There are two groups of students that keep high school counselors awake at night in the fall. The first group of 2 AM students are the ones who aren’t going to graduate on time. Yes, you worked out a plan where a full schedule, a night school class, work study, and a Saturday dual enrollment class will get them a diploma. But this is a student who, at best, passed four of six classes in a regular high school schedule. Is this new plan too much?
I call these students the Potato Salad kids, named after a PE teacher I worked with who once asked me in June how the Potato Salad calls were going—“You know”, he said, “’hold the potato salad/hold the beer/your little darling/isn’t graduating this year’”.
To sleep well, do two things. First, to help students avoid this kind of senior meeting in the first place, set aside regularly scheduled time in the office (not in front of your home refrigerator at 2 AM) to review your student support efforts for students in grades 9-11—what’s good, what’s bad, what’s missing, what’s needed. Yeah, it means a little less time with students, but when the house is falling down, you fix the roof before you make dinner. Help from administrators is paramount, and if you have a study skills or student support center, bring them in.
Experience suggests many of these students have had classes with teachers who only teach content, not the study skills needed to understand the content. That’s a much bigger challenge to take on, but if your administrator is game, go for it. (Pro tip: Whatever you do, be sure to ask the failing students what they need to succeed. A true game changer.)
For the seniors you’re pretty sure aren’t going to be able to right the ship by June, there’s a three-step process:
Cut yourself some slack The same counseling services you’re offering 95% of the students either got them to graduation or at least didn’t get in their way. Unless you told Billy’s teachers to flunk Billy on purpose, the issues for Billy’s challenges are his, not yours. Move on.
Buy high quality snacks You don’t want your next meeting with these students to be a meeting about graduation. You want it to be a meeting about life. Creating that atmosphere requires a change of atmosphere. Pizza does that. Cold soda. Mozzarella sticks.
Have a real conversation The counseling techniques you learned in grad school likely didn’t work with these students, so it’s time to see them as your neighbor’s kid, your niece or nephew—maybe even your own. That requires a different approach, and different questions:
“So, it’s the day after final exams. No more high school for you. Maybe no more school ever. What’s next?”
“Why is that what’s next?”
“What do you need to get ready for what’s next?”
“How can I help?”
Right—you are assuming the student finishes high school. That’s because you want them to start thinking that way, which makes whatever they need to do to finish high school that much more important to them. That nurtures success.
Yeah, you’ll likely need Plan B, and likely Plans C, D, and E. But that’s later. For now, it’s time to get them to believe in themselves. That alone increases the chances that most of Plan A will work, so they only end up with a class or two to finish in summer school to get a diploma. That means that, by next September, nobody knows they were a Potato Salad kid.
Not bad.
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