The majority of Mountain State students who enter high school as freshmen leave like they’re supposed to.
That is, four years later (or thereabouts), they gleefully turn their tassels on Graduation Day.
In fact, the 89.4% high school graduation rate West Virginia boasted in 2017 was the third-highest in the nation, coming just behind Iowa and New Jersey.
However, just like the mountain climber who sets off the avalanche when he plants the flag at the peak, the celebration was short-lived.
Only 55% of those grads were enrolled on college campuses that fall.
And as many 30% of incoming college freshmen educated in West Virginia schools over the years have had to take remedial classes just to catch up.
The Monongalia County Board of Education set out to move that mountain Tuesday night.
Board members inked a “Trauma-Skilled School” partnership with the National Dropout Prevention Center, an advocacy group in Anderson, S.C.
Today’s school-aged children answer the morning bell (if they go to class at all), with a lot of stressors from home, Donna Talerico said.
Poverty and abuse.
Ripples in the livingroom from West Virginia’s daunting opioid epidemic, statewide.
Bad experiences at home have a way of translating into bad experiences in the classroom, said Talerico, a Mon board administrator who was also a teacher and principal in the county.
Stack up enough of those, she said, and kids will either drop out or just do enough to get by.
The trauma-skilled model, she said, helps educators refine the mission.
“It’s helping students develop that growth mindset,” she said. “It’s helping them become resilient.”
The two-year pilot program here will launch Oct. 14 at Ridgedale Elementary School and South Middle School.
Plans are to take the program countywide in 2021, she said. Visit dropoutprevention.org to learn more about the national effort.
It’s no longer enough to simply be a teacher in that effort, said Sandy Addis, the director of the National Dropout Prevention Center.
Those in front of the classroom, the director said, have to be students of the human condition, too.
But the program, Addis said, isn’t about turning teachers into de facto counselors.
The program, its director said, pulses with twin heartbeats of inspiration and learning.
Which makes the grade with Talerico in Monongalia County and West Virginia.
“You’re getting a kid to say, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ ” Talerico said. “And I don’t have to tell you what that means.”
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