Lisa Higuera

Lisa Higuera
July 17, 2015

In 8th grade, I did not understand terms like dropout or schoolhouse push-out. I didn't know that there was a vocabulary or a movement to accost what I saw in my middle school or high school: a lot of my friends did not graduate with me; life became too complicated for some of my peers and it appeared that school wasn't providing any solutions to help them in their life or education so they gave up.

I was a fortunate exception. As a get-go-generation immigrant, I spent the commencement few years of elementary school struggling to blot English so I could larn. Even so, as soon every bit I could speak English, the Los Angeles Unified Schoolhouse District labeled me highly gifted. But while I attended a highly gifted magnet programme in heart schoolhouse, I watched my peers struggling with lack of back up and castigating discipline, in spite of their intelligence and potential.

My proficient friend became pregnant in 7th class and, without supports in school, she dropped out that yr. Some other classmate experienced trauma at home, had to move in with relatives in some other city that same year, and as well dropped out. He told me that school didn't feel similar a expert identify for him and that life in the streets was better than school. Equally far as I knew, neither of my classmates' problems were addressed past our teachers, and nosotros never saw them again.

I am now a graduate student at the University of Southern California. Working towards my master's in social piece of work, I am learning that children who struggle with school should not be dismissed as lost causes; at that place is usually more to the thing and it oftentimes involves traumatic experiences. Students who endure trauma are yet children deserving of school support and their right to an education, and there are ways we tin can help them.

Teaching in Los Angeles has changed since I was in the K-12 system. In 2013, LAUSD passed the School Climate Bill of Rights and made a delivery to implement restorative justice in its schools by 2020. As a result, schools in the district today can use an effective strategy that assists struggling students, one that tackles behavioral and emotional bug that oft push students like these out of school.

Known as Schoolwide Positive Beliefs Interventions and Supports, it focuses on creating a positive schoolhouse climate through interventions that address pupil behavior, trauma and social emotional skill edifice. This way of intervening and supporting students deals with issues that affect learning and the educational experience by positively addressing the mode students are treated.

Research shows a strong connection between investing in helping students feel connected to schoolhouse and keeping them from dropping out. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports tin can provide schools with strategies that assistance children stay in school.

Likewise my graduate studies at USC, for the past five years I worked with Public Counsel, a legal aid organization that advocates for positive, research-based schoolhouse climate strategies, like Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports.

Every bit part of the Education Rights team at Public Counsel, I helped advocate for students similar those I knew in high school. Past helping parents and students empathise their options, the Pedagogy Rights team focuses on helping children admission pedagogy, particularly when they are not getting the assistance they need in schoolhouse or have been removed from school through disciplinary actions.

I worked with youth who reminded me of the students whose stories I've shared. Students struggle with complex trauma that impacts their behavior in school. Every bit I saw in my middle and high schools, today the unaddressed trauma and resulting behavioral issues often lead to asymmetric discipline in schools, such as suspension and expulsion for students who struggle the about.

However, while these enquiry-based, school-wide approaches have been shown to have remarkable success, not all school districts have access to technical assistance and support to implement these kinds of collaborative interventions.

To accost this event, Public Counsel and partners advocated for funding in this year'southward budget for statewide resources and trainings, grants and the cosmos of a network of trainers to assist schools across the state implement strategies such as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports, restorative justice, trauma-informed exercise and to help them build cultural competency skills. The neat news is that California's governor has approved $10 million in the new state budget for this purpose.

It is incommunicable to go back in fourth dimension and assistance the hundreds of students who dropped out from my centre school and high school, students who were supposed to graduate with me but did non. Notwithstanding, I see great potential for helping amend educatee outcomes from here on out. The governor's decision to fund this statewide endeavour is an important step toward implementing equitable, schoolhouse-wide supports that accost the needs of students holistically, in terms of academics and well-being, and to reaching the students who struggle the virtually as a outcome of violence, trauma and mental health issues often beyond their control.

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Lisa Higuera is a graduate student in the Academy of Southern California's School of Social Work and Sol Price Schoolhouse of Public Policy.

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