Take Charge of Your Life Program : Programs › Academic Monitoring and Truancy Reduction

The Program

The Brotherhood© and Leadership Program is a school-based truancy intervention and behavior modification program for at-risk male students. This program is designed to decrease discipline referrals, gang-related activity, school suspensions and truancy. The structured program will create positive cultural appreciation, social bonds with the community and positive fraternal bonds amongst the participating male youth.

The Problem

The African-American male student is imperiled with less than 43% graduating from high school. Nearly 7 out of 10 African-American youth are born to single parents, so the absence of positive male role models in single parent households has severely hampered the male’s development into well-rounded young men.

Youth who are truant from school are harming themselves by not learning the skills, education, and diploma they will need in the workforce. Their truancy from school, coupled with the idle time often lead to victimization of the community by engagement in delinquency and criminal activity.

The Game Plan

The Brotherhood© and Leadership Program will use positive adult male case workers as Team Builders to effectively counsel, lead and support each youth in their case load daily, for 14 weeks. The program will identify male students with the most frequent discipline referrals and assign them to a Team Builder. Aside from the In School Support supplied by the Team Builders, the Brotherhood© Program will convene for group sessions with youth and parents one evening each week.

Features

Professional Day- youth wear shirt, slacks and tie to school
Parental inclusion in Group Sessions
Daily morning briefing prior to academic day
Cultural field trips to Historically Black colleges and museums
Intramural basketball games
Free tickets to sports and entertainment events

Results