Five Effective Ways To Support At-Risk And Wounded Students In Thriving At Alternative High Schools And Earning Their Diplomas!

Effective alternative high schools service the whole child - academically, socially, emotionally, and developmentally. It is critical to address the needs of the child through wrap-around support services that include Building Positive Relationships, Providing Supportive Safety Nets at School, Offering Counseling Services, Having a Food and Toiletry Pantry, Laundry Service and Bus Pass Bank and Focusing on Post-secondary Plans. A clear focus on these five wrap-around support areas will assist at-risk and wounded students to earn their high school diplomas - and level the students’ playing fields with an emphasis on building productive futures in college, military and/or career.


INTRODUCTION
ffective alternative high schools are vital to reaching and meeting the needs of at-risk or wounded students developmentally, academically, and socially (McPartland & Nettles, 1991;Slavin & Madden, 2004). They provide opportunities for a unique population of students who do not find success in traditional schools. While society may not often hear of the great success stories, despite numerous challenges, and often against all odds, there are alternative high schools where students are achieving substantial success based on the school's strategic efforts to build and maintain positive relationships and high expectations for students to succeed and earn their high school diplomas.
Nationally, students who traditionally attend alternative high schools typically are described as at-risk or wounded students who, by their circumstances, are statistically more likely than others to fail academically or who are beyond the point of "at-risk" and "suffers from hopelessness," respectively. Those determining the criteria of at-risk status often focus on students who are ethnic minorities, academically disadvantaged, disabled, characterized by low socioeconomic status, experienced trauma, or on a probationary condition over past behavioral issues (Anderson-Moore, 2006). Moreover, at-risk students typically have at least one or more of the following characteristics: retention in grade level, poor attendance, behavioral problems, low socioeconomic status or poverty, unsatisfactory achievement, substance abuse, or teenage pregnancy (Slavin & Madden, 2004). Wounded students deal with circumstances such as withholdings in childhood, aggression during early development, stressful events, parental betrayals and longterm constraints that set the typology for at-risk and wounded students (Hendershot, 2008). At-risk students have significantly higher rates of dropping out of school. According to StatisticsBrain.com (2014), 8,300 students drop out of high school each day; that is 3,030,000 students annually, with the bulk of these students (36%) dropping out in ninth grade.
Alternative high schools that support at-risk and wounded students, with intentional efforts in the following five areas: Building Positive Relationships, Providing Supportive Safety Nets at School, Offering Counseling Services, Having a Food and Toiletry Pantry, Laundry Service and Bus Pass Bank and Focusing on Post-secondary Plans will support these scholars towards successfully earning their high school diplomas.

Build Positive Relationships
If an alternative high school focuses on building positive relationships with students who have struggled in other school settings and provides meaningful educational access and opportunity, the students will succeed. Research shows that the attitudes, skills, and beliefs of the school professionals who work in a school are the most important factors distinguishing schools where high levels of [academic] achievement are the norm for all students (Noguera, 2008). Research further supports that a positive, caring school professional could offer at-risk students substantial emotional and instructional support that could supplement the needs not met by a student's family or regular school program (McPartland & Nettles, 1991). At-risk and wounded learners often lack long-lasting, stable relationships in their lives (Noguera, 2008). It is imperative for educators to build positive, healthy, and trusting relationships with at-risk and wounded students that they lead, teach, and develop daily.

Provide Supportive Safety Nets at School
Supportive safety nets may include daily monitoring of students' attendance rates, building positive and professional relationships between caring faculty and staff and students, online and traditional course offerings, rigorous and engaging instructional practices, weekly tutoring sessions, individual, substance abuse and group counseling meetings, cultural activities, free bus tokens/passes, career and college exposures and waivers for college application fees. Supportive safety nets maximize the at-risk student's ability to make the school the priority in his/her life. From having a mentor, to attending a flexible class schedule to receiving tutoring for a challenging class, supportive safety nets make attending school and thriving at it much more doable for at-risk and wounded learners.

Offer Counseling Services
It is critical to develop the whole child who has been identified as at-risk or wounded and attends an alternative high school. Staffing alternative high schools with mental health psychologists and/or substance abuse counselors will provide ongoing opportunities for students (and if appicable their familites) to address, and hopefully, correct any conceivably disruptive or potentially dangerous behaviors. Alternative high schools that foster safe, positive and caring educational environments must provide resources, such as social workers, psychologists, counselors, behavior intervention specialist, to address the counseling needs and services of at-risk and wounded students. Another viable option is to "refer students and families to (external) mental health and financial assistance services in a timely manner" to address behavioral concerns (DeAngelis, 2012).

Have a Food and Toiletry Pantry, Laundry Service and Bus Pass Bank
Quite often, at-risk and wounded students are their sole providers. Many are homeless, in foster care, living on their own or in transitional housing situations. When students arrive at school and know that they will receive a free meal, inclusive of "grab and go", non-perishable food, it is a beneficial factor in combating potentially, daily hunger issues. Providing toiletries like soap, toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner to cleanse themselves, laundry appliances inclusive of washers/dryers at the school building to clean dirty cloths and/or bus passes to get to and from school help support needy students -emotionally. They are no longer hungry, dirty or without transportation due to these small acts of kindness on the behalf of the alternative high school's food and toiletry pantry, laundry service and bus pass bank. If the school's budget is unable to cover the cost for non-perishable food, personal care toiletries and bus transportation tokens/passes, often times, these items may be donated by the district's homeless office (for identified students) or churches, non-profits or citizens in the local community. According to Gompert (2015), "Support from adults outside of school reduces the likelihood of young people leaving (dropping out) by 17 percent."