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Middle school teachers meet with parents
Students facing peer pressure not to succeed

By teaching organizational skills, offering tutoring and tightening sanctions for disruptive behavior, middle school teachers hope to reverse a slide in performance by sixth-eighth graders.

The middle school teachers hosted a meeting last Wednesday with parents and guardians of middle schoolers to discuss their concerns and changes being implemented to address them.

They were responding, they said, to the fact that the average grade in the middle school is between 60 and 70 percent, and that students here feel considerable peer pressure not to excel.

"It's a culture that the kids who are getting good grades are not the cool kids," said middle school science teacher Jeannette Bray. "Students are called 'preps' when they get good grades and they're made fun of. They feel obligated to share their work and let other kids copy."

"I've never seen it this bad," said School Counselor Becky Crumbo. "I've never seen it be so uncool and to see kids so put down. That's alarming for me."

Discovery coordinator and health teacher Dan Lopez expressed frustration at the turnout. Though middle school enrollment is 73, about 20 people were in attendance.

"This is the problem," he said, gesturing to the empty seats. "If I'm a parent and I get a letter signed by every middle school teacher, that should be a message that this is serious."

In response, parent Angie Kissner urged teachers not to assume that because parents were absent, they didn't care.

"You have to understand that there are some parents who have tried to make positive changes," she said. "They've gone to teachers, and to the administration and spoke about issues they were having at the school. Parents don't feel it's worthwhile."

"The bottom line is that there's not a solid representation of parents that should be here tonight," said Lopez. "I'm really upset. I thought this would get a bigger response."

To address the behavioral issues contributing to the negative culture, the middle school team said there are some changes in the Discovery program.

Principal Bob Kelso said that because Grand Canyon is adapting the high school-level program to middle school, some fine tuning is necessary.

"We were not implementing Discovery in a consistent way," Lopez said. "It's a program that takes a while.

Previously, students had to get four redirects, or warnings, about a behavior before they were removed from class and sent to the focus room. Under the new policy, students will be sent to the focus room on the second redirect.

Students who visit the focus room will have to bring their focus worksheet home for their parents to read and sign.

Also, students won't receive redirects for chewing gum or having a hat in in the building. They will be told once to lose the gum or hat; if they don't comply, they will get a redirect for not doing what they were told. Students will no longer receive redirects for being tardy. Chronic lateness will be addressed with Friday detention.

"Redirects are preventing me from teaching the kids who are ready to learn more," said Language Arts teacher Lori Rommel. "I don't want to be disciplining the others so often. We don't like to see the bar go down."

Art teacher Amy McBroom said that some students were aspiring to the transition room to be with their friends.

"It's the idea of the culture of it's cool to be bad," she said.

Crumbo said that while that was raised as a concern early on, once students get in transition they find they don't like it.

"Every kid that gets there is not happy there," she said.

Incentives will continue for students who don't receive focus room visits. Last week, almost half of the middle school went to a movie in Flagstaff and next month students with no focus visits after the second term will receive awards, including entry into a drawing for an iPod.

That the middle school is made up mostly of new teachers has also contributed to a disconnect, the team agreed.

"Almost all of the teachers are brand-new, except one who is new to her subject," Bray said. "Students have had to relearn all of the new teachers' expectations. Several students struggled for a C in the first quarter and rose to the challenge and now they're getting an A in the second quarter."

She said that missed work is a problem at all grade levels and is a symptom that "kids are not really as worried about their grades or how they're achieving in school as we feel, as parents and teachers, they should be. They're not worrying about what it means when they don't turn something in."

For those students who haven't picked up this past quarter, there will be invitations for tutoring with middle school teachers during lunch and after school. A late bus will be available twice a week for those students who do stay after for extra help.

Teachers will also emphasize organization and planning skills. All middle school students received a binder with plastic pockets for homework and eight tabbed sections with looseleaf paper, one for each subject.

"As a program we're going to take the whole middle school and try to develop study skills, organizational skills, note taking, basic school survival, the things they need to go through high school," Bray said. "We're having a hard time trying to get the message across that these things are important."

Rommel said that students are finding it difficult to plan locker visits around their classes so many have given up using lockers altogether.

"It's too hard for them to go to their lockers," she said. "So they just carry around 45 pounds of books."

Kelso acknowledged that the two-minute pass time for middle schoolers wasn't realistic, and said that they would likely add 15 minutes to the school day next year to allow for longer pass times. Parent Jon Streit questioned whether the change could be made at the start of the next semester.

"We can fix it this year," he said. "We don't have to wait until next year."

Kelso said he would address it with Superintendent Sheila Breen for possible inclusion on the Dec. 13 School Board agenda.


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