(By Don Meador, Public Relations Coordinator, Allen County Schools)
New teachers and staff, new objectives in the second year of the Leader in Me program, and a new mission statement will be among the changes students at the Allen County Intermediate Center can expect when classes resume on August 4.
“The biggest initial change people will see is in fifth grade because we will have five new staff members alone,” noted ACIC principal Shawn Holland. “We had outstanding candidates for new teachers this year. Several of the new teachers got their education right here before going away for their teaching certification. A couple have teaching experience and all are coming in very highly qualified. That speaks to what they did in their college work and also to what they did when they were students in Allen County.”
The new fifth grade teachers include Holly DeWitt, Emily Rutherford, Devin Stovall, and Kasey Turner. The remaining new fifth grade teacher has yet to be hired. Additional new teachers and support staff include MSD teacher Halie Graves, PASS program assistant Casey Napier, MSD assistant Mariah Burnley (a transfer from the Allen County Primary Center) and MSD nurse Vickie Warren (a transfer from Allen County Primary Center). Scottsville police officer Bobby Jackson will be the new school resource officer.
Holland adds that the school continues to work toward having the curriculum “as rigorous as possible and as aligned as possible.”
“We are going to a team concept in fourth grade this year instead of departmentalized,” Holland noted. “One of the ways we are working on alignment is by spreading that teaming concept. The last area of departmentization is sixth grade. Because of teacher certifications and the need for those students to prepare for middle school we are leaving sixth grade as a departmentalized grade. Everyone else is either team teaching or teaching in a group or three. That allows more planning time together and our teachers time to plan equal access to a common curriculum. That way you don’t have one reading teacher doing this and another doing that, and another doing something else. They have time to work together on common assessments that they have developed their units together. This also allows us to compare kids. The curriculum is viable for every student and that is important to me.”
This year will mark the second year for the Leader in Me leadership program at the school. Holland was pleased with the progress of Leader in Me last year---a year in which staff and students worked to learn the concepts of the program built around the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Last year, Leader in Me program developer Muriel Summers was at the Intermediate Center for training prior to the start of the school year. Summers is slated to return this year to introduce the ACIC staff to a second component of the program.
“The main focus of the training on July 26 will be aligning academics,” Holland explained. “That will be about working the academic component into the Leader in Me program. This is something that is new that has just come around in the last couple of years. I’m excited to see how that lines up and how that will impact the work in the classroom. Mrs. Summers will also meet with our Leadership Team in the school. We will reflect on the past year and discuss where we want to go this year.”
Holland anticipates the further development of student-led conferences during the school year, a fall and spring Leader in Me Parent Night, and a possible Leadership Day with a target toward the education community---a day in which other school districts would be invited to the school to see the exciting things taking part at ACIC. A Leadership Day for business was very well-received last spring.
The third year principal points out that ACIC will start the new school year with many strong points, headlined by a very committed and dedicated staff which has put in long hours to help the school move forward.
“We have an outstanding teacher staff and we have strengthened that with our new hires,” Holland said.
“Their wiliness to learn, to change and to work together is great. I have asked them in the last two years to do things they had not done and I had very little resistant. The teachers are seeing that through hard work and collaboration, and through the use of best practice teachin, we are having academic success. Our scores looked really good last year. We are going to have to wait to see how our scores look this year but we anticipate they will be good again. We are having more kids, especially in reading and math, getting close to obtaining that grade-level standard on a variety of measures---whether that be STAR, or K-PREP or the teacher’s summative assignments. We have become much more academically focused. We weigh everything we do against its academic value. If it doesn’t have an academic value or purpose, we don’t do it.”
However, ACIC does have two areas that Holland would love to see improvement. The first is discipline referrals with a second issue being attendance.
“We have way too many discipline issues,’ Holland said. “However, that number was reduced by about 35 percent this last year. I attribute that to the teachers, to Leader in Me, to PBIS, and all these things we are doing. Our discipline issues are still too many. Every time that we have a discipline issues takes teacher’s time, student’s time, and administrative time that we could be spending working on academics.
A second area for improvement lies in attendance.
“In my opinion, the biggest challenge we face is attendance, “Holland pointed out. “We have way too many kids that miss way too much school. The fact of the matter is that when the students are not here, we can’t teach them. We have kids that miss 15 and 30, 50, and 60 days. When that happens, you can’t catch them up. We looked at the absences we had and did a little math. If a teacher spent an average of five minutes per kid---getting late work together, making sure they have it, grading the late work---our teachers spent a full week of instruction throughout the school year just doing what has to be done when a child misses, only if it took just five minute per kid, per day. We want this place to be a place that the culture is such that kids want to be here. We are seeing this turning but it’s still an issue. I also worry about the kids. If you don’t come to school when you are in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade then what will it mean for you as an adult and as an employee. Of course, you can’t put all of this on the kids, it goes back to the families.”
Holland firmly believes that a decrease in the first area and an increase in the second will bring changes.
“If we could greatly our office referrals again and greatly increase our percentage of attendance our achievement would go up, no doubt,” Holland said.
Holland reminds families that a child success in school starts with a good work ethic and parent involvement on the home front.
“We expect kids to come in and work hard,” Holland added. “If they use their time wisely in school, they will have very little homework. What I need from parents is support. We need parents talking to their kids, asking if they have any homework, and if they do not have homework, having discussions with them about what went on with them during the day. That is a great benefit. Anything parents can do is encourage 20 minutes of student reading a night outside of homework. Some many of our kids don’t read for pleasure.”
ACIC will start this year with a new mission statement; Learn, Lead, and Succeed. The statement is intended to help students and parents realize that working hard today translates into success in the future.
“If you come here and you learn and accept leadership roles, you can succeed in anything you want to in life,” Holland noted. “We talk to students about doing the right thing when nobody’s looking---that’s from homework, to behavior, to holding yourself to a higher standard. We talk about working harder makes you smarter. All kids can grow; the secret is that you have to work at it. The harder you work at it, the better you get at it. We are trying to extend good habits now.”
Open House at ACIC will be on Thursday, July 28, from 5 until 7 p.m. for all grades at the school. Classes rosters are scheduled to be posted at the school on July 18.