By Ariana Serventi ’15 | Staff Writer

Part of the job teachers and faculty members face is to help and encourage students to accomplish their assignments, and with the South Success teams program, students are able to receive the extra help they might need.

For the second year, teachers and staff are taking part in a mentoring program, Principal Dr. Matt Outlaw said.

“During the 2011-2012 school year, we as a staff spent a great deal of time looking at why certain students were not being successful at South,” said Outlaw. “We studied and looked at different research for a while, and we became obsessed about finding out why some students are not successful.”

Often times the staff will only focus on those who are successful, so this brainstorm was a way to figure out why some students are not, Outlaw said.

“There is a variety of reasons people are unsuccessful. One has to do with foundational skills, such as reading, writing, math, and so on,” said Outlaw. “Others have to do with habits of students, study habits, and those types of things.”

Not just any student who seems to be struggling can become a member of a South Success team, Outlaw said. To qualify for to be a participant in a Success Team, a student must meet specific parameters.

“The Success Teams are a specific program for students who are struggling and got two or more D’s or E’s in their previous report cards, from the previous year, and are off track for the MME, which is the current test we use,” Outlaw said.

Teachers are expected to be a guide to the students in the Success Teams, said counselor Troy Glasser. The mentors act more as parents to the students and less as tutors.

“The students are being assigned a faculty mentor, which is kind of like your additional parent here at school, who can tap you on the shoulder and help you out, and guide you to NHS after school, help you get a tutorial or a math tutorial and help teach you to advocate your time management,” said Glasser.

Who is in the program and how long they have been a member are both under complete discretion, Outlaw said.

“It (the program) is to give the students a little bit of TLC, some extra help, and the reason why most people do not know about it is because we kind of kept it under the radar,” said Outlaw. “We do not want kids to be stigmatized for having struggles in school, so you will not know who is on a Success Team. We will never bring that forward, but the entire teacher staff is involved in looking out for somebody.”

The idea of Success Teams originally started with a suggestion of a program called “Adopt-a-Kid,” proposed by Assistant Principal Terry Flint.

“A bunch of schools have different programs that they attempt to do, and what a lot of those kids needed was a next level of involvement. I put out the idea of the ‘Adopt-a-Kid’ program, which is what it really is,” said Flint. “We have one adult paired up with two kids and they are distributed to adults who will work to try and intervene and advocate for them, so that is the design of the program.”

An administrative team got together and discussed the ideas of a program at the end of the 2011-2012 school year. This group included Outlaw, Flint, former Assistant Principal Brian Shelson and Athletic Director Jeremy Hawkins, Outlaw said. Since it began in the 2012-2013 school year, the statistics and improvement from last year to this year is promising, and the program has been thriving.

“Last year, we had 212 students in the Success Teams, and off those 212 (students), 105 of those students did not have a single D or E on their report card during the 12-13 school year,” said Outlaw. “Every single one of those people had a D or E the previous year.”

Counselors take on the process of identifying those students who need to be placed in teams, Glasser said.

“I am mainly involved with identifying the kids,” said Glasser. “We are always trying to make sure kids can achieve and be successful, and this is meant to help the kids who aren’t aware of all the programs or services we offer here.”

As for the future of the program, Outlaw said it seems as though it will be around for a while.

“It was extremely successful, and we felt like we just dipped our toe in the pond of what this program can really do,” said Outlaw.