“Going Pink” to Support School Attendance
Meet Jaedyn, a 5th grade student at Supply Elementary who despite being SUPER intelligent, does not like coming to school. Jaedyn has been a CIS student for 2 years now, and when she first started working with CIS, she had 47 absences for the school year, only attending about 75% of the school days in a quarter for most of the school year. To improve her attendance, Jaedyn was offered a reward if she could drastically improve her attendance this year, but it was up to her to decide what would motivate her to make the improvement to reach her goal. After much thought, Jaedyn came to Program Director Drew Jordan’s classroom one morning and exclaimed, “I KNOW WHAT I WANT AS MY REWARD!” Caught off guard, because he hadn’t even had his morning coffee yet to wake up, Mr. Drew asked what it was she wanted. “To embarrass you!”, she said. “You have to wear all pink on the last day of school if I reach my attendance goal!” Mr. Drew told her the only way he would do it is if she could cut her absences from last year in half. “DEAL!”, she yelled at him. At the end of every grading period she would ask him “How close am I to my goal? Will you have to wear all pink?” Fast forward to the last week of school and Jaedyn asks Mr. Drew, “Did I do it? Did I meet my goal!?” Sure enough she had, she had reduced her absences from last year of 47 to only having 22 unexcused absences for the year, a 54% improvement from the previous year. Hearing that, Jaedyn excitedly ran over to Mr. Drew’s desk and told him he had to order all pink clothing and a pink wig so that it would arrive in time for the last day of school. Despite all the embarrassment of wearing hot pink for a day, the deal was worth it, and created not only an improvement in attendance, but a lasting memory for both the student, and Mr. Drew.
