College Doesn’t Love You
What if our efforts to support our students’ preparation for college are actually making it harder for them to succeed once they get there?
One young alum at Hampshire College, Crystal, recently wrote to me in response to an ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) article about first-generation college students,
“The part that struck me the most was that ‘Colleges don’t love you.’ It’s very true, and that has been my biggest struggle this year. My large community of support has vanished, and while I know I can always count on my high school supporters to give me a hand, it’s a shock to look around and be like ‘Who can I turn to?’ I feel like we should warn our students that their safety net will be disappearing, without pulling it away from them. We should be tougher in the last year or two, but avoid making students feel shirked and unimportant.”
As an example, Crystal goes on to write, “In college deadlines count, big-time. And if you can’t make the deadline and did not ask for an extension, your grade drops.” This is certainly not current practice at BART. In our efforts to support our students, we provide ample warning about deadlines, making sure they are posted in multiple places. Students don’t have to ask for an extension, and if they miss a deadline, a teacher will find them and work out a plan to submit the work. Otherwise, our students would miss out on critical learning opportunities – and that would make them less prepared for college.
Finally, Crystal writes, “I was not prepared for the style of reading I had to do this year. I think that in the science classes and history classes, articles and studies need to be read, discussed, and summarized. If our students can master non-fiction reading by the time they graduate, college will be much, much easier.” Wise advice from a college freshman – and advice that echoes a blog from MATCH executive director Mike Goldstein, from earlier this year, in which he cited three struggles college students face that limit their success: lack of money; lack of time-management/ study skills; and lack of experience dealing with dense, non-fiction texts.
Crystal, you are so wise.
In fact, it is the blog that Crystal echoes that led us to hire Spencer Blasdale from SchoolWorks to help us answer the very question I posed at the start. We don’t have any answers yet, but I’ll be sure to report back when we do.
