Classroom Success = Retention
Or is it
Retention = Classroom Success?
by Marie Paiz
It is the proverbial chicken and egg problem - which does come first:
classroom success or retention? I believe retention is necessary in order
for your students to achieve their goals. Only then do you have classroom
success. My team teacher and I have come up with some innovative ideas
to retain our students.
When my team teacher and I started teaching in January of 2005, we didn’t
really know how we were going to keep students coming to class. Retention
was dwindling. We came up with a student of the month and attendance
prizes, which helped, but our most innovative idea came towards the end
of the school year. We decided to try personal trainers when classes
resumed in the fall. We realized that many students work better when
they have someone with whom to work through math problems. While we,
as the instructors, are able to answer the questions, sometimes we just
can not be in two places at once and the students get frustrated. Therefore,
personal trainers became part of our curriculum.
What are personal trainers? In previous years they were known as tutors,
but the connotation with a tutor is that “I am not smart enough
to understand the problems, I need extra help, and people will laugh
at me.” We came up with the idea of calling these tutors “personal
trainers”. Everyone from celebrities to politicians and even common
folk have a personal trainer to help them exercise or diet. Why not a
personal trainer to help you understand math, the consequences of joining
World War I, or just understanding the differences between an adjective
and an adverb?
Now that we knew what we were going to do the next questions were where
to find personal trainers and how to convince students to use them. We
are lucky to have a university with a teacher education program in our
community. Having worked with this education program I knew students
in the program are required to complete hours of observation. There are
times when they can not fit these extra hours into their day. In addition
to being able to acquire the observation hours, these students would
begin working with the students on a one-on-one basis and find out earlier
in their education if they really want to teach. I approached the department
chair of the program and asked if having students come and work with
our GED students would solve the problem of observation hours. The answer
was a resounding “Yes!”
Now all we had to do was convince the GED students that the personal
trainers would make a difference in their ability to learn the material
for the GED test. Once all of these obstacles had been met, we needed
to determine if the personal trainers were going to make a difference
with out retention rate and make our classroom a success. This would
be done through attendance reports and progress testing.
Once the word was spread about the personal trainers, our evening classes
began to grow by leaps and bounds. Each time we had another registration
period, we would gain more students. Not only were we getting more students
all the time, we were retaining the ones we had. When Christmas came,
we were still having 30-35 students attending on faithfully. Then January
came, and we had even more students register and more came back after
the holidays. Now we had an overcrowding problem. Imagine that! More
and more students were attending classes, and they wanted to stay in
class. We have had several students transfer to our class from other
classes due to the concept of personal trainers.
Using personal trainers allowed us, the teachers, to work with a large
group while the personal trainers would work one-on-one with students
as they needed help in a subject area. The use of personal trainers also
allowed the GED student to learn another way to solve a problem, a way
that might be easier for them to grasp and actually use on a test. Even
though we saw the retention rate improve and we were acquiring more and
more students, were we really having classroom success?
At this time, we have not had many of our students test and obtain their
GED. However, we have had several start the testing process. For many
students, taking the GED test places a financial burden on them and/or
their family so they stay in class until they can afford to take the
tests this does not mean that the student or the class is not successful.
These students are successful, even if they have not taken the GED, because
we are able to progress test the students and show a gain in the domain
of significance on the TABE tests.
I can hear the teachers reading this saying, “That’s great.
You have a university. You can utilize the students as personal trainers.
What do we do?” Personal trainers can come from any volunteer
program in your area. RSVP (Retired Seniors Volunteer Program) is a good
place to start. In addition to RSVP, call your local school districts
and find out where they get their mentors. There are probably a lot of
people out there who would like to mentor and can not because they work
during the daytime. An evening class would be ideal for them.
In conclusion, I believe retaining the students in our classroom has
shown success because we are able to progress test and show gains in
their domain of significance. This retention also provides us with more
contact hours, something that we need when filling out grant requirements.
Again, retention equals success. Therefore, I believe retention does
come first and it does equal classroom success.
About the Author
Marie Paiz has worked as a part-time GED instructor for the Comal,
Guadalupe, Kendall Counties Co-op for approximately 3 years. She is a
graduate of Texas Lutheran University and has begun postgraduate work
at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. In addition to working as a
GED instructor Marie also works full-time as an Administrative Assistant
for Texas Lutheran University. She is married and has two children
in college.
  
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