What if School Was Like the Prom?

            It is prom season.  For many young men and women, the prom is the final event before graduation.  Prom season is one of the few occasions where students want to dress up, dance and take pictures at venue that is designed to celebrate them. 

            Prom is also a time where everyone pays attention to young men and women.  You have parents and teachers who make sure the young men and women have purchased their tickets, rented or purchased their prom outfit, make sure hair appointments are made and corsages are purchased.  More importantly, prom is a time where young men and women are told how “beautiful” they are by their parents, relatives, teachers and their peers.  Prom is where young men and women are made to feel important.

            What would happen if schools took those same positive characteristics from prom and integrated them into school climate and instruction?  What would happen if our young men and women were provided with all the attention they receive at prom on a daily basis regarding their education?

            School should be a place where young men and women are nurtured academically and cultivated socially into the adults they aspire to become.  School should be a place where young men and women feel welcomed; where they feel “beautiful” inside and out; a place where they matter. 

To accomplish this, school staff should strive to develop a school climate where learning and growth will occur regardless of a student’s current academic level.  Academic supports and interventions should be provided as electives and not as a “pull out or push in” model as is currently done for students’ with disabilities.  Schools should help develop peer support groups where peers can tutor and mentor each other.  Schools should honor students who are making gains in their academic levels.  Finally schools should have the student who has made the most academic gain a special speaker at graduation.

If schools emulated the positive characteristics and attention they give to students attending the prom, our country would not have to worry about our young men and women being able to compete in the global market.