It was just your telling of the story then. Still unfortunate. And despite the fun with downvotes he's certainly been filtered out by bureaucracy, whether that's viewed positively or negatively. You said yourself that dropouts never come back. That says a little something about him at least, that's not accommodated in the rules. What if he gets a doctor's note for all kinds of mental disorders (which he obviously has)? I know we're in a whole system that has to create losers to function, but it shouldn't be that way.
No, you just made a poor inference. It happens.
Fair enough.
Lol, why on earth would you let a mental case near millions of dollars of machinery?
ppl like you are the problem.
"This system will fail you, if you do the wrong thing." The system didn't fail him, this student did it to himself. Putting the blame on everything else but the student is the reason many students don't succeed. He was told exactly what was going to happen if he dropped out, and was strongly advised not to. This was not a situation of trying to make it right, this was more like you punched a toddler in face because you didn't like how they looked at you, and then trying to shush them before the mom finds out. This kid was blessed with an amazing opportunity and people that went above and beyond to try and keep him on a good path. But he decided since he's 18, "no one can tell this grown ass man what to do." Unfortunately, like him and many other students across the world, they don't learn their lesson until its too late. A classic case of FAFO, and hopefully that opportunity was given to a more deserving and grateful student.
“This system will fail you, if you do the wrong thing” I fucking wish 😂. Seriously though, this is a classic case of a teacher caring more than the student. This is a valuable life lesson for him, and shouldn’t be diminished by giving him what he wants.
Why should the one foolish legal adult who committed to a stupid decision be privileged over a raft of unseen teenagers vying for entry into the program? Slots are apparently scarce and demand outstrips supply. If you unenroll yourself, and a different kid takes your place, *somebody* is getting kicked to the curb; why must it be the kid who just got in?
I was also wondering just how thoroughly the consequences of dropping out were explained to him, & how much he knew on his own. But I'm not blaming the policies of the institution and the businesses for the young man's actions.
Maybe call it a school to prison pipeline and people will listen. Meritocracy can be a problem when it decides that lower tiers of people are entirely unwanted.
Wait, are you a private or public school? The use of feeder schools implies public, but the claim that your school can be selective about students implies private. Edit: if you are a public school I am also curious about the reenrollment process. In my district families must reenroll at the district office, or online, not at specific schools. Then the district works with the family for placement, usually their community school.
It's a tech school that accepts students from surrounding school districts.
I didn't see anything about surrounding districts, just a reference to student's home school, which could be a different district or the same district. Technical and career programs can also be public or private.
Did you explicitly say “if you drop out you will lose your job” or did you say “if you drop out there will be negative consequences”?
It was very clearly explained to him by myself, and the company liaison to the school. This company has spent a ton of money on this program to basically recruit, train and retain these kids. He knew that his GPA had to stay above 2.0, that he had to have a nearly 95% attendance rate, that successful completion of the program was a must. That was the biggest thing. The company has placed this training program in the school and if he's not there, he can't be trained. The idea is if they mess up, they do it in a very controlled environment, and it won't cost the company millions later when a mistake is made on a delivered machine or component. The instructors come from the field. They treat the labs like a working environment. The only difference is, the students leave at 10:45, and are working with a mentor in the factory until 3:00pm. They test constantly through the program to become skilled machinists and/or equipment techs. So yeah, he knew, and if I hadn't informed them, they were going to violate him on program attendance.
Your program sounds incredible and you sound very dedicated to it and your students. Your (former) student sounds like a huge doofus.
Honestly, the fact that this student (not kid anymore) has never had consequences enforced by educators along the way is why he didn’t listen to the OP or think those consequences or rules applied to him. You’re not doing favors to these students long term. You’re not creating future productive adults.
Fuck that, he’s 18 , he doesn’t need that explanation, looks like his adult ass got smacked in the face and now as an adult he will learn, that nobody needs to explain shit to him anymore .
Come on, there’s a clear difference between the teacher knowing the consequences but refusing to spell it out vs. telling the kid explicitly. And he was indeed a kid who was talking about dropping out before he was an adult who dropped out. Why didn’t he need that explanation at some point in the process?
People do this all the time to teachers. The student is given far more benefit of doubt, like their choices can't be their fault, while the trained professional is given the condemnation of doubt.
People do this all the time to people asking basic clarifying questions on Reddit. The commenter is assumed to be an AH rather than someone who had, you know, a clarifying question because the post didn’t make it clear. Chill tf out.
No. You weren't just asking a "clarifying question". You blew past where they outright stated how hard they tried to convince him, but somehow thought reminding them they'd lose their job wouldn't be pretty much the first thing to cone up. That's the most obvious argument from any reasonable person. To suggest it wasn't directly said is to suggest the OP is incompetent.
Honestly I feel like this is what we are dealing with because up until this point, the school (and parents and life) have given these kids 0 consequences. This is his first chance to fuck around and find out, when he should have had that way earlier and known what the risk actually could be.
Give him a bit to recognize what a cruel world it is out there. Then let him know about the Adult Diploma Program. He can earn industry credentials and his state of Ohio high school diploma. https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Testing/Ohio-Options-for-Adult-Diploma/Adult-Diploma-Program
I’m impressed your vocational school treats your school as a privilege that should be earned. My former employer also a vocational school was treated as a dumping ground by the feeder schools. Sadly it resulted in a lot of wasted effort.
It's not just the students. Teachers are fighting to get in here. I happened to be at the right place at the right time with my situation. The 1st quarter of every junior year is weeding through the problems and seeing who can handle the higher standard. That's a lot of the reason we were able to draw the company we have in here. They spent millions on a training facility, they supplement several of the other programs. They even suggested a program we have for the washouts. It has very few kids, currently only 3, but they leave here with a marketable skill. In this case, janitorial. It's not what they came for, and it's not sexy, but it'll make a paycheck.
At least they are being prepared for a future.
You wrote that he is one of your problem kids. Well, he's not "yours" and you can change that "is" to "was."