Owning up to Failing Grades?

What causes Tahoma students not to pass?

Owning up to Failing Grades?

Daniela Barros, staff

High school. Where your grades are the most important thing to you, your number one worry and stress, the grades that depend on your life after high school. Students at Tahoma High School have fallen victim to failing grades.

According to the Seattle Times, nearly 22.5% of ninth grade students failed a core class in the nation, with Tahoma below average at 15.7%. This didn’t factor in elective or non-core classes. This is somewhat understandable, as students have yet to figure out what to do with their lives and getting settled in for three more years of high school. At Tahoma High School lunch is known as power hour, where students get half an hour of lunch and teachers are allowed to control the other half. Power Hour has been efficient for many students. Yet, many see that going to a teachers classroom for 30 minutes of Power Hour as a punishment. Power Hour was established at Tahoma High school for students to meet with clubs, meet with teachers and eat lunch. Some students are not using this helpful resource to their advantage and just taking this as a full hour of lunch to hang out with friends.

How exactly are students failing classes? Well, when a student does not take the time to see if they finished their work or put any effort into finishing their assignments, the grades in their classes drop. Students not putting any effort into their work or just their lack of motivation in class are just signals being sent to a teacher that a student doesn’t care enough to be in that class or that they have zero intentions of learning anything. When a students send these signals, teachers find themselves in a hard position as to what to do with the student, how to help them and what they need to do to get them motivated. At times, students are failing because they don’t understand and haven’t asked for help and other times a student is failing because they don’t put a single effort into doing their work no matter how much the teacher tries to get them involved.

Tahoma High School’s Power Hour concept is great, but it is not effective enough for students with failing grades. Ms. Vanhoomissen, a math teacher at THS, stated “We have more work to do to make it more effective. To make power hour more effective it should be more privilege based, freshman and sophomore shouldn’t be as privileged and should have a study hall for at least one half of power hour to make it more controlled.’’  

To get students motivated teachers need to get their children encouraged and show they care. Even simple things can show that a teacher cares more about them as a person than the grade they get in class. Some teachers fail to realize that there may be a lot of things going on in a student’s home life: divorced parents, jobs, babysitting siblings, sports. All these are just a few things that could be going on in student’s life. Few teachers also fail to realize that with problems at home that school does not come first.  Talking to the student and attempting to try to solve the problem will get them on track again and lead them to a stronger future.

Making these necessary changes to help a student is not as much work as it seems to be. Not every student is dealing with the same struggles or has failing grades. Yet, we as members of a community,  fail to see at times that not everyone’s the same.