The Purpose-Driven Student: Improving Low-Income Pupils' Graduation Rates

Introduction
The Purpose-Driven Student details my credentials and life events leading me to become a Purpose-Driven Student and later a Purpose-Driven Professor at Arizona State University.
When I was a teen, it was common practice for young boys to drop out of school to become coal miners. Our schools taught coal mining as the best place for young men to work. I thought school was a waste of time because coal-mine operators needed little education.
During elementary school, my father became ill with black lung and could no longer work in a coal mine. He opened a small grocery store, about the size of a two-car garage in the front, with two pool tables in the backroom. Selling groceries earned barely enough income. My younger brother and I suffered as low-income students.
I am a native of West Virginia, a state known for supporting the coal-mining industry and ignoring educational funding. Schools did not have space for children from the fifth through the eighth grades. We attended half-day morning sessions and other pupils used the same classroom during the afternoon. My low-income student status taught me that prejudice is a clear and existing hazard to self-confidence and learning. The Purpose-Driven Student lights the path of student higher performance by:
•Helping teachers remove student constraints imposed by poverty
•Using positive peer pressure to create an innovative learning culture
•Coordinating the course using The Purpose-Driven Student teaching method
•Reaching and teaching Low-income pupils
•Developing a pupil centered classroom
•Applying detailed plans to increase teaching and learning efficiency
•Transferring learning responsibility from the teacher to the student
•Attacking the reason public schools have mostly low-income pupils
•Confronting the cause of American middle income shrinking to the low-income class
•Recognizing that education ensures better-paying jobs with greater chances of holding employment
•Students learn faster and in greater depth through positive peer pressures.
The Purpose-Driven-Student presents teachers with needed tools to turn a low-income student from a lifetime of poverty into a successful adult. An energy-filled adult with a vision of the future is unstoppable in reaching a satisfying career destination. That means a lifetime filled with joy—going to work Mondays and sometimes holidays—because they adore what they do for a living.
I recognize without any question that I endured a low-income status during my younger years. However, in my adult years, I overcame difficulties my low-income status presented, and achieve each goal set in my teaching career. This book details a method to transform hundreds of low-income pupils who have little hope of lifetime achievement, to fully-engaged students with a purpose-filled life. Students without a purpose-driven life are often content with whatever grades they earn and never reach their full educational potential.