Take a second to imagine a different type of school environment. One where teachers and students come together to create a positive solution where both sides can benefit. Well, students in Long Beach are one step closer to that reality.
Students have to be at risk of dropping out of high school to land a job at Southwire. It’s all part of a program called “12 For Life.” Southwire created it in 2007, together with the local County school system, to try and improve the dropout rate and improve the lives of teens like Deriek Foster.
Students are settling into the routine of fall semester, drilling spelling words and memorizing times tables. But at some schools, students are drilling another key idea: motivation.
During those two years while my mom was losing her voice, in a way, I lost mine as well.
It turns out, growing up isn’t something you can always do alone.
Moving away from home and going to college can be stressful for anyone, but Asian American students often face culturally related factors–model minority expectations and family pressures, among them–that can affect their mental well-being.
It’s unusual enough for an Asian American parent to discuss mental health with teens, given the stigma that surrounds mental illness in many Asian American communities. But Wei speaks with an indisputable authority: a teenage son who struggled for years with minor depression, a daughter who took her life in college.
Make no mistake: most Asian American teens are emotionally healthy and thriving. But government statistics suggest that a substantial number struggle emotionally. Among Asian American high school students, 29 percent have reported feeling “sad or hopeless” for at least two weeks in a row during the past year.
Now that more schools are wired, and a generation of teachers is going online to download tools that help them teach, old models are being upended.
