The Lincoln Log

Bad grades in freshman year add to the chance that one is likely to drop out of high school.

Bad grades in freshman year add to the chance that one is likely to drop out of high school.

The number of students at homeroom meetings on Thursday mornings decreases every year. Empty seats where friends once sat are visible; Lincoln’s drop out rate is shown, and the memories fade when you can’t remember who sat next to you.

There is a lot of data that shows mentoring programs work such as peer mentoring and after school tutoring. Connecting a young person to a concerned adult raises student achievement.

“The bottom line is that these are our children. We have to work together to find solutions to help them connect to the school. In my opinion it’s a matter of really looking at each kid as an individual and you really can’t put labels on kids. We need to figure out the needs of the children and how to meet the needs,” Assistant Principal Barnaby Payne said.

Counselors, teachers and student peers provide academic mentoring for students. They try to find out why they are having trouble in class.

“We focus on the freshmen who have trouble succeeding at Lincoln. There are 308 freshmen that got a D, F or I on their six-week report card. We connect them with mentors on two levels; one is peer mentoring where both juniors and seniors work with the freshmen. The other is teacher/adult mentor where they meet with students regularly and check up on them,” Peer Resource Mentor Christopher Pepper said.

The problem is not always academic performance but tardiness as well.

“There are some practical concerns with getting people to school on time whether it be getting across town on bus or students need help organizing a schedule for how much time they need to allow to get here on time.” Pepper said.

Once every two weeks freshmen students meet with his/her student or adult mentor.

“If they are having academic problems we stress why it’s a big deal because some students have the idea that freshmen doesn’t count for anything or its not an important year and the connections with juniors or seniors telling them if you don’t pass this class then you won’t be able to take the interesting elective classes here because you will be retaking the classes you failed. Another reason we connect them with adults or students is so they develop a vision of what they want to do with their lives,” Pepper said.

The freshmen usually pay a price for their failed classes during senior year.

“The majority of the seniors who are taking evening classes are taking classes to make up are from their freshmen year. I think its more important then even to really get our freshmen to buy into the Lincoln high school family. Another part of it as well is are freshmen mature enough to handle high school?” Payne said.

Programs help such as free after school tutoring, 9th grade mentoring and The Movement (Linking Latino and African American students with SFSU Tutoring).

“Part of our plan for W.A.S.C. was to do more outreach especially Latino and African population. We have a Jump Start program which tries to make connections with the students,” freshman counselor Betty Hom said.

The mentoring program is not a mandatory program. The program does not force anyone to be mentor or be mentored.

“If nobody is talking to them then they get lost and we don’t want them to get lost,” Hom said.