Janine Pease: Freshmen need our encouragement to succeed

A month into the year of any high school you could probably easily spot members of the freshman class. The step into that first year of high school is a whopper: swirling among lockers, hallways, peers, multitude of classrooms, labs and teachers.

The early teen years have plenty of challenge to them with the emotional and physical changes of adolescence; then you add in the whole new learning environment of high school. Just how important is the freshman year?

It turns out that the ninth grade year determines whether a student will drop out or continue his or her education to high school graduation. In the, “Ninth Grade: The Most Important Year in High School” by Michele Willens, ninth graders are described as having “the lowest grade-point average, the most missed classes, the majority of failing grades and more misbehavior referrals than any other high-school grade level” (Atlantic Monthly, November, 2013). The ninth grade is called an educational bottleneck.

Freshmen enrollment numbers are noticeable. Why are there so many freshman students compared to the seniors? The “ninth grade bulge” is what happens when students fall behind, repeat a grade, and wind up in the biggest high school class, the freshman class.