Hands-On Learning
Every nine seconds of every school day, a student drops out of school in the United States. In Georgia, one in four high school students fails to graduate on time, and more than 80 percent of the state’s adult prison inmates are high school dropouts.
Lori Elliott, a clinical instructor in the College of Education's middle-secondary education and instructional technology department, is all too aware of the state’s growing truancy rate and its consequences for dropouts.
That's why, in the spring of 2003, she formed a partnership with the Truancy Intervention Project, or TIP, a nonprofit community agency that targets students who are at risk for dropping out of school. The collaboration was designed to provide teachers in the College of Education's language and literacy master's degree program with real-world experiences working with academically at-risk and habitually truant students, nearly all of whom live in poverty.
Each semester, graduate students attend their required "at-risk readers" course at the Fulton County Juvenile Justice Center, where they teach struggling readers who've been referred to them by TIP. In the three years since the program's inception, more than 60 of the project's teens and young adults have been helped by Elliott's students, who also submit written reports with academic recommendations to each TIP student's teachers and probation officer.
Elliott expected some of her students to have reservations about the project, but their overwhelmingly positive response surprised her.
"I realized how much my students don’t know about at-risk students and the community resources out there for these adolescents," she says, adding that her approach to teaching and learning allows future teachers to make a contribution to the community and have a greater understanding of the large network of professionals who are working with struggling students.
In recognition of her work, Elliott received this year's Georgia State University President's Award for Community Service and Social Action, an honor that she says not only recognizes her community service but also the invaluable contributions of her students and TIP.
"I tell my students that we should all be advocates of keeping students out of the juvenile justice system," Elliott says. "This experience allows teachers to participate in a community effort with lawyers, social workers and judges who also are working toward the same goal."