High Stakes Community School Experience

Throughout my life, I have always seemed to enjoy role playing experiences in a classroom setting because I feel like I can better think through issues if I pretend to actually be involved in the problematic situation. Our Ed Psych "High Stakes Community School" role playing game was no exception. I was instructed to assume the role of a counselor for underachieving students who were at risk of not graduating from high school. This was a very intriguing role for me to assume because I've never really been able to grasp the thought of dropping out of school on a personal level, but assuming the role of someone trying help at risk students obtain a diploma was kind of an eye opening experience. I learned that motivation and acceptance is KEY to keeping kids in school. We have mentioned numerous times in class that poor reading skills is one of the main underlying causes of the high school dropout rate in our country, but what can we do about it? My group discussed numerous ways to go about fixing the drop out problem in our schools, but it was terribly difficult to come up with realistic solutions that would help large numbers of students. Then during the actual role playing activity in the evening class, it was really hard to get other groups to realize that we need to worry about the at risk students as much as we do the other students who seemingly do well in school. Other groups were worrying more about sports extracurricular sports teams than they were about students who were at risk of not even earning a diploma. That was one of the BIGGEST "Ah Ha" moments that I got out of the whole experience. We as a society need to first focus on students academic needs before we can think about extra activities or programs.