PERSONALIZING THE HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER 1
Two boys from Guatemala were adopted by one of the book's authors. While the author's other children were successful in the local public schools, these two boys met with much frustration and discouragement. The public schools in their community did not personalize instruction as indicated in parent discussions with school administrators. Few resources had been allocated to provide instruction for ESL students. The parent met with the classroom teacher, the school principal and the School Board, to no avail. Some changes were made and the older son met with some success by the time he left sixth grade. However, his middle school experience was dismal and he spent two years as a freshman in high school. A switch to a private school afforded their older son an opportunity for advisory meetings twice a day. The advisor contacted the student's teachers twice a month to be sure his grades were being maintained and the student's success returned.
Problem Areas for High Schools designated by the book are:
§ Depersonalization
§ Lack of adult support
§ Unresponsive teaching
§ Imperceptible results
§ Invisibility
§ Isolation
One area of concern is that the U.S. is now 16th in the world for high school graduation rate; at one time the U.S. ranked first in this category. While some critics prefer to think that high schools are broken, the authors' viewpoint is that high schools are obsolete. High schools operate much on the same basis as when they were first created in the 1890s—where very few women and only 5% of men were intended to attend and graduate. This chapter also addresses that while changes are continually made to the present high school system, no amount of changes will meet the needs and demands of today's students, society and economy.
Essentially, today's authorities of high school education maintain that personalization is essential to create a learning environment for all students. ". . . the new vision of high school is schooling that puts students at the center of their learning. All further changes proceed from that idea."
CHAPTER 2
The Purpose of Advisories
Advisory programs have been implemented across the United States to support personalization for both students and adults in the school corporation. Each advisor has typically less than 20 students that meet regularly. The teacher is a guide as well as an advocate for the students.
To be successful, the advisories must have a clear purpose to drive the program. Also, each person in the school must know and accept the purpose of the program. Written content that guides the routines and activities during the advisory period must be created. In some schools, the faculty members are free to create their own lessons and activities, but it is crucial for the school to create consistent content. The advisory program must be assessed in order to improve the program, and school leaders must embrace the concept in order for the outcome to be positive for the students.
Goals
Schools must determine what the focus of their program will be. Some schools have chosen academic skills or student advocacy, while others have chosen community participation. All stakeholders (faculty, parents, students, community members) need to be a part of the planning process.
Chapter 2 gave a list of possible purposes a high school might use to focus its program. Some include:
- To increase student motivation
- To help students imagine their future
- To connect each student with a caring adult
- To gather a best work portfolio
- To plan a path after high school
- To improve basic skills
- To explore career choices
- To prepare for college applications
The authors suggest that the school faculty select four to six purposes to help define a coherent program. The school must first decide on explicit advisory goals. Determining the goals will help establish who should become advisors and what they should focus on.
Activities in an Advisory
School may set different activities during the advisory period, depending on what the school’s focus, or goal of the advisory program is. Regardless of purpose, it is important that the program implement guides that provide relevant activities, exercises, discussion topics, and guidelines. Ideally, the program framework should be developed by educators and administrators with input from students. The guides should be viewed as a flexible tool that will not be rigidly followed, as with other academic curriculum, because the activities and discussion topics may evolve during the advisory period.
Some possible collaborative activities that may be worked on during advisory periods include compiling a portfolio that may be required as a graduation requirement, or completing and analyzing a personalized learning plan. Community service projects are also a part of many schools’ advisory systems.
The book describes three schools with difference goals and their advisory programs.
Granger H.S. – heterogeneously organized groups with a teacher that will be their advisor throughout their high school years. Granger's basic goal is to make every student known by at least one adult. Advisories meet four times a week for 40 minutes at the end of each day.
Kansas City H.S. – 18-to-1 ratio of students to advisor. Advisory groups stay together the entire four years of high school. Their goal is to improve basic learning for each student. Groups meet at least once a week, and advisors contact each student's family once a month. Each semester a family conference is held with family members, the student and the advisor to monitor the student's progress.
Parker High School has a strong academic purpose connected to classroom advisories. They are organized so that a student has an advisor that is also his/her classroom teacher. Although, a student may request a specific advisor and an advisor may request a student to be in his/her group. Advisories meet three hours each week (8:30-8:45) in the mornings, afternoon reflections (3:20 – 3:30), and extended time once a week (12:30 – 1:30). Their advisories provide a strong avenue for students to voice opinions. Each advisory has a parent volunteer to support the school's goals.
Granger High School expected advisors to know which students were struggling in which classes. Each semester, student-led conferences are conducted, where students discuss how they are progressing in their personalized education plan, what their grades are, and what interventions are needed.
Leadership
The core of the advisory system is the connection between adults and students. It requires teachers getting to know their group of students in a structured, yet informal setting. Although students work hard to establish their own identities, and break away from adult conventions, they need and willingly accept guidance from trusted adults. When students were surveyed about their favorite, or most influential teachers, they seldom mention anything to do with actual disciplinary knowledge. They remember most the informal interaction with teachers, and teachers who were concerned with their well-being and success.
The issue of leadership for each of these high schools is approached in a different manner. Granger High's principal, Richard Esparza, believes in advisories because he believes that "high schools must do the right thing for their students. He realizes that to reach all students, high schools need to know all students." Parker High School has an advisory coordinator to support, plan and conduct professional development so advisors can be more effective.
Engaging teachers in teams with specific goals such as developing lesson plans and creating program guides can contribute to the success of the program. Professional development conferences can be attended as well for additional information and training. To deal with resistant students, students need to be included in the planning process and need to have their ideas incorporated into the program. If teachers and students are privy to information about the advisory concept before the program is begun, and their input is included in the purpose and design of the program, enthusiasm is generated throughout the school climate.
Assessing
An integral part of the advisory process is to provide for assessment, whether it's formal or informal. It is essential for the success of the advisories that suggestions gained from reflection are discussed and used for improvement of the program.
The advisory system as a whole may be assessed by examining questions about the effectiveness of the advisory itself. This is usually done through surveying the school and community as a whole. Advisors themselves may be assessed through periodic observations and/or feedback from students or parents. Students may be assessed by examining how they are meeting their goals, which are determined at the beginning of the formation of the advisory. (Some schools choose the measurement of Personalized Learning Plans). It is common for a school to require the completion of a portfolio project, which may be assessed and refined throughout a student’s four years of high school.
The school that was previously mentioned, Granger, chose two methods of assessment. The first one was the percentage of students that have a parent attend a student-led conference. The second measure was based on achievement scores on state assessment tests. This particular school, upon assessment, demonstrated astonishing results. Before the formation of the advisory system, the rate of attendance of parents who attended parent-teacher conferences was at 10%. After the first year following the implementation of the advisory system, the percentage was 20%. After the second year, the percentage was at 100%. This demonstrates an outstanding commitment of both the school and the parents supporting student learning and success. Students also felt a sense of ownership and pride in their school, and experienced a significant drop in the rate of crime after the implementation of the advisory program.
With regard to academic achievement at Granger, achievement test scores also showed dramatic increases. Within three years, the percentage of students passing achievement tests in reading went from 20% to 47%. In math, the percentage jumped from 4% to 31%, and in writing, the percentage improved from 8% to 52%. One of the measures that led to these dramatic increases was the bold implementation of a “no-fail” rule. Any student who fell below a C grade was required to get extra help until they were able to improve their grade. The advisors were the link that provided communication about student progress. Due to these noteworthy academic successes, the school was able to boast about their graduation rate improving from 58.3% in 2000, to 69% in 2001, to 85.2% in 2002, to 95% in 2007.
Lessons from Exemplary Schools
Some common themes among schools participating in this type of program included:
- the advisory program has a clear purpose
- looping students (being able to stay with the same teacher for more than one year)
- weekly professional development opportunities planned for the entire staff
- a strong understanding by both students and teachers that the school's goals have not yet been accomplished and much improvement is still needed
Question: Is "personalization" for all students possible at your school? What factors do you have working in favor of this program? What factors would work against this program?
Wow. I can see where the author got the powerful list of faults that high schools have. However, I also think some of these things can be definitely remedied if the student takes initiative to act toward such a goal. This is also true in college; for example, a student really has the CHOICE of whether or not to be invisible and isolated.
ReplyDeleteAnother thought: Although the US may be 16th in the world for high school graduation rate, I wonder what that statistical comparison includes. Does it take into account that some of the countries with a higher graduation rate may rely heavily on tracking of their students and not even allow a large percentage of their students to attend regular high school? (I know Germany and France both follow this style of schooling.)
Our school has actually begun a similar program to the advisory program idea. We call it Student Resource Time; each teacher has about 20 students in an 8th period that meets for 90 minutes on Thursday. During this time, we meet with each of the students and try to help them set goals and reflect on the past week’s successes and failures (the students have a folder they are supposed to fill out, which they find to be tedious and is usually completed with disdain, if at all.) The past two years, we have kept basically the same students in our SRT’s, grouping them by graduation year. Next year, I have heard the plan is to sort SRT’s by student interest instead of by grade level, which could be interesting! Community members have not really been integrated into this program at all, though.
Is "personalization" for all students possible at your school? What factors do you have working in favor of this program? What factors would work against this program?
ReplyDeleteThis is a question that probably does not apply to me, since I work in an elementary school, but I will answer it anyway. In the last elementary school where I worked, personalization would be possible. The students are with a regular classroom teacher all day. Even in the classrooms with 36 students, their teachers definitely know their names! As a special area teacher who came into their classroom, it took me until Halloween, but I eventually learned the names of the 200+ students that I saw daily. My last year there, I worked with second through sixth graders. I did now know the names of all of the kindergarten and first graders and did not have a personalized connection with them. Maybe if one of my duties would have been lunch duty for kindergarten through first grade, I would have learned their name, but otherwise, I never saw them.
Sadly I don't know if all teachers would be open to personalization in the high school where I work. We have a similar program to advisories but many teachers ignore their students or don't work to help them succeed. The core idea of the program is for students to have a relationship with a teacher, they don't have during the day. The class meets once a week for 30 minutes, which is not enough. I think the idea of the program is workable but the teachers and students have to buy into it. When you get everyone on board I think it can work. It is still a fairly new program and hopefully after a few years it will catch on better.
ReplyDeleteAs well as students buying into the program as Heather said, it is also important for the activities to be deemed worthwhile by the teachers. We have a program called TAG (teacher aided guidance) that has been revamped 3 times in the seven years I have been at my school. At this point in time, the admininstation simply prints out drill (fire, chemical, tornado, etc ) information and expects us to read it with our group when we meet once a month. Neither the students nor the teachers are buying into this new method. I think personalization is very important in the high school setting and so much could be done with TAG to help this happen. However, the present activities do nothing more than create a huge pile in my recycle bin.
ReplyDeleteOne thought I had was that personalization in the high school definitely is affected by the size of the school. I have taught in 3 different schools with populations of 2,600 , 750, and 230. In the large school, it was almost impossible to get to know students and faculty. In fact, on quite a few occasions I was stopped by our security guards and asked for my hall pass because they thought I was a student.
I worked in a school with advisories (I mentioned this in a wikispace earlier and apologize for repeating myself). We met them every day for about 20 minutes. The groups were multi-graded (usually 5-6 students in each grade)and we stayed together from the freshman year to graduation. We acted as the school-family-community liaison; families often chose to have all their children placed in the same advisory group. I was hired in the 3rd year of the program and found it difficult to have an effective meeting every day The teachers who had been hired earlier had received intensive PD and had visited other schools with advisories. By the second year, I felt more comfortable; my colleagues helped me adjust to working with advisories. When a new principal arrived, he redid the schedule, taking out the 20 minute time period. Students and teachers were very disappointed but after a few years, new teachers came, students graduated, and it remained part of the history of the school that only the veterans had experienced.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Is "personalization" for all students possible at your school? What factors do you have working in favor of this program? What factors would work against this program?
ReplyDeleteI do think it is possible, and I do think it is necessary. I feel like students are falling through the cracks daily. To hear that the U.S. is 16th in the world in graduation rates is so disappointing. We have CT (collaboration time) everyday from 7:30-8:15. We normally use this for meetings of all sorts, including Monthly Faculty Meetings. We do not have a meeting everyday and it would be very possible for teachers to meet with students for a few minutes of that time, say from 8:00-8:15. I really like the idea of picking students to be in your group. There are times when a student really tugs at my heart strings and I would like to be able to help them but I do not get the opportunity to have the interaction with them. I could request that student to be in my group. I think feeling a connection is an extremely important concept for high school students in today's society.
Personalization does occur at my school. I do not know if it happens enough but we are trying. I teach in a middle school setting and every Monday morning I have a class of only 12 students (collaboration or homeroom). During this time we work on skills such as note taking and communication. I also touch base with these students to make sure they are on the right track. They can bring homework during that time. It is also the students that I take the ISTEP test with. I feel like I know these students really well. We also have team building activities. Once a nine weeks we have some sort of activity. One nine weeks we had pumpkin Olympics where my first period class competed against other first period classes in such activities such as pie eating and pumpkin throwing. Our team made team shirts, had a team song, team name and team motto. One thing that I think is difficult about personalization is time! I am so busy throughout the day that a different schedule would be needed so I could be an advisor to students. For instance, today I had about one and a half hours for my prep period. I was running around the whole time doing different necessary things, I did not spend 10 minutes in my own room.
ReplyDeleteOne of the motivators mentioned was to have the students expolore career choices. I think we do a great job at this at my school. We have many different career pathways established for the students to explore. Each pathway has a series of courses and ends with a college class the students received college and high school credit for. This allows the students to choose a path this is interesting to them and gives them ownership of the program
ReplyDeleteI'm not currently teaching but hope to be during the next school year so I can't answer your question fully but I do have some comments and thoughts regarding personalization in the school. I see a lot of benefit to them from previously reading this book. I think it creates a great bond between an educator and students because it gives them a sense of belonging. I know that in my 4 years of high school I had very little consistency and would have preferred to have something like this in place. I think that everyone can gain from them and as Dr. Graham said in her post when they canceled it at her school everyone was disappointed. Unfortunately it became a thing of the past and never was used again. As you see in Ashlee's comment about her group competing and having team names, shirts, etc., there is a lot of teamwork and ownership in their learning experiences when they feel they belong!
ReplyDelete-Nick
Dusty, tell me more about these "career pathways". Are they various tracks of study? Is it similar at all in concept to Project Lead the Way? Give me some examples. And how many students do there need to be in order for one of these programs to exist?
ReplyDeleteWe have many different pathways. Academy of Finance, Entrepreneurship Academ (school store), Marketing, Culinary, Health Careers, Sports Medicine, just to name a few. The amount of students needed varies between pathways. go to our website for specifics. www.nacs.k12.in.us go to carroll high school and then follow the links to the course curriculum guide
ReplyDeleteI think personalization is one thing my school does well, although it is informal. We have fewer than 250 high school students, but for the most part, our staff is highly aware of student needs and backgrounds. I also think most students have a trusted teacher that they gravitate to for advice and encouragement. However, I feel that if a formal program were developed, it would feel forced and artificial to most of the participants. Our students may have the same teacher 2-5 times per day, including a 30 minute activity period.
ReplyDeleteI think in any school, with the right training, allowance for time, and motivation of the staff, advisories would be a noble activity, but it would take a massive amount of leadership to implement and maintain.
Thanks, Dusty! I'll have to explore the course curriculum guides!!
ReplyDeleteAlso, the career pathways are on the DOE website - they have been used for years in other states (Wisconsin is big into this)...Indiana is finally getting on-board! Columbia City High School has an entire Internship program that focuses on the pathways. Check out their school website, too! We are trying to incorporate them into our middle school for next year to help students choose their high school classes accordingly.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think personalization is very possible for each student. And Ironically, I don't necessarily think that at least one of those methods the book described is really necessary to do it, though they can help in that goal. Personalization, I think, is simply adapting the school into a community where indvidual needs and differences are expected--and expected to conrtibute positively to the overall atmosphere--as well as the feeling that each student has a place in the community so that they can grow in the most holistic way possible. To do this, "all" teachers have to do is let the students know what expectations are, consult with them when making certain expectations, and letting them respond to those collobarated expectations in a way the student feels useful. Students know when they are growing and when they are lazy, generally--and I have found trusting them to tell the difference when making their own expectations usually results in more work being done than if I simply expect a lot from them because I have tendency to become demanding--which is demoralizing--and I've had teachers do that to me as a student as well.
ReplyDeleteNow, my one gripe: The book recommends that students be looped. The idea behind this isn't so that students get more familiar with the teacher's expectations, but that the student find a mentor who knows them well--and to do that takes time...so therefore more time must be spent with individual teachers and students. That's just one method of doing that. I don't necessarily like it because these programs often arbitrarily stick teachers with students and hope the extra time pays off--this doesn't usually happen with personality conflicts. Even with advisory programs (for pairing students and teachers), especially when students transfer into a new building this advisory staff is still dealing with an unknown student, even though information is shared. And when people can't make a truly informed decision the decision becomes "arbitrary." For example, it might seem that a student likes a demanding, fairly stressful work environment (one that is very exacting in accuracy and volume of work and overall expectations) as they seem to thrive in it...but really that student hates it and only did well because he or she had a reserve of emotional and mental energy. Looping a student with a teacher who creates a "demanding" environment like that would only lead to burnout, even though the advice seemed informed.
Other mentoring programs work well at that goal too, but are often voluntary, even when paired with various "reach out" efforts. Thus I'm not sure how genuine mentoring can take place for all students--perhaps a mix of programs is needed rather than haning our hats on looping. However, in any case if teachers and students seem to get along and the student chooses (as well as the teacher) I do believe they should spend as much time in the classroom together as possible. Generally, after a semester people know if they want to work together--and if they want to continue working together, let them. If not...have them move on. Don't force them to loop.
I am not sure personalization is possible for all of the 1200+ middle schoolers at my school. I think our school is too big for that and I'm not sure where we would find the time. We have a hard time fitting everything into the schedule as it is. Having said that, I would LOVE if it were possible! Middle School is tough as it is and to have an advisory period (or any of the other catchy titles) would be very helpful to our students. One thing I thought of while reading is do the teachers and students have the option of moving to another advisor if theirs does not work out? Also, I think the parent/community buy in is essential. The statistic of 10% of parents attending conferences to 100% is astounding! What more proof do you need?
ReplyDeleteI think personalization is possible at my school because of its small size. I'm not sure if it would be possible at an extremely large school or how that would work - and obviously that is where it would be needed the most.
ReplyDeleteI would hope that every teacher would see the value in creating a personalized high school atmosphere for students. Students often get "lost in the shuffle" and all students deserve individualized attention from educators who care about their educational future and who also show an interest in their outside lives. We once had an advisory period when I taught at the middle school, but we were told that it was basically silent reading time. If the school was more organized, that time period could have been put to better use.
I'm am not a practicing teacher, but I do strongly believe personalization, community involvement and parental involvement are all key factors in secondary education today. All of these issues need to be addressed simultaneously and in multi-level approaches. Of course, this does take the willing participation of so many different people: the students, the teachers, the administrators, the parents and the community. The experiences I have had at our local high school as a parent lead me to believe it would nothing short of a miracle to do something like this there.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the concept of looping, I found it to be a positive aspect of the advisory concept, one that created consistency. I would love to work with a small group of the same students for 4 years. I feel that the longer you work with students, the more comfortable they feel with you, and perhaps you could make a real difference. As far as what happens if the advisors and advisees don't get along - the reading didn't specify. With quality activities in an advisory period, as well as strong parental and community involvement, I can't really envision situations in which students would be requesting to switch teachers. Of course there would be exceptions, but those kids probably aren't getting along with any of their teachers.
ReplyDeleteThe closest thing that my school did to this concept was an ISTEP daily review period. Most of the students hated it, because it was boring - students viewed the material from video monitors. Teachers also disliked it, because they had little, if any role other than "crowd control". The students were randomly assigned, and some teachers had trouble with students being disruptive. As with everything, there needs to be penalties in place.
I think the schools that are on the right track have career programs in place, and portfolio requirements.
I believe that personalization is very possible. We currently have advisory periods that double as SRT's like Kristen. We have 30 minutes with our advisory group. I often go over grades with individual and respond to questions about our program and such. They then have two 30 minute tutorials. We utilize these like office hours in college. Students and teachers can use this for individualized instruction, help sessions or whatever they may need (like organizational meetings).
ReplyDeleteThe downside of our program is that it is limited on how much personalization you can do with course offerings. We are a focused magnet program. The assumption is that our students have interest in the medical fields, which is not always true. The courses that we can offer are limited because of our requirements in our program (etymology, two years of Latin, two years of Spanish, Medical Terminology, etc.)