Georgia’s Challenge

Life After High School The Promise of Inclusion, One Student at a Time

Earning a high school diploma might seem commonplace to some, but for a certain group of students, it is a daunting task. This article tells the story of one student’s journey toward the goal of earning a diploma and the implications it has for students and educators within high schools throughout the nation. Just as importantly, given Georgia’s current quality of life, it is validation that the path to success may look different for different students. Georgia has a full life after high school. She was recently married and has a career as a Pilates instructor. Upon graduation, she received a college dance scholarship. She is surrounded by friends and family and her schedule is as full as anybody I know!
As a high school student, Georgia’s case pushed our district to use data to think and plan ahead and summon resources toward successful programming like person centered planning, co-teaching, the push in model, and use of a learning center. The push in model brings services such as speech and language and reading support directly to the classroom rather pulling the student out. This family advocated strongly for their daughter and ultimately joined with the school district to support the programming we sought to put in place. This is a story of a team of educators dedicated to finding a way to meet this student’s needs and learning challenges and ensure her success. And, it is the story of how Georgia taught me, as her case manager and teacher, to really listen to her and advocate on her behalf.
Our team decided that we would incorporate Person Centered and Strength Based Planning using a meeting called a PATH (Pearpoint, J., O’Brien, J., & Forest, M. 1993). A PATH involves all the major stakeholders important in the student’s life and charts out a student’s dreams and aspirations, as well as their passion and their strength. During the course of this meeting, we discovered that Georgia possessed an array of skills that she used successfully outside of school. Georgia was a master dancer having studied it from the age of five. She also had a wonderful voice, and had pursued music for years. She performed regularly in recitals and theatrical shows throughout the area. Her discipline in this area came to be a powerful component of her school success. If she could practice and learn dance steps and perform with such precision and depth, could she transfer this discipline to her schoolwork? The answer was a resounding yes!
Georgia’s journey was not an easy one. There were days filled with stress for everyone including her family and her teachers as she struggled to learn the concepts, strategies, and skills she would need in order to challenge course content and exams successfully. But slowly and surely her abilities, self-discipline and desire to succeed outweighed her learning challenges. During triennial testing that year, her scores revealed a score in the superior range in oral expression. We began to integrate that strength as a learning strategy. Georgia would talk through homework and essay topics and even mathematical concepts, in preparation for one of her first challenges to a state exam. She allowed all of her teachers as well as the reading specialist and the speech and language therapist, co-teachers and me to help her develop strategies. She practiced them and used them faithfully. She taught her teachers what she needed and helped us to listen to her. Soon she passed the first mandated state assessment required for graduation and the rest was history. Georgia’s challenge to our community changed the culture of the school program and the payoff has been unbelievable. In the end, Georgia’s story offers a hopeful message to fellow educators and students. One student at a time. One goal at a time.