Here are some ideas to help you continue to make a difference for stressed, maladjusted, troubled, frightened, and vulnerable students during school vacations. These ideas are all taken from our web site, books, e-books and workshops.

*** Extend Your Reach: For some kids, their teacher may be the only sane, sober, caring adult they know, and then summer vacation comes. To extend the reach of teachers and other school-based youth workers who provide invaluable stability, safety, direction and nurturing, use this intervention: Address pre-paid post cards to the teacher (or other key school worker) at school, and give them to the child on the last day of school. Ask the child to write or draw on the post cards then drop in the mail. Studies show that children who have a sense of connection to the community do better on almost every measure including graduation rates, teen pregnancy, delinquency, etc. The post cards can preserve a bit of that connection over the potentially lonely and difficult summer.

*** Connect Back: Before leaving for summer vacation, the teacher (or other school worker) can write up post cards from the teacher to the child, and ask the school secretary to send out the cards over the summer. The post cards (or letters or small packages) can offer suggestions for summer activities, provide encouragement or contain specific activities that the child can do.

*** Find Linkages: Prior to the summer break, research community groups that will provide a summer connection for your neglected, troubled or lonely students. Groups such as Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, YWCA and Big Brother, Big Sister can provide activities, mentors, camp experiences and other key linkages. As delinquency tends to increase when youth are not involved in school or similar activities, it may be very important to structure summer vacation for youth who would otherwise be largely unshepherded.

*** Leisure Time Management: Kids chronically claim there is nothing to do. Show that there is always something to do. Divide your youth into 4 or 5 smaller groups. Ask each group to imagine they have each been given a small amount of money; one group might be told they have $2.00, the next group might have fifty cents, etc. One group can be asked to imagine they were given no money. Now, ask each group to determine all the activities, events and hobbies a person could do with that small amount of money. Provide access to phone books, newspapers, the internet, etc. to aid the groups to develop long lists. Write up all the groups' answers and distribute to your kids. Include a wide range of activities such as visiting the library, playing hackey sack, reading, internships, sports, utilizing mass transit, volunteering, crafts, etc. Your kids will be amazed how much there is to do when there is nothing to do!

*** Reach a Dream: Discuss how Martin Luther King Jr. worked to reach his dream. Ask your students what they are willing to do to reach their dreams. Suggest that the summer months may be the perfect time to gain or perfect the skills needed to reach each dream.

How Does High Stakes School Testing Affect Sad, Traumatized, Withdrawn, Vulnerable Students?

One of the hottest topics in our Problem Student Problem Solver workshop staff development sessions has gotten to be participants' upset at the damage they see being caused by overzealous state-wide assessment testing. As you may know, some states have become so concerned about measuring student progress, that many they have highly rigorous testing. In some regions, teacher and administrator employment and/or salary are based on test scores. In at least one state, personnel have been caught forging test results. In another state, schools are actually given report cards, and graded, with some schools failing. In other regions, professional sport team mascots and cheerleaders are hired to urge students to score well.

In one state, part of the progress assessment testing, includes having students write an essay. One teacher wrote the local newspaper to tell of her dismay when one of her students wrote his essay on his return to middle school following a period of dropping out due to serious difficulties he was facing. The essay was judged unsatisfactory when scored for the test on such measures as grammar, punctuation, etc. The teacher now had the difficult situation of having a young, vulnerable student receive a failing score on a highly sensitive topic. Worst still, apparently the student's story would also have been failed even if the essay's focus had been to lament the death of his mother, or to describe the beating of his sister. There is no provision to adjust tests to the special needs of students, or to give consideration to special circumstances. This inflexibility is true across many states that use progress testing.

The teachers and counselors who come to our workshop, often ask if there are approaches that could work better than what they view as "education at all costs," when students are expected and pressured to produce regardless of any family problems, disabilities, crises, or personal horror that a child may be living with. There are much better ways, and some of the best, are described below. But, testing does not leave only challenged kids buckling under the pressure. My own 13 year old, easy B+, honor roll mention, doesn't-even-study-much, normally unflappable student burst into tears recently, terrified that she will flunk the 10th grade tests she will face that are still more than 2 years away!

Here Are Adaptations to Consider:

** What Could Replace "Education at All Costs?"
So often adults have two viewpoints towards educating youngsters in distress. Some adults say that no matter if the child is being beaten, or goes unfed, or whatever the distress, the child must still complete homework on time, take tests, etc. This can heap more misery on the shoulders of a deeply troubled youth. Others take the opposite tact and say they don't want to add to the child's problems, and so they won't expect much from them. Sadly, this means the child may not get the education they still need. Instead of these extremes, find the balance between these viewpoints: never abandon your educational mission, but don't accomplish it all costs.

** Understand How Much Pain Exists
Non-mental health professionals may be shocked at the surprisingly high numbers of children in pain. The literature suggests that perhaps 10% of the children (or a family member) may struggle with substances; 10% may be emotionally disturbed; 20-30% may face sexual abuse or incest; 10-15% may face verbal, physical or emotional abuse. Even though these numbers don't take into account the overlap across these groups, that's a lot of kids facing a lot of pain.

** Stop the Pressure
There are ways to evoke a desire to perform well that doesn't have to be experienced as pressure. So many teachers believe that the pressure that is being exerted in their state is absolutely counterproductive to testing, and they are probably right. Instead of ressure, show how education skills will be needed in the adult world, and how critical they are to the kids' futures, rather than relate learning skills to scoring well on assessment tests. Education is meant to prepare kids for the adult world, not for taking tests.

** Train Kids to Be Students
We don't formally train youth to be students. Very few schools have a formal, written-down plan to teach attendance, punctuality, motivation, test-taking, homework management, discussion skills, how to focus, etc. If these nuts-and-bolts skills were systematically taught instead of just being expected, more kids might learn more, and yes, test scores could be enhanced.

** Train Kids to Manage Anxiety and Problems
We also don't teach students how to manage big problems from home, and anxiety about tests and school. Learning problem management and how to overcome anxiety will be skills a child will need for an entire lifetime, and yes, could enhance test scores.

** Stop Micro-Managing Teachers
In many states, teachers are treated like money-grubbing scum. Teachers do the most important jobs on the planet, often for humble pay, and without thanks while also serving as parent, psychologist, nurse and pastor to many lost souls. Instead of making teachers' jobs harder, give them more support and better training. Much of today's teacher training is not geared to face the big social and emotional problems that arrive each day with the kids. We also have schools where classes include a whopping 38 youngsters and the sky can be seen through the holes in the classroom. We expect teachers to teach against all odds, all while consistently criticizing them and reducing their budgets.

** Stop One-Size-Fits-All Testing
Few accommodations are made at all in performance testing. A child who was raped the night before, or slept under a bridge, or witnessed terrible domestic violence, must still perform. No one wants lower standards, but build in some type of breathing room for students with serious or pronounced distress, disabilities, crises, cultural differences, ethnic differences, language differences, etc. In one state, many of the schools that performed poorly on state-wide tests were communities with many minority group members. Little effort seems to have been made to ensure that these tests were fair to children who were different from the dominant culture. So, their school flunked.

** Stop Telling Schools They Flunk
Imagine you are a six-year-old and you hear that your school flunked. Imagine the impact on you, especially if you struggle academically, or have a low opinion of yourself, or you already live with racial bias, or you're a new immigrant feeling adrift in a new world... where even your school flunks. Let's find more grown-up ways of referring to schools that struggle.

If you want to see how the education world looks from outside the box, be sure to check out the hundreds of surprising, wonderful methods and ideas on our web site. You won't find a focus on content or testing, but you will find common sense methods that work to build motivation, stop work refusal, help
traumatized youngsters, and improve class participation.

Ruth Wells
www.youthchg.com