Schools prepare for freshmen

Special views, additional changes planned for incoming students

“Welcome to the penthouse.”

Lorain High School principals carved out an oasis in the expansive school with a special view this year for freshman students.

Lockers and most classes for the 645 new additions to the campus are located on the third floor of the middle building with views of the school and the city beyond. But there’s more. Looking down just one 500-foot-long hallway, or almost the length of two football fields, in the classroom wing can be intimidating. So the principals divided teachers into four teams who only are assigned to freshmen.

The class also was quartered, along with the hallway.

A team of four core teachers — math, science, English language arts, and social studies — teach from classrooms near

“The goal is to be able to do a better job of wrapping ourselves around our freshmen.”

— Lorain High School Principal Robin Hopkins,

each other and near the lockers assigned to their group of students. The science classrooms are in the middle of the hallway.

“The goal is to be able to do a better job of wrapping ourselves around our freshmen,” said Lorain High School Principal Robin Hopkins, who opened the school a year ago as a new principal. “And when they come in, placing them in a more familial environment that teams create.”

The students were randomly selected for the teams, Hopkins said, although some adjustments were necessary to accommodate class schedules.

Two assistant principals who also were new last year, Melissa Cheers and Pat Coleman, asked to be assigned to freshmen, as did counselor Missy Clark.

“(Clark has) worked with middle school and credit recovery,” Coleman said. “Probably most importantly, she wants to do it. She approached us.”

Leading up to a freshman orientation Aug. 16, Coleman and Cheers lead a retreat for freshman teams Aug. 14 at the school to discuss plans for this year, Hopkins said. Extra activities are designed to build relationships and create a community.

Two safety officers are assigned to the third floor, also, Hopkins said.

“That’s not because of concerns about discipline,” Hopkins said. “That’s to have more people to build relationships with our students.”

And a Spanish teacher is assigned to third floor, teaching primarily freshmen, she said.

“The goal is to create an environment, one, where they feel safe; and two, where they know that they can get the supports that they need,” Hopkins said.

At the retreat, the teams discussed culture and climate of Titan Academy, which is the moniker for the freshman teaming, Cheers said.

“It was important for us to get that feedback from teachers to what they thought would be important to help our students become a part of a collaborative community,” Cheers said. “Some of what they said was positive and constructive feedback to students.”

The teams also agreed to add character education to the curriculum to help improve the culture and climate, Coleman said, even in math and science.

“Teams had a lot of productive conversations on how that would look,” Coleman said. “Most thought it would be the best idea to have them develop that as opposed to having us decide how that would look, so it’s going to look different from team to team. We want to give that time, and maybe step back after a year and see what progress was made, and make use of any success stories that we have.”

Providing time for teachers to sit down and collaborate is essential to teaming, Cheers said.

“That’s embedded in their schedules,” Cheers said. “We expect them to provide data as they plan, on student outcomes, best

practices for instruction.”

The group had good discussions about getting calibrated as a team and the expectations for improving academics, Coleman said.

“But also defining what the adult outcomes would be of each meeting,” Coleman said. “It’s data driven. That they identify a format by which they overcome issues and arrive at a collective consensus.”

And they are solution oriented when discussing student needs in terms of providing interventions for students, Cheers said.

“As assistant principals we are not here just for discipline purposes,” Cheers said. “We are instructional leaders. We are to provide social and emotional supports to help our students and staff be successful.”

The teams are choosing to look through misbehavior to discern clues and to uncover causes, so real issues can be handled effectively, Coleman said.

“It’s easy with ninthgraders to get caught up in the fact that they misbehave from time to time and for us as adults to get punitive in how we think and how we act,” Coleman said. “This really maps back to Robin’s leadership at the high school. We’re trying to ramp it up for the freshmen and provide support of some kind. When a kid acts out in class, they’re drawing attention to a need. So we want to be really intentional and impactful how we meet those needs.

“What was a really encouraging outcome of our retreat was that to a person our teachers feel the same way as well,” Coleman said.

Parents also hold a key to the teaming success, they

said. The more parents volunteer, show up for conferences and events, and build positive relationships with teachers and principals, the better the outcomes will be for students. For some parents, this might mean talking to another adult about negative memories of their own school days to work through them, so school can be better for the children.

Hopkins said later the orientation went well, with 500 people attending the presentation by the Titan Academy team. She was pleased.

While Titan Academy on the third floor “penthouse” mirrors a larger effort building wide, the school’s collaborations reflect district initiatives under a strict academic distress timeline, Hopkins said.

“I think if you look at (Chief Executive Officer David Hardy Jr.’s) 90-Day Plan, his first bullet point has to do with instruction and what works,” Hopkins said. “Freshman teaming is a national initiative. I went to the National Drop Out Prevention Center meetings this spring. This is dealing with dropout prevention. And this aligns with what (Hardy) sees as important for the district.”