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Volume 4, No. 1
Fall/Winter, 2010 Exclusively online at
www.EducationHall.com
Zero Out of Three Walk through the halls of Sheridan Elementary School and you’ll read a smattering of posters proclaiming, “Be nice to our preschoolers,” “Get meteoric on the tests,” and “Zero out of three.” The posters, all student-generated and hand-made, are part of the GO Project, a home-spun community-building effort created by the sixth-grade population at the Title I school in Spokane, Washington. Inspired by district-level and nation-wide data that indicate roughly one in three students drop out of school, and fueled by the desire to strengthen the outcomes in a community that enrolls over 80% of its students in the Federal free and/or reduced meals program, the GO Project was born in 2008. GO, an acronym for “Get Organized,” “Get Out (into the community),” and “Get Over (yourself),” depending on which needs are being addressed, is a philosophical approach to fostering leadership, building citizenship, and enhancing contributions to the school and neighborhood. Get Organized GO begets the word GOAL, and goal-setting is the crucial beginning for launching the GO Project. Students brainstorm in September about a wide range of community access points that are ready and willing to receive the volunteer services of Sheridan sixth graders. Kids meet in teams to plan and set goals for which opportunities hold their highest interest. Certain groups form the planning phase of the community interaction, and other groups contribute to the actual event itself. Student choice is a strategic key to forming a more complete student connection. Every Sheridan sixth grader has a personal GO folder containing tracking or “GO-tribution” sheets. Self-reflection logs are completed after each community interaction. Pre and Post efficacy surveys round out the planning and goal setting phase, where students are asked a range of questions in September, and the same questions in June. Kids rate themselves and their perceived abilities as game-changers in their community. This provides the students an opportunity to reflect upon their growth, and offers valuable information to key adults (staff, administration, and parents) about the impact of various activities and approaches throughout the year. The GO Project is not limited to community service, though that is a red thread woven throughout the initiatives. Students also set academic goals – both short-term (for the sixth-grade year) and long-term (looking at their entire academic career) – and list strategies for accomplishing them. Through a battery of academic tests and formative assessments, the students and teachers can match current levels of performance with realistic, ambitious goals for scholastic performance. With goal-setting completed, students pledge and commit to the GO ideals, by traveling to an off-site camp for a day-long field trip. There, among the low-ropes courses, students learn how to struggle and persevere as they problem-solve together through each challenge. The high value the camp counselors place on letting kids struggle to find a solution is of utmost worth as students return to school and begin the daunting task of teaming together to meet a long list of needs in their surrounding community. Both the students and a slew of adult volunteers engage in this massive team-building experience and return to campus ready to GO! And thus, the GO Project is launched. Get Out (into the community) When the GO Project was introduced, it was vital that its application be both reliable and replicable. As every student population differs, so do the needs of its surrounding community. In effect, one size could never fit all, and that flexibility is what makes this project work. One year, the emphasis might be on community-building and contributions within the school campus; the next, the focus might be on turning a social group’s energy into supporting various causes in the immediate neighborhood. An integral aspect of the GO Project is that students actively advocate for which needs they wish to meet. Students discovered that Sheridan Elementary was just a short walk to a state run senior center with residents rarely getting visitors. This group of overlooked elderly is a perfect match for disenfranchised students wanting to feel special to someone. Several times a year, students prepare gifts and happily make the short trek over to the waiting seniors. There have been as many as 70 kids singing Christmas carol concerts, while smaller groups provide room-to-room visits. Boys, lacking certain social skills, amaze staff every year as they kneel down in front of wheel chairs, gently handing large homemade snowflakes to all the residents at Christmastime. Another student search led kids to a startling new understanding of growing numbers of people faced with being homeless. A large homeless population living under some of Spokane’s bridges was a perfect match for students who rallied an entire neighborhood for supplies to hand-make over 500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A sixth grade mom drove the portable meals directly to the needy. There have been blanket drives for women and family shelters and leaf-raking rallies for anyone in the community willing to let kid squads with rakes storm their yards in November. Of particular note was a community outreach organization showing up at Sheridan one day after hundreds of homeless “care-kits” had been delivered by Sheridan students. They couldn’t believe that just 75 kids and a large, caring staff could have put together something so timely and needed for the people the agency served. The moment the students were thanked publicly was priceless – overcome with emotion, the students exhibited genuine pride at seeing the gratitude for their giving. Even during this era of heightened accountability for higher test scores and the push to cram more and more material into the precious minutes of every school day, Sheridan sixth-graders carve time to personally connect with their community. It has become a cornerstone of their development as whole children and future citizens. Get Over (yourself) For years, educators at this 500-student, K-6 schoolhouse scratched their heads at the self-absorbed, it’s-all-about-me nature of sixth-graders in the elementary school. They lamented the preponderance of sixth-grade infractions in the school discipline log. They winced at the boisterous gatherings of sixth-graders around the campus. Eventually, a core group decided it was time to take action. So, the what-if talks and the strategy sessions led to the formation of the GO Project. In addition to Getting Out of the school building to meet community needs, students are given many new responsibilities for Getting Out inside the school. Sixth grade classrooms are intentionally paired with Kindergarten classes to help foster everything from social to spelling skills, depending on the need. Smaller groups are partnered with third graders every week to dialogue and write about conflict resolution strategies. Younger grades no longer see the older students as scary; rather, they have new role models to look up to and check in with each week. As role models, the sixth graders have an obligation to view themselves as others would view them. They rise to the expectations set for them by their peers, their teachers, the younger students, and (most importantly) by themselves. Sixth graders are the safety patrol, recess mentors, lunchroom helpers, custodial support, hallway decorators, and the new community leaders for their neighborhood and school. These challenging and spirited sixth-grade students spend so much time helping others to grow, far fewer discipline referrals have been recorded at their grade level. There just isn’t time for negative behavior with so many positive behavior replacements. Wraparound Supports Beyond the GO Project, the concerned staff at Sheridan Elementary has launched other initiatives to support the healthy development and long-term success of its students. In addition to making a commitment to defining and practicing powerful classroom instruction, Sheridan piloted the launch of a truly standards-based grading and reporting system in 2008-2009. This practice has resulted in higher levels of student engagement, a formal process for goal-setting, student-led conferences, and increased student-reported levels of effort optimism (the belief that the rewards will follow the risks). Additionally, staff has begun creating a matrix of warning factors to identify students at high risk of dropping out of school. Then, with intentionality that follows the information and knowledge of individual students, the school has partnered with an organization called Communities in Schools to provide adult mentors, community partnerships, family outreach, and additional services. Communities in Schools has committed to following the identified students into the middle school setting, creating a smoother transition and a greater likelihood of a positive, long-range impact. As a result, during this past year’s sixth-grade promotion ceremony (so dubbed because “promotion” indicates upward motion towards something bigger and better, while “graduation” implies finality – and the Sheridan sixth-graders have a long ways to go still), several students read essays or spoke about the impact their teachers and school have had upon their young lives. Articulate, intelligent, and passionate, they demonstrated a solid grounding in reading, writing, and communicating skills. However, that’s not what they were reflecting on; rather, they spoke of the relationships they’ve built, the experiences they shared, and the promise they’ve made: to NOT be the one out of three that will drop out, but to be the “zero out of three.” They’ve promised to GO forth!
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