Junior High Focuses On Academic Goals
by Jesse Vela
February 11, 2008
Greetings from the Jr. High! On February 1, 2008, we shut down the Jr. High to take some time to visit with our students about their academic goals and in some case their life goals. All our students have been assigned to a test administrator. In some cases the first and only time a student makes contact with the teacher who administers the test is when he/she walks in that classroom door. Thus, we felt that it would be important for our students and teachers to take some time to visit and learn about each other and set some goals before our benchmarks.
We used a template created by Mr. Ewing which he named the ROY G BIV. Our teachers have been monitoring student progress through this document. The mechanism behind the document is to convert percent scores on our CBAs (6 weeks tests) to scale scores as given by TAKS. On all TAKS tests a scale score of 2100 is the minimum passing standard, 2200 is considered college ready, and 2400 is commended performance. Lytle Jr. High has a goal set for BLUE which is the college ready standard. What we want is to have the aggregate scores of all our student groups to be at 2200.
The students met with the teachers from 8:00 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. They covered all the tested areas; reading, math, science, social studies, and writing. I was extremely impressed with the students who visited with me. They were thoughtful in their goals and most wanted to attend college. As we work to build a college going culture in Lytle it is imperative that we allow our students every opportunity to be active in the decision making process. In education we have used testing processes as predictors of passing and failing and not given the students much of a voice. Our hope is that giving our students a chance to articulate their opinion and set their goals will provide a breakthrough in their education. This is our first year with this process and hopefully it won’t be our last.
Our spring Academic Festival is coming up in March. This is our second year instituting this activity and we have been overjoyed at the amount of parent and student participation we have had. So mark your calendar March 12, 2008 from 5:30 P.M. to 7:30 P.M.
