Week Three

This week at Starke we learned a lot about some of our students and their backgrounds. The students at Starke have much different lives than I did when I was their age. Many of these students are concerned with where their next meal will come from, whether they will have the power or water turned off at their house tomorrow, and for some when they will see their parents next. All of these hardships that these children face influence their performance in school. I have seen so many cases of this throughout the years that I have volunteered at Starke and this summer is no exception.

           

One of our student’s mothers is only seventeen or eighteen years old. She struggles to get her child to school and when the child does show up he is often late. The child’s grandmother has been trying to help get him to school but she is trying to back off so the mother realizes it is her responsibility to get her child to school. Another student lived in a terrible environment for the first few years of his life, then he was placed in foster care, and now has been adopted by his foster family. He has many behavior problems due to his past. However, his parents are working closely with the teachers to try to help the student adjust his behavior to be classroom appropriate and recover from his past. These are just two examples of the many problems that our students are facing at home. We do everything that we can to help the students do well in school but until their parents support them academically there is only so much the teachers can do. The parents need to be communicating with the teachers, staying informed about their students’ performance in school, and making sure that their students are coming to school.