Item of Interest: The Make or Break Year (Emily Krone Phillips)

This weeks item of interest is the book, The Make or Break Year: Solving the Dropout Crisis One Ninth Grader at a Time" by Emily Krone Phillips. In the past few decades students in CPS schools were just as likely to dropout as they were to graduate.This book follows the implementation of Freshman On-Track, an approach to education to address the dropout issues in school. The book follows the research provided by CPS schools in navigating effective intervention to meet freshman students' needs. Furthermore, the implementation of these effective interventions found to positively impact student graduation rates. As I read this book I am choosing to take a critical perspective as the book presents the solution to dropout rates as a series of "simple" solutions. Knowing that academic achievement can be rooted in socio-economic status, race, ethnicity and other factors I am interested to know how accurate the solutions presented in this book are to sustainable and effective change.
Emily Krone Phillips Book Reading

Amazon Link to Book

The Bully Project

Bullying is a huge issue in our schools, and as social workers, we often deal with children on both sides.  Preventing bullying from happening and developing policies to address bullying in our schools is a necessity.  The film can be used as a whole school Tier 1 intervention and can be followed by classroom discussion using materials provided by The BULLY Project at www.thebullyproject.com

The film BULLY was released in 2011 and follows the stories of children who experience bullying by their peers, the responses of the school administration and the communities.  The film has two versions. The full version is PG-13 and contains graphic language.  The shortened version is PG and is appropriate for younger children.

The BULLY Project website contains resources for parents, educators, and students.  The cost of the package with both versions and tool kit is $50 for DVD, or $38 via Dropbox.

Preview of the film BULLY