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South Success Team plans to help students achieve academic success

Photo+Courtesy+of%3A+Colleen+Martin+12.+Students+in+Dr.+Jodi+Stevens+English+class+last+year+are+models+for+how+South+Success+Team+hopes+to+help+struggling+students.+
Photo Courtesy of: Colleen Martin ’12. Students in Dr. Jodi Stevens’ English class last year are models for how South Success Team hopes to help struggling students.

Marissa Day ’14 | Copy Editor

The administration has created a new student-teacher mentor program called South Success Team. Due to students struggling with grades and overall standardized test results, the staff plans to use this program as a way to improve students’ academic performances, Principal Dr. Matt Outlaw said.

“This is an idea that came from the administration at the end of the (2011-2012) school year,” said Outlaw. “We have so much success here with our students that we’re almost blinded by our success because we have students that are not successful in this building. They’re meeting minimum standards but we want them to make it to the next level.”

To find ways to reach the students having academic troubles, Outlaw met with the assistant principals and brainstormed effective ways to help those kids. South Success Team started there and was built upon concerns administrators had.

South Success Team is comprised of 212 freshman, sophomores and juniors who received two or more failing grades (D’s and E’s) in a class or attendance R’s. The program incorporates students who were off track in two of more areas for the 2012 standardized testing. Each teacher and counselor at South picked two students to mentor during the school year.

Although it sounds like the program would infringe on both the teachers’ and students’ schedules, there is actually very little interference in anyone’s work. There are only five scheduled meetings this year and they take place during PLC Mondays, Outlaw said.

“I’ve designed this thing to be convenient for teachers,” said Outlaw. “I built in the time; I used some of our professional learning community time in order to do it so we avoid all (schedule conflicts) and the whole thing is structured so it doesn’t add a whole lot of inconvenience for teachers.”

“The teacher has to be willing to try to help a student, but the student has to be willing to put themselves out there with the teacher that’s trying to help them,” said Science Department Chair James Adams.

To help students on a more personable level, the 212 kids are being split into groups of 18-22 with 8-10 teachers assigned to them. Those teachers will then have two students from their group that they are responsible for checking up on and providing a more individual mentorship throughout the year.

“The second tier of this is every single counselor, teacher and administrator has adopted two students to be their person that they will personally lookout for,” said Outlaw. “Let’s say I have two people that will be mine, I’m going to do things like provide encouragement, I might help them to start write a paper.”

For teachers, the program was just recently brought to them for consideration, James Adams, Science Department Chair, said. While they still don’t know how it will work out, most of the teachers believe the program is necessary and beneficial for their classes.

“No matter what year you’re doing, there’s going to be students that are struggling,” said Adams. “The mindset hasn’t changed a whole lot. I don’t think that there won’t be struggling students and we won’t try to do things for them; I think it’s a constant year-to-year effort, but you always do things to try to improve it.”

One of the only concerns teachers have in the math and science departments is how well the student-teacher dynamic would work. Both parties need to be comfortable with each other and put in the effort to make the use of this program successful, Alan Vassel, Math Department Chair, said.

“I do think it’s a great idea, but I do think it’s a two-way street,” said Adams. “The teacher has to be willing to try to help a student, but the student has to be willing to put themselves out there with the teacher that’s trying to help them. There’s kind of a give-and-take, if it’s going to work it’s going to be a both ways deal.”

With subjects like math, scores tend to dip more than other subjects, Vassel said. Due to this factor, the teachers have always tried to help students improve their grades.

“Math is a tough subject.” said Vassel. “We always will have usually a higher percentage of struggles than other classes do. We’ve kind of just done (mentoring) on your own, teacher dealing with your own students your own way.”

Like Adams, the math department’s biggest concern is the follow through with both teachers and students, said Vassel. While in the beginning of the year everyone cooperates and seems ready to work, getting towards the middle of the year there could be a lot of slack.

“Everyone’s got a lot of excitement and a lot of energy,” said Vassel. “Everyone’s passionate about what they do the first week or two or quarter and then it gets December, and January and February and it gets busy and a lot harder to be motivated to do stuff.”

Success Team meetings will not impact students’ school schedules or extracurricular activities. In fact, students are not required to attend, and meetings are just scheduled to have mentors check up on them and see how they’re progressing academically.

“Students are just going to do business as usual, they’re just going to have more people that are going to be helping them to be successful.” said Outlaw. “It’s a team approach to helping the struggling student to be successful.”

If students are worried or embarrassed about others knowing, the important thing to note is that the program is confidential. There will be no list in the hallways, and students probably won’t know anyone other than the people in their group who are in the program, Outlaw said.

“This is not a list of people, it’s not a special thing. They’re (teachers) helping everybody but they’re just putting a little bit extra focus on you,” said Outlaw. “Teachers are bound by their confidentiality. ‘Don’t worry,’ that would be my message to anyone who’s on the team.”

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