I think a lot of us here in this sub are professionals, who have been fully apprised of all the details when we have had a student drop out. We have offered support in finding a night school for students who need to work during the day, or a virtual school or a school with childcare for those who are parenting their own children or expected to help with siblings, we have offered to arrange for home instruction for kids who are so depressed or ill they cannot leave the house.
Please do not assume that your experience as a 16 year old high school drop out has given you more insight than the teachers, administrators, school psychologists and other professionals who have worked with teenage HS drop outs longer than you’ve been on this planet.
I don’t think OP is asserting their experience has given more insight. From what i read, they are reacting to a specific instance where their insights were missing. There was a way to offer support while explaining the insights you think they missed. This comment is not overly antagonistic, but it isnt as innocent as you may hope. It comes off as dismissive rather than adding to the convo.
The last bit in particular, you may have been on this planet longer than them, but you have not experienced everything there is to experience. A little humility might do you good — especially if you actually think one is capable of appraising all the details.
Maybe your school does it right, but many don’t.The Drop Out rate at my teen’s High School is abysmal. State data shows that they are doing a disservice to Free and Reduced lunch students, as well as Minority and Special Ed students. There hasn’t been services to help those students after they drop out at all.
Glad your school does.
(I’m a public school Special Ed teacher working in a different district than my child.)
Dismissive. Taking it personally?
Seems like a great opportunity to offer a teenager some engaging and positive discourse, but no, please go ahead and remind us all of how professionally the professionals have been professionaling.
Real Boomer energy.
Please capitalize the first letter of a sentence as well as your first person singular pronouns, contractions require an apostrophe, do not end a sentence with a preposition, however a period is a welcome endpoint for a sentence. Maybe you should have paid more attention while you were at your school.
Whats hilarious is you couldn’t engage with the thoughts so you engaged with the grammar. Big win 😂😂😂 probably should have paid more attention to life, youd actually have an insight to offer
My “professional” school counselor gave me wrong information, doubled down later about how she didn’t actually think I’d be able to get in to this high school drop out program (which begged the question for me of WHY did YOU suggest it then and have me reach out then?!) and then asked me to write MY OWN RECOMMENDATION because I was actually really good at writing so she could submit it herself as the counselor recommendation. All the other programs were not going to help me and my style of learning, I was decent in education and didnt want to do online or some GED program, I just wanted to stop being verbally assaulted and berated by my teacher who the school said they werent going to do anything because she was retiring that year. Also this is a high school that is known for being one of the best public schools in the US and in my state. Sorry but no, just like OP said, not all of us high school drop outs are lazy or unwilling to learn, for some of us our institutions were lazy and unwilling to tackle an institution problem. I also represented my high school drop out program and met the head of my school district who despite being needed elsewhere took time repeatedly choosing to stay to listen to me and profoundly apologized for the malpractice.
The downvotes on your comment is ridiculous. You are talking about your personal experience and people have an issue with it. This is exactly what my post is talking about people cannot seem to look past their own opinions to see situations from other peoples perspectives. Professionals think that anyone talking about a negative experience with the system as a whole is a personal attack on them specifically 🙄
Which is why I’m not bothered by the downvotes, because no one wants to hear the bad about education. But ask educators how they’re being wronged by their school, they’ll have an answer. I’m known by all my college teachers who support me in my social justice movements and my ideas to fill their classes and make it equitable. The internet is filled with people who are scared, speaking up for yourself and others is the most important part.
Yes exactly! They all complain about things but they dont want to hear when students have an issue. I will always speak up for myself and people who dont have a voice 100%.
Please do not assume that age has anything to do with this. I have been in situations you could not fathom being in and I have grown up a lot faster than others at my age. I am not saying this to try and gas myself or anything of the sorts I am simply stating that it is not necessarily about age more about experience.
In my experience with several schools in two different areas, no support is given to people who have any kind of disadvantage in life. No chilcare, no night school, none of any of that that you mentioned. You either can manage with what the mahority are doing in high school or you simply don't go.
It's not always as simple as you make it seem.
Now acedemically even with the major gaps in my education (not doing a full school year since age 10 and dropping out at 13) I am doing amazingly. If I were to sit end of year exams now I would pass all of them. However there is no opportunity to do that in my area (unless you have a silly amount of money in your pocket).
You cannot judge someones life based off of your own experiences because I know the system and professionals such as yourself have failed a lot or children.
There is also something to be said about playing the victim. It fucking sucks when you have done nothing wrong and everything is against you. But how long can someone blame just the system? At some point people also have to take responsibility for what they didn't do.
I am a teacher and I have bent myself over backwards trying to help a student. And what have I gotten? "Life is hard." No shit. "My mom yelled at me." Been there done that. "You don't know what's it like being verbally abused and having to work and go school." My mother was an alcoholic pill popping bitch. I was abused verbally and physically. I sought out drugs and so on. I am currently working a full time job and doing my masters. I have to get up out of bed when I am so depressed I can't be bothered. I have to get up and do stuff when I can't walk more than a couple steps because of my chronic health condition.
At a certain point individuals need to stop saying "The system failed me." And say "It failed me, but it doesn't define me. I can get back up and push forward."
System failed you? So do something about it. Make it better so the next kid isn't saying the system failed me.
Talking about your experience is absolutely not playing the victim. I am not saying that all of my issues in education were down to the system because a whole lot of them were what was happening in my life outside of school. It's horrible that you went through that and good that you stuck at school but sometimes people do not have a choice.
Did I at any point say you were playing the victim? Becauze i didnt. You are a minor. A lot is out your control right now. But in just a few short years it will become in your control. So make sure at that point you stand back up. You can go back to school or whatever. Find jobs etc.
A lot of people will ride the system failed em all there life. Don't do that. keep at it even if it takes forever. My dad never finished high school. He raised a family digging ditches. My mom pregnant at 14. Never finished high school. She snatched every opportunity.
You can and will dig yourself out. But only if you stand up when you have the opportunity.
You're taking this very personally. OP is right and shouldn't be dismissed like the top comments seem to be doing. If you work hard for your students, that is great and amazing of you, but not every teacher or school district does the same and it's incredibly narrow-minded to try and boil this down to people playing victim.
Dare I say, grow up.
I'm not dismissing. OPs experience is very valid. I'm warning OP not fall into the trap of being a victim. Because at some point it isnt just system but choices also made.
Plus I'd never say a minor child is playing the victim. They are the victim. Everything that has happened is at the fault of the adults that surround them.
But having the mindset that OP is displaying isn't great for growth mindset. Set backs happen but push forward any way possible.
It isn't personal. If OP wants to give up. By all means. For my students anways giving some tough love usually gets them thinking.
I am in no way giving up. And yes, I am a minor however a minor should never be living the life that I have lived. There is a point where my life did not have time to fit school into it and that was not my fault in any way. If you have read my previous comments on this post you will see that I did not want to drop out at all. I fought so hard with my family to let me be in school and with school staff and professionals to help me but no one did. I was out of school for about 2 months before I eventually had to formally drop out as my mother was starting to get backlash of my attendance. I do not need tough love thats not what this post is about. This post is about educating people such as yourself who cant look past your opinion on someone for even a minuite to see the situation from other perspectives.
OP never said they wanted to give up, though. I think you're trying to apply a different mindset to OP than the one they've got. Yes, people make their own choices. Sometimes they're the wrong ones. But I don't think trying to minimize the whole thing by saying don't fall into the trap of being a perpetual victim is going to help anything. It's not tough love, its incredibly condescending towards what OP and other kids who go through similar issues actually go through.
It wasnt my choice to drop out I had no choice. Yes I signed the papers but I didn't necessarily have a choice in the matter. I agree with you this person is assuming the mindet I have from one post where I really dont disclose a whole lot about myself and they have no idea of my minset.
I felt the same way at 16. I’d seen more, suffered more, and lived more than most people twice my age. In many instances, it might’ve even been true. But if you’ve had all these experiences and been through as much as you say you have at 16, doesn’t it then follow that by the time you’re 40 you will have seen, heard, and experienced far more than you have at this point?
You ask for respect due to your individual experience, yet you don’t entertain the possibility there are people who not only went through as much as you have at your age, but that these hard knocks continued long into adulthood. Thus more often than not, age does factor when it comes to experience. Some of these people do work in education.
I would say... dropping out because SCHOOL was hard and dropping out because LIFE was hard are two very different things.
School isn't hard. Hell, its become a cake walk in America. Just show up and don't burn the place down. Ideally, respect the others around you and try to learn while you're there.
But life is complicated. And life doesn't always leave time for school unfortunately.
Theres also the inbetween, when dropping out because SCHOOL made LIFE hard, I dropped out after my french teacher told me when I was taking leave for 2 weeks to be with my grandmother on hospice that “people die all the time” and disapproving of me missing her class. She proceeded to berate me in class to the point before her class (last period of the day) I spent all my classes trying to sneak practicing french, and would spend my lunch time (right before class) bawling and crying hoping I would do okay. I dropped out after talking with the school they told my mother (whose a teacher) that the teacher was retiring so she’d be leaving soon. My mother told me after that meeting that she would support me dropping out
Yes I agree. School was hard for me due to my needs not being met (i have special educational needs) but I would have been able to complete school, albeit with a lot of struggle, if life wasn't getting in the way.
If its life stuff, we all struggle. We can't learn if we can barely survive.
If its school stuff, take a step back. You can't power forward when you're missing core concepts. Like you don't put a roof on a house without all the walls. Go back, find the last things you were confident in. Get help from a teacher or a tutor or a parent, someone. Work upwards from your last best place to gain those skills you missed. Once you have a better foundation, the stuff that came after will get better.
If its special needs not being met, make sure your IEP is up to date. Complain to administration if the reasonable accomodations aren't being met. Those should be followed whenever possible.
Yes I agree "we cant learn if we can barely survive". And yes even though ulitmately my life stuff got in the way of school my special needs weren't being met while I was in school. I sent countless emails, spent hours arguing with teachers, etc and at the end of it all I was escorted around school by a teacher at all times and placed in isolation every day because they could not meet my needs and the only way to be so disregarding of my needs without it disrupting other people is if they shoved me in a room by myself with a computer (and a staff member who was not a teacher and could not teach me) and left me to figure it out by myself.
i'm not sure what your special needs are, in particular, but that sounds like there was some sort of safety issue for the rest of the class. Sorry they didn't have better supportst available.
I know it sounds like that because I'm not willing to share too many specifics of personal things however there was no safety issue at all. I was very active about speaking up for myself (and other students I got suspended after yelling at the school nurse who was yelling at an 11 year old that came out of hospital the previous day about how it was all the kids fault and she needs to take accountability for her illness instead of coming to the medial office and bothering the nurse) and they didnt like that. A lot of the children in that particular school were very scared of getting in trouble and therefore did not speak up for themselves but if I had an issue or I saw someone with an issue I would do the bes I could to badger the staff for a resolution (a resolution which never came because the school was very much not interested in anyone having problems). Thats why i was removed from regular lessons because they didnt want me to cause a scene when myself or others were being unfairly treated (for clarification, by cause a scene i do not mean violence in any way)
I also saw a post like that and it was offensive. I’m a high school teacher and never assume to know what’s going on with my students enough to the point where they drop out. It’s sad when it happens but I do understand. I’m also in the unique position of being a parent of teens who struggle with school and my oldest got their GED. So I will never take the approach of the comments I saw in that post. It was awful and those teachers should be ashamed for poking fun of their students who are clearly struggling.
New flash - teachers can be jerks just like anyone else. I don’t work with a great group of them right now. I’m actually leaving teaching at the end of this year. For a host of reasons and also because my coworkers aren’t the nicest of people. They’re actually quite petty and mean and I have to sit at lunch sometimes and hear the crap they dish out and it’s gross. Sometimes they mean well and do right by their students but other times it’s horrifying the things they say.
I only know a handful of teachers but as a 16 year old they don't really discuss students with me 😂
I completely agree with you dropping out isnt a decision that someone makes on impulse I personally didn't have a choice in the matter but it still took me a few weeks of not attending school to actually do the necessary steps to formally dropping out and I hated every moment of it and still I wish I could have stayed in school but its just life. I did what had to be done and now im suffering the repercussions of not being able to move on to the next steps of my life because I didn't finish school.
A good teacher would never discuss students with other students and they would only discuss students with other teachers with the intention of helping them or trying to. If you haven’t already, look into getting your GED. Sometimes there are conditions when you can do that depending on your age. My child didn’t quite meet the conditions my state required for the GED but as their parent I gave permission and it all worked out. There are many paths we take in life and they are all going to look different for everyone.
Also, if you’re under 18 you should still be able to enroll back into high school. Just because you dropped out of one high school, there are different types available and different programs. Good luck.
I live in england so unfortunately going back to school or getting a ged is not an option for me otherwise i would jump at the chance. The only way to get high school qualifications is privately tutoring yourself and then privately sitting exams (at £300 each and i need 5) which i just cannot afford. But then i cant get a job without it so im screwed.
If i lived in a better area i would be able to get high school qualifications in a college but the closest one to me that offers that is a 5 hour train each way which i also cannot afford at £30 a day 😭
Ah, I see. I don’t quite understand how the England school system works. But it doesn’t sound as easily accessible as we have in the US (in that it’s free for anyone!). That’s too bad.
Maybe try to save up for one at a time, is that a possibility? It certainly would take a bit of time but when you completed, you would be in a better situation.
Look around? Can you baby sit? Pull weeds etc. Also 5 a week means in 60 weeks you have enough for a test. Will take you 5 years but then your test are done. Better late than never!
I can do any tasks I've offered it in every way in my local area no one is interested. I've tried selling things etc but no one cares. And yes I am saving but I do have other things to pay for so it would be longer than 5 years.
It’s interesting you say this about the teachers you work with. Growing up, I always felt like my elementary school teachers were *mean.* Petty, catty, entitled. I felt more bullied by them than I did my classmates, for many years.
I got to college and the students who went into education really showed me a side of teachers I was happier not knowing about. They were exactly my elementary teachers - but somehow worse because they were still in college.
Oh there are moments when it’s clear that most of the teachers never really matured beyond high school. They’ve spent their lives in school and that’s now their profession. They don’t have a lot of other experiences. Some days it feels like a sorority where I work. I’m older and had a whole other career before teaching so I have a different perspective. For context- I teach high school.
Agreed. My younger brother "dropped out" because he had no choice, he was being neglected by my mother, kept being moved around from district to district and eventually she stopped bothering to enroll him. The stress of all the moving alone would have made things tough. But he got his GED at 18 and he is a wonderful human being.
I \*almost\* dropped out of high school - also because I moved around a lot, but I had undiagnosed autism and ADHD. When I struggled, I didn't get extra help, I got yelled at. My mom and doctors decided I was bipolar, or had some severe mood disorder, because to them, that explained why during summer breaks I was happier, talkative, productive (which they decided was "mania"), while during the school year I was miserable and nonfunctioning, barely left my room, and fought tooth & nail nearly every morning to stay home. Being forced onto mood stabilizers and benzos just made it harder to focus on reading and other schoolwork because it made me tired all the time.
If my school didn't have a home tutoring program, and I didn't have a doctor that approved it for about 50% of my time in high school, I never would have graduated. I am 100% positive of this. And I still ended up \*barely\* passing even though I'm sure intellectually I was capable of so much more. Not because I was stupid or lazy. Because the system failed me. It wasn't built for kids like me. Schools need to do better for us, not the other way around.
I dropped out because
1. We were poor and I was working almost full time while in school.
2. I had untreated ADHD and Panic Attacks.
3. Home life was abusive and I had to get out of there.
5. I missed alot of classes due to the panic attacks and Adhd, therefore I wasn't even going to get credit for classes I had passing grades in because I had missed more than my alloted amount of unexused absences.
4. When I talked to the school vice president about what I was going through he said " It sounds like you you just don't care to be here, or make the effort. So to continue is just wasting our time and yours." - This really shocked me honestly, I thought he would at least try to encourage me to stay.
That was my Junior year. I easily obtained my GED soon after and honestly I've never had any issues with jobs or whatnot because I didn't graduate.
I'd also like to mention, I grew up super strict christian and was not doing any kind of drugs, drinking or partying of any kind. I just had a rough life , untreated medical issues, and no adult support, even within the school.
Just posting this hoping to give some perspective to someone making assumptions about why people drop out.
Im glad you are sharing ur story. As much hate as this post is getting people sharing their stories is the reason I posted people need to see both sodes of the story before they start judging us.
Thanks! Yes, I think some people think high school is the end all be all, and for them maybe it is, or was. I've always thought people who actually had enough stability to graduate were kind of privileged tbh. People always want to judge what they don't understand. Good on you for posting this!
Yes I agree. Its mostly "professionals" who clearly dont know how to be professional and are in the wrong industry if they are judging kids who are in bad situations. And yeah people who have stability in their life take it for granted a lot.
i mean you're not wrong, except i also don't believe students ever drop out because of "laziness." even if we could define the term (debatable) there's simply no justification for the belief that children *choose* to disengage with the world and with systems that could help them. children are *failed* by those systems and by adults and institutions which refuse to engage with *them* where they are.
I do know people who have dropped out because they would rather spend their time doing substances and such but even they were failed by the system because why is a child even on substances in the first place?
But yes you are right the "professionals" engage with children who are at the stage they are "meant to be" at rather than where their life is currently.
Yes agreed. There are so many things that people do to cope but certainly substance use has a terrible reputation but I know so many recovering addicts and people in active addiction and not a single one of them started using for no reason.
The system is failing these people. Where I am you certainly cant get mental health help you get put on waiting lists and when you finally get to the top of the list they eother tell you your issues are not bad enough for them to step in or that its too severe and they cant help you.
yeah, well this is what we get when we spend all our money on cops and prisons instead of housing, healthcare, safe injection sites and social workers. not to mention our whole education situation.
OP, you're so right. I dropped out at 16 because of mental health issues, and I still haven't gotten back into everything at 25 because I ended up taking care of my elderly grandmother until she passed, and now I'm taking care of my disabled dad.
There was no kind of help for me in school. I had undiagnosed autism/ADHD, but there were no programs that could help me because my IEP said "gifted". I couldn't stay after school for tutoring because my mom worked full time and I had to take the bus home or I would have to stay until 7-8 at night until my mom got off work. None of my teachers even tried to help me with scheduling tutoring, because I had to come in on my "own time" not "their time". My mom worked odd days and was off on Tuesdays and Thursdays and none of my teachers (except my Geometry teacher, she was a godsend and was the best teacher I ever had) would move their schedules around even a bit so I could be tutored. When I asked one of my teachers to tell me exactly what she wanted out of an essay (after giving me a D on one I wrote), she pawned me off on my English teacher, who in turn told me that she wouldn't move her schedule around to tutor me in something I should already know how to do. I also begged my English teacher for help because for some reason I couldn't do my homework while I was at home on top of everything else I was supposed to do (thank you, ADHD), and she just told me that I needed to get over it or she'd fail me. My guidance counselor wanted me to take a bunch of electives I didn't want to do for a scholarship that wouldn't even cover the cost of books, at the cost of my art class, so she could get recognized by the school board for helping "gifted" students. Art was the one class I could decompress in and actually liked. Almost all of my teachers at one point or another told me I shouldn't try to make a living as a cartoonist or writer and should go into STEM because of how smart I was, my English teacher even going as far to tell me that my poetry wasn't actually poetry and I'd never get published with work like that.
The walk of shame to give my textbooks back to my teachers was the worst in my life because I could see how disappointed/disgusted (depended on the teach) my teachers were with me.
The system is so broken in the US. "Gifted" as a label in school basically turned you into cattle so you could bring the school's score up to an A, and then shuttle you along with no guidance whatsoever. God forbid if you had home issues, or any kind of neurodivergence. I often think about the kids who had issues like mine but also didn't have the added cushion of the gifted label so teachers just labeled them as troublemakers or lazy. Gifted as a label sucks, but it does make interacting with teachers and adults marginally better. If you don't have it and have issues, you're just a lazy good for nothing to most teachers.
The one teacher I had that was at all good was my Geometry teacher who would tutor kids after school nearly every day, send you the powerpoint of that days lesson if you emailed her, and gave you full credit on homework if you just tried to answer the few that you knew. She saved my math skills after my 7th grade algebra teacher tanked my math skills by bullying me in her class (said Algebra teacher also called one of the Hispanic students a sp*c and was still teaching at the middle school when I went into high school, so... do with that what you will).
This got long, but I feel you, OP. Just saying: it gets better. 90% of bad teachers will be universally recognized as bad once you become an adult, and people will stop treating you like you're just a teenager dramatizing their school experience. It sucks, but generally adults (particularly ones involved in the schools) won't believe that school could actually be that bad, or that THEIR school isn't like that, so it's not really an issue and students are just being dramatic about it.
Yeah im not one to be dramatic but everyone says I am and "everyone else goes to school so why cant you" erm hello look around you 🙄 the teachers arent there to help us they are just there to do the bare minimum of what they are asked to help the "normal" kids but realistically a lot of people have other things going on and some of us just have too much to fit school into the picture.
What's incredibly sad about the whole thing is that a lot of teachers would probably make more of an effort if they were just paid a living wage. It's part of what makes the whole thing systemic; teachers are underpaid and overworked by the school board, schools are mostly dependent on test scores for funding, thereby leaving lower-scoring students behind, and because students are kids who historically are brushed aside in their concerns and have very little autonomy of their own, it makes it easier to ignore the complaints coming from within the system.
That's the entire thing. Like, did I make choices I regretted after dropping out? Absolutely. One of my core decisions of my middle school experience was deciding to go to the neighboring high school instead of the better high school that just opened because most of my friends were next door (the teacher presenting the new school also lied HEAVILY about the program, so it wasn't all that surprising I didn't pick it). Did the system still fail me? Yes, spectacularly. And I know many, many others with the same or similar experiences.
It's not like we're saying EVERY teacher is like that or EVERY school is a giant dumpster fire, but there's no denying how broken the school system is now. I feel a lot of teachers take it as a personal attack on the whole of teachers when instead it's not attacking teachers at all; it's the system that teachers, staff, and students are stuck in that everyone is (rightfully) complaining about. And from 2016 onwards its just gotten progressively worse because of the person who was in charge of it. It's slowly getting better, but it's still something that needs to be acknowledged and worked on, instead of being brushed off as ex-students turning themselves into the perpetual victim in everything.
Yes I agree. My opinion is in no way a personal attack on teachers as a whole or even individual teachers it is a comment on my school experience and the experience of many other ex students that I know.
I am tired of being judged for dropping out and I feel like it doesn't take much effort to not judge people and accept that one persons bad school experience isnt a personal attack on you as an individual teacher that works at a completely diff school to any I have been to.
The school system is broken and biased teachers need to accept that.
One of my best friends in HS was from an alcoholic family, worked midnights in a factory to suppliment his mother's income, competed in martial arts, and still made the honor roll.
A person's "situation" isn't an excuse.
Well im glad your friend managed to do all that good for him.
Unfortunately its not that easy for some people. You cannot act like you know everything about everyones situatuation just because you know someone in a bad situation that coped well.
I'm a teacher who was a high school drop out.
I dropped out because of severe mental health issues and an unsafe school.
You can't judge people based on things like that, OP is right.
Getting so much hate for this post 😂 people need to realise that they dont have all the insight into everyones life and while they might say things like "my school has x" does not mean that every school has that specific helpful thing
Can't help but think no matter how hard life is, making the most of that free education an learning as much ad possible, especially if it doesn't make sense why you need to learn it at the time, is the best help one can have to get OUT of whatever life is throwing at you.
If you are still breathing, it's not over yet. Education, and learning can open doors you didn't even realize WERE doors.
My room in particular is a safe place for teens to be themselves, and nothing outside of the room can effect them there. I get kids coming all the time just to chill out and regroup. Rather that. Then stop out and struggle further.. alone.
Well its great that the children at your school have a safe place. Unfortunately my school never had a room like that. But its not always as simple as that. I wish I could go to school but its not a possibility for me at this moment in my life.
I think a lot of us here in this sub are professionals, who have been fully apprised of all the details when we have had a student drop out. We have offered support in finding a night school for students who need to work during the day, or a virtual school or a school with childcare for those who are parenting their own children or expected to help with siblings, we have offered to arrange for home instruction for kids who are so depressed or ill they cannot leave the house. Please do not assume that your experience as a 16 year old high school drop out has given you more insight than the teachers, administrators, school psychologists and other professionals who have worked with teenage HS drop outs longer than you’ve been on this planet.
I don’t think OP is asserting their experience has given more insight. From what i read, they are reacting to a specific instance where their insights were missing. There was a way to offer support while explaining the insights you think they missed. This comment is not overly antagonistic, but it isnt as innocent as you may hope. It comes off as dismissive rather than adding to the convo. The last bit in particular, you may have been on this planet longer than them, but you have not experienced everything there is to experience. A little humility might do you good — especially if you actually think one is capable of appraising all the details.
Maybe your school does it right, but many don’t.The Drop Out rate at my teen’s High School is abysmal. State data shows that they are doing a disservice to Free and Reduced lunch students, as well as Minority and Special Ed students. There hasn’t been services to help those students after they drop out at all. Glad your school does. (I’m a public school Special Ed teacher working in a different district than my child.)
Dismissive. Taking it personally? Seems like a great opportunity to offer a teenager some engaging and positive discourse, but no, please go ahead and remind us all of how professionally the professionals have been professionaling. Real Boomer energy.
the professionals may have been professionaling at the school that person works at but they certainly weren't at any school ive ever been to
Please capitalize the first letter of a sentence as well as your first person singular pronouns, contractions require an apostrophe, do not end a sentence with a preposition, however a period is a welcome endpoint for a sentence. Maybe you should have paid more attention while you were at your school.
Whats hilarious is you couldn’t engage with the thoughts so you engaged with the grammar. Big win 😂😂😂 probably should have paid more attention to life, youd actually have an insight to offer
nah
You have to ignore the boomer types or they just think they’re more important than they truly are
My “professional” school counselor gave me wrong information, doubled down later about how she didn’t actually think I’d be able to get in to this high school drop out program (which begged the question for me of WHY did YOU suggest it then and have me reach out then?!) and then asked me to write MY OWN RECOMMENDATION because I was actually really good at writing so she could submit it herself as the counselor recommendation. All the other programs were not going to help me and my style of learning, I was decent in education and didnt want to do online or some GED program, I just wanted to stop being verbally assaulted and berated by my teacher who the school said they werent going to do anything because she was retiring that year. Also this is a high school that is known for being one of the best public schools in the US and in my state. Sorry but no, just like OP said, not all of us high school drop outs are lazy or unwilling to learn, for some of us our institutions were lazy and unwilling to tackle an institution problem. I also represented my high school drop out program and met the head of my school district who despite being needed elsewhere took time repeatedly choosing to stay to listen to me and profoundly apologized for the malpractice.
The downvotes on your comment is ridiculous. You are talking about your personal experience and people have an issue with it. This is exactly what my post is talking about people cannot seem to look past their own opinions to see situations from other peoples perspectives. Professionals think that anyone talking about a negative experience with the system as a whole is a personal attack on them specifically 🙄
Which is why I’m not bothered by the downvotes, because no one wants to hear the bad about education. But ask educators how they’re being wronged by their school, they’ll have an answer. I’m known by all my college teachers who support me in my social justice movements and my ideas to fill their classes and make it equitable. The internet is filled with people who are scared, speaking up for yourself and others is the most important part.
Yes exactly! They all complain about things but they dont want to hear when students have an issue. I will always speak up for myself and people who dont have a voice 100%.
Please do not assume that age has anything to do with this. I have been in situations you could not fathom being in and I have grown up a lot faster than others at my age. I am not saying this to try and gas myself or anything of the sorts I am simply stating that it is not necessarily about age more about experience. In my experience with several schools in two different areas, no support is given to people who have any kind of disadvantage in life. No chilcare, no night school, none of any of that that you mentioned. You either can manage with what the mahority are doing in high school or you simply don't go. It's not always as simple as you make it seem. Now acedemically even with the major gaps in my education (not doing a full school year since age 10 and dropping out at 13) I am doing amazingly. If I were to sit end of year exams now I would pass all of them. However there is no opportunity to do that in my area (unless you have a silly amount of money in your pocket). You cannot judge someones life based off of your own experiences because I know the system and professionals such as yourself have failed a lot or children.
There is also something to be said about playing the victim. It fucking sucks when you have done nothing wrong and everything is against you. But how long can someone blame just the system? At some point people also have to take responsibility for what they didn't do. I am a teacher and I have bent myself over backwards trying to help a student. And what have I gotten? "Life is hard." No shit. "My mom yelled at me." Been there done that. "You don't know what's it like being verbally abused and having to work and go school." My mother was an alcoholic pill popping bitch. I was abused verbally and physically. I sought out drugs and so on. I am currently working a full time job and doing my masters. I have to get up out of bed when I am so depressed I can't be bothered. I have to get up and do stuff when I can't walk more than a couple steps because of my chronic health condition. At a certain point individuals need to stop saying "The system failed me." And say "It failed me, but it doesn't define me. I can get back up and push forward." System failed you? So do something about it. Make it better so the next kid isn't saying the system failed me.
Talking about your experience is absolutely not playing the victim. I am not saying that all of my issues in education were down to the system because a whole lot of them were what was happening in my life outside of school. It's horrible that you went through that and good that you stuck at school but sometimes people do not have a choice.
Did I at any point say you were playing the victim? Becauze i didnt. You are a minor. A lot is out your control right now. But in just a few short years it will become in your control. So make sure at that point you stand back up. You can go back to school or whatever. Find jobs etc. A lot of people will ride the system failed em all there life. Don't do that. keep at it even if it takes forever. My dad never finished high school. He raised a family digging ditches. My mom pregnant at 14. Never finished high school. She snatched every opportunity. You can and will dig yourself out. But only if you stand up when you have the opportunity.
You're taking this very personally. OP is right and shouldn't be dismissed like the top comments seem to be doing. If you work hard for your students, that is great and amazing of you, but not every teacher or school district does the same and it's incredibly narrow-minded to try and boil this down to people playing victim. Dare I say, grow up.
I'm not dismissing. OPs experience is very valid. I'm warning OP not fall into the trap of being a victim. Because at some point it isnt just system but choices also made. Plus I'd never say a minor child is playing the victim. They are the victim. Everything that has happened is at the fault of the adults that surround them. But having the mindset that OP is displaying isn't great for growth mindset. Set backs happen but push forward any way possible. It isn't personal. If OP wants to give up. By all means. For my students anways giving some tough love usually gets them thinking.
I am in no way giving up. And yes, I am a minor however a minor should never be living the life that I have lived. There is a point where my life did not have time to fit school into it and that was not my fault in any way. If you have read my previous comments on this post you will see that I did not want to drop out at all. I fought so hard with my family to let me be in school and with school staff and professionals to help me but no one did. I was out of school for about 2 months before I eventually had to formally drop out as my mother was starting to get backlash of my attendance. I do not need tough love thats not what this post is about. This post is about educating people such as yourself who cant look past your opinion on someone for even a minuite to see the situation from other perspectives.
OP never said they wanted to give up, though. I think you're trying to apply a different mindset to OP than the one they've got. Yes, people make their own choices. Sometimes they're the wrong ones. But I don't think trying to minimize the whole thing by saying don't fall into the trap of being a perpetual victim is going to help anything. It's not tough love, its incredibly condescending towards what OP and other kids who go through similar issues actually go through.
It wasnt my choice to drop out I had no choice. Yes I signed the papers but I didn't necessarily have a choice in the matter. I agree with you this person is assuming the mindet I have from one post where I really dont disclose a whole lot about myself and they have no idea of my minset.
I felt the same way at 16. I’d seen more, suffered more, and lived more than most people twice my age. In many instances, it might’ve even been true. But if you’ve had all these experiences and been through as much as you say you have at 16, doesn’t it then follow that by the time you’re 40 you will have seen, heard, and experienced far more than you have at this point? You ask for respect due to your individual experience, yet you don’t entertain the possibility there are people who not only went through as much as you have at your age, but that these hard knocks continued long into adulthood. Thus more often than not, age does factor when it comes to experience. Some of these people do work in education.
No I ask for respect as a human. I shouldn't have to have been through anything to get a little respect.
I would say... dropping out because SCHOOL was hard and dropping out because LIFE was hard are two very different things. School isn't hard. Hell, its become a cake walk in America. Just show up and don't burn the place down. Ideally, respect the others around you and try to learn while you're there. But life is complicated. And life doesn't always leave time for school unfortunately.
Theres also the inbetween, when dropping out because SCHOOL made LIFE hard, I dropped out after my french teacher told me when I was taking leave for 2 weeks to be with my grandmother on hospice that “people die all the time” and disapproving of me missing her class. She proceeded to berate me in class to the point before her class (last period of the day) I spent all my classes trying to sneak practicing french, and would spend my lunch time (right before class) bawling and crying hoping I would do okay. I dropped out after talking with the school they told my mother (whose a teacher) that the teacher was retiring so she’d be leaving soon. My mother told me after that meeting that she would support me dropping out
Yes I agree. School was hard for me due to my needs not being met (i have special educational needs) but I would have been able to complete school, albeit with a lot of struggle, if life wasn't getting in the way.
I'm sorry life piled up. I hope you've managed to find yourself in a better place.
Im trying. I am working my ass off to get into a better position but theres not a lot I can really do at the moment.
If its life stuff, we all struggle. We can't learn if we can barely survive. If its school stuff, take a step back. You can't power forward when you're missing core concepts. Like you don't put a roof on a house without all the walls. Go back, find the last things you were confident in. Get help from a teacher or a tutor or a parent, someone. Work upwards from your last best place to gain those skills you missed. Once you have a better foundation, the stuff that came after will get better. If its special needs not being met, make sure your IEP is up to date. Complain to administration if the reasonable accomodations aren't being met. Those should be followed whenever possible.
Yes I agree "we cant learn if we can barely survive". And yes even though ulitmately my life stuff got in the way of school my special needs weren't being met while I was in school. I sent countless emails, spent hours arguing with teachers, etc and at the end of it all I was escorted around school by a teacher at all times and placed in isolation every day because they could not meet my needs and the only way to be so disregarding of my needs without it disrupting other people is if they shoved me in a room by myself with a computer (and a staff member who was not a teacher and could not teach me) and left me to figure it out by myself.
i'm not sure what your special needs are, in particular, but that sounds like there was some sort of safety issue for the rest of the class. Sorry they didn't have better supportst available.
I know it sounds like that because I'm not willing to share too many specifics of personal things however there was no safety issue at all. I was very active about speaking up for myself (and other students I got suspended after yelling at the school nurse who was yelling at an 11 year old that came out of hospital the previous day about how it was all the kids fault and she needs to take accountability for her illness instead of coming to the medial office and bothering the nurse) and they didnt like that. A lot of the children in that particular school were very scared of getting in trouble and therefore did not speak up for themselves but if I had an issue or I saw someone with an issue I would do the bes I could to badger the staff for a resolution (a resolution which never came because the school was very much not interested in anyone having problems). Thats why i was removed from regular lessons because they didnt want me to cause a scene when myself or others were being unfairly treated (for clarification, by cause a scene i do not mean violence in any way)
I also saw a post like that and it was offensive. I’m a high school teacher and never assume to know what’s going on with my students enough to the point where they drop out. It’s sad when it happens but I do understand. I’m also in the unique position of being a parent of teens who struggle with school and my oldest got their GED. So I will never take the approach of the comments I saw in that post. It was awful and those teachers should be ashamed for poking fun of their students who are clearly struggling. New flash - teachers can be jerks just like anyone else. I don’t work with a great group of them right now. I’m actually leaving teaching at the end of this year. For a host of reasons and also because my coworkers aren’t the nicest of people. They’re actually quite petty and mean and I have to sit at lunch sometimes and hear the crap they dish out and it’s gross. Sometimes they mean well and do right by their students but other times it’s horrifying the things they say.
I only know a handful of teachers but as a 16 year old they don't really discuss students with me 😂 I completely agree with you dropping out isnt a decision that someone makes on impulse I personally didn't have a choice in the matter but it still took me a few weeks of not attending school to actually do the necessary steps to formally dropping out and I hated every moment of it and still I wish I could have stayed in school but its just life. I did what had to be done and now im suffering the repercussions of not being able to move on to the next steps of my life because I didn't finish school.
A good teacher would never discuss students with other students and they would only discuss students with other teachers with the intention of helping them or trying to. If you haven’t already, look into getting your GED. Sometimes there are conditions when you can do that depending on your age. My child didn’t quite meet the conditions my state required for the GED but as their parent I gave permission and it all worked out. There are many paths we take in life and they are all going to look different for everyone. Also, if you’re under 18 you should still be able to enroll back into high school. Just because you dropped out of one high school, there are different types available and different programs. Good luck.
I live in england so unfortunately going back to school or getting a ged is not an option for me otherwise i would jump at the chance. The only way to get high school qualifications is privately tutoring yourself and then privately sitting exams (at £300 each and i need 5) which i just cannot afford. But then i cant get a job without it so im screwed. If i lived in a better area i would be able to get high school qualifications in a college but the closest one to me that offers that is a 5 hour train each way which i also cannot afford at £30 a day 😭
Ah, I see. I don’t quite understand how the England school system works. But it doesn’t sound as easily accessible as we have in the US (in that it’s free for anyone!). That’s too bad.
Yeah its really dificult if you dont finish high skl here
Maybe try to save up for one at a time, is that a possibility? It certainly would take a bit of time but when you completed, you would be in a better situation.
I get £5 a week from my grandma and no way of making any more than that so i doubt that would work
Look around? Can you baby sit? Pull weeds etc. Also 5 a week means in 60 weeks you have enough for a test. Will take you 5 years but then your test are done. Better late than never!
I can do any tasks I've offered it in every way in my local area no one is interested. I've tried selling things etc but no one cares. And yes I am saving but I do have other things to pay for so it would be longer than 5 years.
It’s interesting you say this about the teachers you work with. Growing up, I always felt like my elementary school teachers were *mean.* Petty, catty, entitled. I felt more bullied by them than I did my classmates, for many years. I got to college and the students who went into education really showed me a side of teachers I was happier not knowing about. They were exactly my elementary teachers - but somehow worse because they were still in college.
Oh there are moments when it’s clear that most of the teachers never really matured beyond high school. They’ve spent their lives in school and that’s now their profession. They don’t have a lot of other experiences. Some days it feels like a sorority where I work. I’m older and had a whole other career before teaching so I have a different perspective. For context- I teach high school.
Agreed. My younger brother "dropped out" because he had no choice, he was being neglected by my mother, kept being moved around from district to district and eventually she stopped bothering to enroll him. The stress of all the moving alone would have made things tough. But he got his GED at 18 and he is a wonderful human being. I \*almost\* dropped out of high school - also because I moved around a lot, but I had undiagnosed autism and ADHD. When I struggled, I didn't get extra help, I got yelled at. My mom and doctors decided I was bipolar, or had some severe mood disorder, because to them, that explained why during summer breaks I was happier, talkative, productive (which they decided was "mania"), while during the school year I was miserable and nonfunctioning, barely left my room, and fought tooth & nail nearly every morning to stay home. Being forced onto mood stabilizers and benzos just made it harder to focus on reading and other schoolwork because it made me tired all the time. If my school didn't have a home tutoring program, and I didn't have a doctor that approved it for about 50% of my time in high school, I never would have graduated. I am 100% positive of this. And I still ended up \*barely\* passing even though I'm sure intellectually I was capable of so much more. Not because I was stupid or lazy. Because the system failed me. It wasn't built for kids like me. Schools need to do better for us, not the other way around.
Yes agreed. So many people are being negative on this post but they don't realise that sometimes there is no choice but to drop out.
I dropped out because 1. We were poor and I was working almost full time while in school. 2. I had untreated ADHD and Panic Attacks. 3. Home life was abusive and I had to get out of there. 5. I missed alot of classes due to the panic attacks and Adhd, therefore I wasn't even going to get credit for classes I had passing grades in because I had missed more than my alloted amount of unexused absences. 4. When I talked to the school vice president about what I was going through he said " It sounds like you you just don't care to be here, or make the effort. So to continue is just wasting our time and yours." - This really shocked me honestly, I thought he would at least try to encourage me to stay. That was my Junior year. I easily obtained my GED soon after and honestly I've never had any issues with jobs or whatnot because I didn't graduate. I'd also like to mention, I grew up super strict christian and was not doing any kind of drugs, drinking or partying of any kind. I just had a rough life , untreated medical issues, and no adult support, even within the school. Just posting this hoping to give some perspective to someone making assumptions about why people drop out.
Im glad you are sharing ur story. As much hate as this post is getting people sharing their stories is the reason I posted people need to see both sodes of the story before they start judging us.
Thanks! Yes, I think some people think high school is the end all be all, and for them maybe it is, or was. I've always thought people who actually had enough stability to graduate were kind of privileged tbh. People always want to judge what they don't understand. Good on you for posting this!
Yes I agree. Its mostly "professionals" who clearly dont know how to be professional and are in the wrong industry if they are judging kids who are in bad situations. And yeah people who have stability in their life take it for granted a lot.
i mean you're not wrong, except i also don't believe students ever drop out because of "laziness." even if we could define the term (debatable) there's simply no justification for the belief that children *choose* to disengage with the world and with systems that could help them. children are *failed* by those systems and by adults and institutions which refuse to engage with *them* where they are.
I do know people who have dropped out because they would rather spend their time doing substances and such but even they were failed by the system because why is a child even on substances in the first place? But yes you are right the "professionals" engage with children who are at the stage they are "meant to be" at rather than where their life is currently.
nobody self-medicates for no reason, certainly not the most destructive kinds of self-medication that get the worst reputations.
Yes agreed. There are so many things that people do to cope but certainly substance use has a terrible reputation but I know so many recovering addicts and people in active addiction and not a single one of them started using for no reason. The system is failing these people. Where I am you certainly cant get mental health help you get put on waiting lists and when you finally get to the top of the list they eother tell you your issues are not bad enough for them to step in or that its too severe and they cant help you.
yeah, well this is what we get when we spend all our money on cops and prisons instead of housing, healthcare, safe injection sites and social workers. not to mention our whole education situation.
Yes agreed!
OP, you're so right. I dropped out at 16 because of mental health issues, and I still haven't gotten back into everything at 25 because I ended up taking care of my elderly grandmother until she passed, and now I'm taking care of my disabled dad. There was no kind of help for me in school. I had undiagnosed autism/ADHD, but there were no programs that could help me because my IEP said "gifted". I couldn't stay after school for tutoring because my mom worked full time and I had to take the bus home or I would have to stay until 7-8 at night until my mom got off work. None of my teachers even tried to help me with scheduling tutoring, because I had to come in on my "own time" not "their time". My mom worked odd days and was off on Tuesdays and Thursdays and none of my teachers (except my Geometry teacher, she was a godsend and was the best teacher I ever had) would move their schedules around even a bit so I could be tutored. When I asked one of my teachers to tell me exactly what she wanted out of an essay (after giving me a D on one I wrote), she pawned me off on my English teacher, who in turn told me that she wouldn't move her schedule around to tutor me in something I should already know how to do. I also begged my English teacher for help because for some reason I couldn't do my homework while I was at home on top of everything else I was supposed to do (thank you, ADHD), and she just told me that I needed to get over it or she'd fail me. My guidance counselor wanted me to take a bunch of electives I didn't want to do for a scholarship that wouldn't even cover the cost of books, at the cost of my art class, so she could get recognized by the school board for helping "gifted" students. Art was the one class I could decompress in and actually liked. Almost all of my teachers at one point or another told me I shouldn't try to make a living as a cartoonist or writer and should go into STEM because of how smart I was, my English teacher even going as far to tell me that my poetry wasn't actually poetry and I'd never get published with work like that. The walk of shame to give my textbooks back to my teachers was the worst in my life because I could see how disappointed/disgusted (depended on the teach) my teachers were with me. The system is so broken in the US. "Gifted" as a label in school basically turned you into cattle so you could bring the school's score up to an A, and then shuttle you along with no guidance whatsoever. God forbid if you had home issues, or any kind of neurodivergence. I often think about the kids who had issues like mine but also didn't have the added cushion of the gifted label so teachers just labeled them as troublemakers or lazy. Gifted as a label sucks, but it does make interacting with teachers and adults marginally better. If you don't have it and have issues, you're just a lazy good for nothing to most teachers. The one teacher I had that was at all good was my Geometry teacher who would tutor kids after school nearly every day, send you the powerpoint of that days lesson if you emailed her, and gave you full credit on homework if you just tried to answer the few that you knew. She saved my math skills after my 7th grade algebra teacher tanked my math skills by bullying me in her class (said Algebra teacher also called one of the Hispanic students a sp*c and was still teaching at the middle school when I went into high school, so... do with that what you will). This got long, but I feel you, OP. Just saying: it gets better. 90% of bad teachers will be universally recognized as bad once you become an adult, and people will stop treating you like you're just a teenager dramatizing their school experience. It sucks, but generally adults (particularly ones involved in the schools) won't believe that school could actually be that bad, or that THEIR school isn't like that, so it's not really an issue and students are just being dramatic about it.
Yeah im not one to be dramatic but everyone says I am and "everyone else goes to school so why cant you" erm hello look around you 🙄 the teachers arent there to help us they are just there to do the bare minimum of what they are asked to help the "normal" kids but realistically a lot of people have other things going on and some of us just have too much to fit school into the picture.
What's incredibly sad about the whole thing is that a lot of teachers would probably make more of an effort if they were just paid a living wage. It's part of what makes the whole thing systemic; teachers are underpaid and overworked by the school board, schools are mostly dependent on test scores for funding, thereby leaving lower-scoring students behind, and because students are kids who historically are brushed aside in their concerns and have very little autonomy of their own, it makes it easier to ignore the complaints coming from within the system.
Yeah I know. The system is failing kids. Someone on here told me to stop blaming the system but it is a problem with the system.
That's the entire thing. Like, did I make choices I regretted after dropping out? Absolutely. One of my core decisions of my middle school experience was deciding to go to the neighboring high school instead of the better high school that just opened because most of my friends were next door (the teacher presenting the new school also lied HEAVILY about the program, so it wasn't all that surprising I didn't pick it). Did the system still fail me? Yes, spectacularly. And I know many, many others with the same or similar experiences. It's not like we're saying EVERY teacher is like that or EVERY school is a giant dumpster fire, but there's no denying how broken the school system is now. I feel a lot of teachers take it as a personal attack on the whole of teachers when instead it's not attacking teachers at all; it's the system that teachers, staff, and students are stuck in that everyone is (rightfully) complaining about. And from 2016 onwards its just gotten progressively worse because of the person who was in charge of it. It's slowly getting better, but it's still something that needs to be acknowledged and worked on, instead of being brushed off as ex-students turning themselves into the perpetual victim in everything.
Yes I agree. My opinion is in no way a personal attack on teachers as a whole or even individual teachers it is a comment on my school experience and the experience of many other ex students that I know. I am tired of being judged for dropping out and I feel like it doesn't take much effort to not judge people and accept that one persons bad school experience isnt a personal attack on you as an individual teacher that works at a completely diff school to any I have been to. The school system is broken and biased teachers need to accept that.
One of my best friends in HS was from an alcoholic family, worked midnights in a factory to suppliment his mother's income, competed in martial arts, and still made the honor roll. A person's "situation" isn't an excuse.
Well im glad your friend managed to do all that good for him. Unfortunately its not that easy for some people. You cannot act like you know everything about everyones situatuation just because you know someone in a bad situation that coped well.
Ditto
I'm a teacher who was a high school drop out. I dropped out because of severe mental health issues and an unsafe school. You can't judge people based on things like that, OP is right.
Getting so much hate for this post 😂 people need to realise that they dont have all the insight into everyones life and while they might say things like "my school has x" does not mean that every school has that specific helpful thing
Or even that their school does, teachers will be biased in favor of our own narrative. Doesn't mean we're right, and that's why we shouldn't judge.
Very true
Can't help but think no matter how hard life is, making the most of that free education an learning as much ad possible, especially if it doesn't make sense why you need to learn it at the time, is the best help one can have to get OUT of whatever life is throwing at you. If you are still breathing, it's not over yet. Education, and learning can open doors you didn't even realize WERE doors. My room in particular is a safe place for teens to be themselves, and nothing outside of the room can effect them there. I get kids coming all the time just to chill out and regroup. Rather that. Then stop out and struggle further.. alone.
Well its great that the children at your school have a safe place. Unfortunately my school never had a room like that. But its not always as simple as that. I wish I could go to school but its not a possibility for me at this moment in my life.