Adina's Story: Part of the Family

Youth in School

City: Ramla

Adina came to one of Ramla’s junior high schools, where, due to her clear aptitude and intelligence, she was assigned to a high-level class for outstanding students. At the beginning of the year, her achievements were lower than the school expected them to be. The school’s teacher directly responsible for Adina spoke with the ENP SPACE Program teacher. Together, the two teachers tried to understand what the problem was.

The SPACE Program teacher spoke with Adina, and offered to give her supplementary assistance to help Adina do better in the class. Adina joined the SPACE Program, but failed to attend on a regular basis, was reluctant to invest effort in the class exercises, and provided excuses for her repeated absence. After a number of discussions, the SPACE teacher determined that Adina wanted to be reassigned to a lower level class in school, because she did not want to make the efforts needed to keep up in the high-level classes to which she had been assigned.

As a result of Adina’s low grades and lack of motivation to excel, the school’s teacher responsible for Adina reassigned her to a normal track class. But here too, Adina did not make the required effort.

The SPACE teacher tried another approach. She paid a home visit, where she discussed Adina’s situation directly with Adina and her parents. The SPACE teacher’s reasons for taking this step were twofold: to try to bring the influence of those closest to Adina to bear, and to show Adina that the program staff believed in her abilities and took her success seriously.

The teacher’s gamble seems to have paid off. Following the home visit, the SPACE teacher found Adina to be much more willing to discuss her studies in personal discussions with the teacher. Adina began to register improvement in her attitude in classes, which translated into better grades. Furthermore, Adina started to attend her after-school SPACE classes with far greater regularity than any time in the past.