Currently our high school is experiencing a bit of difficulty with a small group grade 9's. There are kids that struggle coming out of grade 8 with attendance, behaviour and academics. They are bottle necking in grade 9 and not attaining any credits or very few credits. Typically most grade 9's struggle with the freedoms of high school. They are allowed to move throughout the school without being in a line, they can chew gum and use their cell phones. From a miner niners point of view, this is either heaven or hell. For students who need extra help in grade 8 are usually put into a supportive program in grade 9 that is set up for a maximum of 10 kids in a class. This year, we had 18. Not a successful recipe for a lot of kids. To address this problem, teachers met a number of times to discuss what we can do as a staff to help our students succeed.
A program is now in the cards to help out these students. We are calling it the FOCUSED program, Focused on Continuous, Useful, Sustained Educational Development. It will be run in our school similar to a junior high program, one teacher for the bulk of the day,focusing on core subjects. We have a space, we have prospective students, we might even have a teacher and an EA. It is difficult, as a high school teacher, to get my head around how this will work. High schools are credit generating beings and 30 is the magic number. How do we teach a group coming from a non credit system and teach them in a credit system, but not in the structured manner we are used to?
The program will have to be extremely hands on and very flexible, but yet very organized. Outcome based assessment, I think, is the way to go.It is a lot of planning and responsibility for one teacher. Supports will be put in place for the teacher in the form of a full time EA. Specialists will also be added to help out with the literacy piece. I think we have a framework now. A couple of teachers have visited other schools that have populations of struggling students and lots of good ideas have been verbalized. Offering breakfast is a program that we have seen in a number of schools.It has been started in the alternative school 3 mornings a week. Students seem to enjoy it but it's not clear yet if it has increased the attendance. I would like to see the breakfast be part of the FOCUSED day. I would like to see a lot of things, but as we all know, there are budget and staffing constraints on everything.
I am a list person, so here is a wish list of things I'd like to see happen with this program. Come fall, we/I can look back at this post and see the actual results.
1.Breakfast to start the day.
2.Classroom of no more that 12-15 students, characterized with attendance, behaviour, social and academic concerns
3.Flexible full days, working in 4 core subjects, book ended with physical activity every day
4.A safe learning environment where students want to be and as a result attendance is consistant
5.Technology focus to engage students
6.Students make gains in their learning.
7.Credits are earned, students then move from the FOCUSED program to either the alternative school or the regular high school with a foundation to succeed
Will keep you posted...
