Last week, the Staten Island Advance ran a feature where students would receive gifts if they ended their truancy. Old Navy gift cards and the like. The article featured the truants of another middle school and how the principal encouraged these educational miscreants to show up and receive their education. If they met standards and benchmarks, they would receive their prizes.
So...
This does not upset me as a teacher but as a parent, I'm pissed.
Why?
I have two daughters in PS 58. They wake up at 6:30 and they are dressed by 7:00. They go to my inlaws where they get breakfast and then at 8:00, my mother-in-law drives them to school. They learn, socialize, play at Latch Key and receive threes and fours on their report cards. Their prize.....
Nothing, absolutely nothing. I don't get a property tax break. My E-Z Pass is not reduced. I don't get free parking at the Ferry Lot.
What I learned is that parents who neglect their children reap the rewards of the DOE while us decent parents get nothing. In the 1970s and 1980s, we didn't get prizes, we received an education and made something of ourselves.
The shame is that if these parents knew this existed, they would be furious as me.
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Maybe Old Navy gift cards aren't the way to go...On the flip side of things- Your daughters get the prize of coming home every day to a household where their family cares about them, whereas I would guess at least half of the truants mentioned do not. Maybe if they see that SOMEONE will reward them for doing the right, they might give it a try for awhile.
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