Community, literacy, confidence focus of Mills Lawn School

Mills Lawn School Principal Christine Hatton was looking forward to the children’s return for the new school year on Wednesday, Aug. 29.

By Virgil Hervey

Mills Lawn School Principal Christine Hatton’s plan for the new school year is a “vision in three parts,” she said in a recent interview. Her vision’s first part is community: the kids must feel that they are known, welcome and safe at Mills Lawn. The second part is literacy: they must learn to read and write and express themselves in every subject. Finally, there is math: students must have all the tools — addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions and percentages — to solve problems.

The school will focus on community in a new way this year. In the recent past, Mills Lawn sent teachers to a Northeast Children’s Foundation (NCF) program for training in a teaching methodology called “responsive classroom,” which aimed to help teachers create community in the classroom. According to Hatton, the program was expensive and got even more so when NCF stopped offering it in Ohio two years ago. So the school stopped sending teachers for the training, she said, but decided to devise its own program. At the start of this school year, teachers Shanna Winks and Debra Mabra, who had attended the program, trained other teachers in a variation of “responsive classroom.” Included in the training were new teachers Heidi Hoover, who replaced Angie Warner as a second-grade teacher, and new primary music teacher Jo Frannye Reichert, who replaced Mary Kay Franz.

This year, the school’s literacy initiative, which had been ongoing for grades first through third for four or five years, has been expanded to grades four through six.

“Yellow Springs’ kids have always been better at storytelling than writing for informational purposes,” Hatton said. “Our goal is to get them writing across the curriculum. For example, as a part of a math lesson, they will have to write about what they think.”

Hatton is looking to the community for help by seeking volunteer reading and math tutors. Their schedules will be accommodated, she said.

“We have had wonderful tutors for the older grades,” Hatton said. “However, we need more tutors, especially for second and third grades.

Over the summer, retired teacher Lillian Slaughter offered tutoring to seven third-graders who had not excelled on the reading proficiency test, and four students attended.

Paula Cordell, an instructional aid in the Mills Lawn School reading center, serves as the Ohio Reads volunteer coordinator. Those wishing to volunteer as reading tutors can contact her by calling the school at 767-7217.

“Why aren’t there more kids taking calculus in high school?” Hatton asked. “They don’t like math because they think it’s hard. I want the kids to be confident and competent. I want them to say, ‘I can.’ ”

According to Hatton, this is the third and last year of the math assessment. Intervention with the kids who need it, she said, requires an intensive investment of time, but one-on-one tutoring helps students gain confidence.

In other parts of the school, there has been some shuffling of responsibilities in the music program with the hiring of Reichert, who will teach primary music to grades first through third, she said. Dennis Farmer and Yvonne Wingard will continue to teach grades four through six. This is an off-year for the school’s musical, which the school presents every other year, Hatton said, so the music teachers and gym teacher Shanna Galbraith will work together on dance. Plans are also in the works to bring the Mad River Theater Group into the school to do a program with the kids.

In special education, Jody Chick, who had served as part-time special education supervisor, will now be the full-time fifth and sixth grade intervention specialist. According to Hatton, Mills Lawn employs an inclusion model for special needs students, meaning that they are included in the regular program as much as possible with an individualized education program (IEP) tailored to their own needs.

There will be no split classes this year, Hatton said. In the past, some grades have had two sections and a split class. This year there will be three sections of 20 kids each in the second grade.

She is gratified that the Yellow Springs schools recently learned that they received an “excellent” ranking from the state of Ohio based on state achievement tests, but she wants to make things even better.

“I am happy for that,” Hatton said of the ranking. “Now I want to build capacity.”

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com