The deans’ and guidance counselors’ offices have been eerily quiet this year at Washington Community High School.
“In the dean’s office this year, about September, our office and the guidance office were saying, ‘Where are the freshmen?’” said dean of students Karen Stevens.
Although the number of students seen in the dean’s office this year has stayed steady, the frequency of the visits has dropped significantly.
The number of disciplinary actions handed out to freshmen has dropped a whopping 37.3 percent from the 2008-09 school year.
The number of failing grades per freshman student has also dropped 33.6 percent.
Teachers, administrators and board members at WCHS say an innovative and collaborative new program for incoming freshmen is the catalyst behind these positive changes.
The program is called Panther Academic Coach, and the idea for it was born at the bargaining table in 2008 when negotiating teachers’ salaries and trying to solve the problem of a much larger incoming freshmen class.
“We were trying to figure out a way to accommodate such a big class with the number of staff we have. We were thinking of what we could do that would be worthwhile with our time,” said Jeff Brooks, a teacher in the business and technology department. He is also a member of the PAC committee.
A brainstorming session led them to develop PAC, an interactive study hall for freshmen.
If a freshman registers for a study hall, they are automatically enrolled in PAC. And this is no ordinary study hall.
“There are ideally 20 students with two teachers. We facilitate, tutor, counsel and mentor.
“We make sure they’re doing their homework, we teach them to use Skyward, which is our electronic system for checking grades ...
“We make them bring in books. If they don’t have one, I get to choose one by Charles Dickens or Mark Twain maybe,” said Dan Zehr, an English teacher and PAC committee member.
“It’s not a time for sleeping, talking or just staring at the wall. It’s not just passive study hall; it’s an active learning environment where they have to learn to prioritize,” he added.
The Skyward program allows students, parents and teachers the ability to see not only the overall grade of a course, but also grades for individual assignments in each course. Missing assignments are marked as such.
A PAC teacher is able to see these missing assignments and encourage the student to complete them.
This alone could account for the 33.6 percent drop in failing grades.
PAC, however, goes beyond academics.
“We made a master list of 18 lessons or topics we wanted to cover and broke the list into three more general topics: educational, social and personal,” Zehr said.
Once a week, the PAC teachers give a 20-minute lesson to the freshman on different topics, such as conflict resolution and time management. The students are also asked to develop four-year and 10-year life plans.
“It’s not only about academics, but also social interactions and how to deal with disturbances and the friction of life,” said Zehr.
“I can’t say PAC is solely responsible, but I would like to think we certainly have some sort of an impact in that area because we’re starting to see the students being more accountable and taking ownership of what they do,” he added.
Zehr developed the lessons last summer with science teacher Mindy Stoller and social studies teacher Eric Schermerhorn.
WCHS is not alone in singling out freshmen.
“Research shows that students who have a successful freshman year are much more likely to do better the rest of their high school career. So, if we could help them get a good start and give them some extra guidance during the transition, it would benefit them for the rest of their time in high school,” Brooks said.
Other schools, such as the one where Brooks taught in the Quad Cities before coming to Washington, have created a separate academy for freshmen only to better prepare them for the transition into high school.
Becky Drum, director of the collaborative resource program at WCHS and a PAC member, said she is impressed with the collaborative nature of the program.
“It was a good collaborative effort between the board, administration and faculty. Of all the years I’ve been here, it was one of the first times something of this magnitude has come out of it,” she said.
The PAC committee is made up of four teachers, Brooks, Zehr, Drum and physics teacher Luke Luginbuhl; two school board members, Gloria McNett and board president Jim Gerkin; and two administration members, superintendent Dr. Jim Dunnan and director of student services Mike Sluder.
“The best part of the program is it continues to evolve to be student-oriented to meet the needs of the students because those change all the time. And it continues to be a collaborative effort between the board, the administration and the faculty,” Drum said.
