August 19, 2004

YSHS, McKinney hope year brings ‘return to normalcy’

BACK TO SCHOOL
The first in a series

With all the change, experimentation and emotional upheaval Yellow Springs High School and the McKinney School endured last school year, Principal John Gudgel said he would like nothing more than to begin the 2004–05 year by “returning to normalcy.”

“We were beset with some unfortunate events no one had any control over, and for almost a whole academic quarter we were in crisis mode,” he said of the discovery of the remains of Tim Lopez, the YSHS student who had been missing for two years, and the death of senior Arla Smith. “We all breathed a collective sigh of relief when summer arrived because we were wiped out emotionally. This year the attitude is getting back to normal.”

Most class offerings remain the same this year, but the 10th-grade English and math programs will partly focus on the Ohio graduation test, Gudgel said. Teachers will spend time evaluating their academic programs and articulating better between grade levels to minimize repetition of material.

Teachers are making an effort to improve students’ academic responsibility by assessing what students need to be challenged yet held accountable for their own learning. The vast array of co-curricular, after-school and employment opportunities available to students are beginning to erode the time students have to do their homework, Gudgel said. The school plans to encourage students to prioritize and plan their days better to get their school work done, he said.

The English program went through a lot of change after Mary McDonald retired last year, and her replacement, Marcy Boone, stayed until the end of the school year. YSHS has hired Desiree Nickell to teach ninth-and 11th–grade English.

Two new teachers, Fred Kingrey, who will teach chemistry, and David Johnston, a special education teacher who worked as an aide at Mills Lawn School, were also hired. Bringing in two male teachers will help balance the nearly two-to-one ratio of female-to-male teachers and provide emotional support for the male population, in the majority at YSHS, Gudgel said.

“In this day and age it’s especially important that students see a variety of teachers, and bringing in two males will contribute to the diversity that’s been lacking,” Gudgel said.

The school is in the process of hiring a new full-time guidance counselor for grades 7 through 10. Current counselor David Smith will serve as the guidance counselor for the juniors and seniors as well as teach French. A new guidance counselor is expected to be hired soon, Gudgel said.

YSHS has established a closed-campus lunch hour for what Gudgel called “obvious reasons.” Last May, Smith died in a car accident after leaving campus for lunch. Traditionally, juniors and seniors have been allowed to leave for lunch, and though school officials are open to discussing the matter, the policy is not likely to change this year, Gudgel said.

Last year, both the middle school and the high school experimented with a block schedule, in which classes are nearly twice as long and held two to four times a week instead of every day. While surveys at YSHS suggested that students and teachers prefer either the block or a hybrid schedule, those at McKinney prefer a conventional schedule, Gudgel said. Half way through the year, the schools will settle on a schedule, or possibly two different models if the buildings can’t agree.

Aside from the new carpet throughout the McKinney School building, lead teacher Pam Conine agreed that “the thing that’s exciting about this year is that there is not much change.”

Both students and teachers spent last year getting used to McKinney’s new facilities and sharing some classrooms with YSHS. They plan to continue to use the outdoor courtyard as an outdoor classroom and for projects that need a small stage.

An interdisciplinary project that incorporated language arts, science and health and physical education into a unit on the rainforest was such a success last year that teachers plan to repeat the project this year with an undecided theme. Conine said she believes group projects are perfect for middle school students who are developing their sense of self and learning their place with their peers and in society.

“Students really seem to enjoy themselves doing group work, and I’m looking forward to more projects like that,” she said.

Social studies teacher Shawn Jackson will coordinate a mock election based on the presidential election. Students will take on the roles of the candidates and their parties and hold debates, advertising campaigns and a schoolwide vote on Election Day.

McKinney teachers are also looking forward to working with a new guidance counselor who, Conine said, she hopes will have time to devote to seventh and eighth grade individual and group support sessions. She hopes the school can continue to make discussion groups on issues such as divorce, self-esteem and peer relationships available to students.

The school library got a makeover that included new paint and carpeting as a prelude to the new Web-based interface product that will allow more sophisticated searches on the wireless laptop computers the schools received last year, MaryAnn Christopher said.

Both schools will continue to hold quarterly pulse meetings in which students and teachers discuss social issues at school. The first meeting will focus on “isms,” such as sexism, racism, feminism and other constructs students use to judge others without being aware of how their views affect others, Gudgel said.

In many ways, the beginning of this year will be about picking up where school left off last fall when the pulse meetings and schedule changes were new things students needed time to adjust to. Last year was an unusual year, and this year should be about settling into a stable groove, Gudgel said.

—Lauren Heaton