Exiting Community Day School
Promoting Successful Students
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Exiting Community Day School seems to be the goal even before the first day of a student's attendance. Community Day School is a program funded by the State of California designed to work with at-risk students. The goal of Community Day School is to be a huge net, catching students who struggle to fit into and flourish in a typical school.
SARB meetings are hard on parents and students. It is hard to see and hear negative things about a child. Research shows that this program does help redirect students.
Success in school is everybody's goal. If you really want your child to be successful in a regular school, anywhere in the world, the key to success is their honesty with you, the parents. Carrying guilt and covering up for our mistakes will eat away at your relationship with your child. In my many years of experience working with studenst who are at-risk of dropping out of school there is one common thread, an honest relationship with parents. Parents typically want to believe their child, to trust that what they have said in regard to school and relationships with adults and other kids, is based on truth. Unfortunately, 99% (two students in all the years were actually honest before placement but did something stupid and landed in CDS for a time). yes, 99 out of 100 students lie and have lied to their parents about their behavior in school.
One of the hardest thing for everybody is to be totally honest with someone when they know that they will disappoint or be grounded or be yelled at or just be in trouble. I listened to a local police officer, hero, talk to my students and tell them that they needed to come clean with their parents, to be honest and to start fresh. I tell kids that when they tell the whole truth about what has been happening in their life, truth, they will feel safer and more loved than they do now, holding lies.
One story to show you the benefit of accepting truth from your child.
Once upon a time there was a student who was placed with me in the fifth grade. I kept him for only half a year and he had learned to behave well at school and to try to control his temper. He wanted to exit. I wanted him to exit. I remembered when he first entered CDS and he had lied to his parents over and over about me. Yes, I hear you, he lied about me and I should have forgiven him because he was doing better. But, as long as his parents believed his lies about me, I knew that they believed his lies about other teachers, and school staff. So, I told him. "When you have been honest with your parents you can exit. I will know when you have told them everything you can remember, every time they showed up at school to defend you, every lie that set them up to look foolish in the eyes of the school. Tell them everything. I will know when one of your parents comes to me and hugs me and thanks me. I promised him that his relationship will be better than ever and that he will learn to trust his parents.
So, I called mom and told her of his assignment. I wanted to prepare the parents for the conversation so that nobody got too out of control mad about all the lies.
Two weeks went by and finally mom showed up with tears in her eyes. She hugged me and thanked me for caring about her son. She told me some of his stories....they started when he was in kindergarten and the principal called...he lied and his folks believed him over the principal who said that he had seen the misbehavior with his own eyes.
That afternoon the father came in and looked at me and yelled, "You turned my kid into a liar. You made him lie to us about lying to us. You have ruined our lives."
I talked to the dad, reasoned with him..."How would I know about a rock being thrown at a squirrel? How could I have even guessed at all the things he told you? Please reconsider and accept his offering and his hope that this would encourage your relationship."
Dad never yelled at me again, he never thanked me. Dad did however invite me to play volleyball in the summer with his team. He seemed to relax a bit. A few years later I was blessed with working with their second son. He had his own issues, lying was not the biggest.
We teach at-risk students because we care. Push it to the end and do not let your child exit CDS without a heart change. That heart change will make the difference.
Thank you,
Sally
530-549-3307