DROPOUT SERVICES

DDL is a division of Self-Knowledge College

It is for two groups of people: at-risk students and their concerned parents & friends.

Roughly half of the high school and college population of the United States and Canada are failing at school, one way or another.Here are some of the things that happen:

they don’t graduate from high school
they can’t get into college
they can’t get into the college they want
they can’t get into the program they want
they get into the wrong program
they have no idea what program to enter
they fail at a college
they drop out
they get into drugs, alcohol or gambling because they are failing at school
vice versa
they switch programs mid-stream and take years more than necessary to get going in life
they get pregnant and have to leave school
shall I go on?

Students

The students we help are those in college, university, or in any other kind of post-secondary training or education. We can also help senior high school students.

We take on students who have failed at school (almost any kind of school, high school, college, university, trade, special, etc). We take on students who are thinking of dropping out or who have dropped out or whose grades are terrible or whose attitude has been worse. The key words there is “has been.”

We don’t take on anybody who doesn’t want to make this work, to change gears to be successful academically. It’s counterproductive, frustrating, a useless repetition of what the student did before and and, hell, it make s us look bad! We take in people who have been bullied in high school or who didn’t fit in (I know that sounds like most of us, doesn’t it?) or who hated school.

Parents, Grandparents and Friends

Students who are having difficulty in school–for whatever reason (we don’t care and we don’t judge)–have a huge impact on parents and friends. That can be physical, emotional, psychological, financial or a combination.

We work in co-operation with parents, grandparents, older siblings friends, teachers, religious leaders –anybody who has some benign influence with the student who can dispassionately but (mildly) aggressively (!) keep the student on time and on task. This doesn’t mean these co-leaders have to talk to us or stand over the student with a ruler every night. These students are supposed to be adults (the older ones, anyway!) And we treat them as such.

No, by cooperation I mean each student should ideally have have a person he or she respects and trusts who agrees to monitor the student and encourage him or her to do his best.

That’s it. But that IS something.

What we do at DDL

We are educators with experience and skill in helping students go from being a potential (or actual) school dropout to getting As and Bs on the dean”s list at college. We are not a degree or diploma-granting institution or anything like it. We are neither a high school or college or have any academic affiliation with high schools or colleges.

What we DO is prepare students for the rigors of academic life.
We teach How to study, concentrate, use their memory.
We teach study skills, organization skills, academic preparation skills.
We teach time management (which is really self-management)
We teach anti-procrastination skills
We teach students how to say “no.”
We teach them how to choose the right college program
We teach how to choose the right (kind of) school
We teach SELF-KNOWLEDGE by which the student becomes self-directed.

We will eventually teach communication: reading, writing, listening and speaking but we won’t give you anything for it except skill at the things you need to succeed in life. Things you need to be doing anyway, whether you are school or not.

We also give you a renewed (or new) confidence in your ability to be a successful student. We help students figure out who they are, what they want and how to get there. We teach students learn to know themselves so they can make smart, correct decisions about which program to enter in college or any other kind of post-secondary field of study or training. We teach them to discover their talents, abilities gifts and strengths. And we ask them to identify and acknowledge their weak areas as well. We advise them to play to their strengthens and minimize their weakness through co-operation. We show them how to bring their basic weakness up to a workable knowledge or competence level and then concentrate on their strengths.

Our success rates are between 68 and 93% . Our success average is about 85% with college-age students.

What that means is that when students do what we ask (OK, demand!) they have a helluva good chance to turn their academic lives around completely. We have taken students who failed the previous term and turn them into B or even A students, in some subjects, in one semester.