This is how Be’er Sheva fought for 100 dropouts
The “Start” (Success) project: 87 of 100 students achieved a matriculation
certification
By Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz, 22 August 2007
“From 7th to 9th grade, I hardly ever entered the classroom. My mother would drop me
off at the entrance, I would wait for her to leave and then turn around and go to have a
smoke or return home,” says Tom Mehraban, an 18-year-old from Be’er Sheva. “I had
13 failing grades at the end of the year and a 100 in sport.” Mehraban is one of 100
students in the city who were on the verge of dropping out of the education system at
the end of 9th grade. Fortunately, the person responsible for the education portfolio in
the city, Rubik Danilovich, decided not to give up. (His own personal past included
eight failing grades that prevented him from matriculating.) Two schools in the city
joined with other organizations to start a unique project for these students: Start
Success.
Today, three years later, 87 of the 100 students who began to study in the framework
of this project have successfully completed their matriculation exams. The decision to
establish the project was accompanied by a directive from Danilovich for high school
principals in the city to allow any student to take the matriculation exams – even if
this lowers the city’s average score.
Support for the Start Success project comes from two city schools, Nissim Cohen of
Tafnit [Program], the Sacta-Rashi Foundation, the Shach”ar Branch of the southern
district of the Ministry of Education and the Check Point company. The total
investment per student is NIS 6,000 a year.
Mehraban’s school did not allow her to continue on the regular matriculation track at
the end of 9th grade. Therefore, she decided to transfer to another school in the city,
Makif Vav [Comprehensive 6], and to join the project. “I was afraid at first because
they told us that it includes 50 marathons in which you study from morning till night.
I told my mother that I prefer to stay at home,” she said. But she ultimately decided to
join.
The project was implemented in Makif Vav [Comprehensive F] and Makif Zayin
[Comprehensive 7], which each school taking 50 students. In Makif Vav, the students
were split into three groups, with a teacher and two teaching assistants assigned to
each group.
Shula Luk, Mehraban’s teacher, says there were 11 students in her class and that most
of them had failing grades in most subjects. “Suddenly you have a quarter [of the
number] of students you usually have,” Luk notes. “This changes the whole method of
work. It enables you to have conversations and to monitor each child, to know
exactly what his situation is at any moment and on any topic.”
Her role as a teacher included close follow-up of each student’s academic situation in
all of the subjects of study. “We checked their situation every day. In this way, I was
able to know if the child needed practice that would strengthen him for continuing
onward,” she said.
The project is built upon a number of basic principles. The first is to provide an
experience of success to students who are accustomed to feeling failure. This is done
various via tests and evaluations throughout the process on a daily basis, reinforcing
the student or, alternatively, serving as an assessment tool for examining the points
where he needs to improve.
Another significant principle was the program’s personal approach and love. The
parents say that if the child did not arrive at school in the morning, the teacher would
immediately call his home to check what happened. The teachers did not suffice with
telephone calls and found themselves more than once sending a grandmother to wake
up the student or they would come themselves to the student’s home to bring him to
school.
Another principle is to find “a significant other” to mentor the child through the
project. This figure participates in setting joint goals.
The “significant other” for Maoz Bracha was his parents, who mobilized for this
mission and say that they themselves experienced a significant process. “The
transition of Maoz from elementary school to middle school was very difficult,” says
his mother, Smadar. “Many times he did not go to school and he finished middle
school with a large number of failing grades. And then came the proposal to take part
in the project.”
But, according to Bracha, the school also made sure to find a “significant other” for
children who did not receive support from their parents. They would recruit whoever
was necessary – an uncle, brother, soccer coach.”
The mentors were significant partners in the project, monitoring the students and even
coming to encourage them during the marathons. From the perspective of the Bracha
couple, the most significant lesson they experienced was in a meeting with a
psychologist in the framework of the program: “In this meeting, we learned first of all
to accept the child as he is. Not to tell him: ‘You’re no good.’ But rather to tell him:
“What you did is okay, and you can do even more,” Smadar said.