A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Key Characteristics Algebra Project prepares students for high-level math courses Job shadowing experiences and trained mentors encourage all students to plan for the future Professional development activities support teachers in restructuring efforts

Number of Students: 850 Grades Served: 6-8 Racial/Ethnic Breakdown: 61% White 39% African American Eligible for Free/Reduced-Price Lunch: 79% Chapter 1 Program: Yes Major Sources of Outside Funding: Alliance for Achievement, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation

Overview

Louis wants to be an airline pilot. The daily realities of growing up poor sometimes crowd out his vision of the future, but Louis's teachers at Western Middle School encourage this aspiration and help Louis by planning out a path to help him achieve it. Recognizing that strong math skills are important for his chosen field, Louis has signed up for the eighth-grade algebra course that will enable him to take advanced math courses while he is in high school. Louis's mentor, who works in the aerospace industry, encourages Louis's career goals by bringing him to work.

Western Middle School began restructuring in 1989, when it joined with its feeder high school and a local community college in a collaboration sponsored by the Alliance for Achievement. Western's restructuring efforts positioned the school to respond quickly to state reforms embodied in the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA). The school combines an academically challenging curriculum, extensive career education, trained mentors, and staff development programs to support teachers as they help students define and work to reach their goals.

School Context

Major Program Features

Revised and Strengthened Curriculum

• Focus on algebra. Western Middle School and its Alliance for Achievement partners noted that students entering the community college often had poor math skills and tended to drop out of school when they had to take noncredit remedial math courses as prerequisites for college work. Furthermore, the high school found that many incoming freshmen were failing Algebra I--a gate-keeper course for higher mathematics and postsecondary education. To combat these problems, the three partners decided to focus on both math and career guidance to prepare students for advanced math courses in postsecondary education.

  Using new math materials and manipulatives purchased with $5,000 in Alliance grant funds, two eighth-grade math teachers worked during the summer to create a new curriculum to teach algebra skills to all eighth graders. They collaborated with high school math teachers to beef up areas where the high school instructors saw students needed more preparation. Now, eighth-grade algebra includes writing activities, real-world problem solving using algebraic concepts, and summer enrichment. Students write instructions about algebra-related math games, solve problems in geometry, and devise ways to distribute food proportionally. Students use math manipulatives to create equations and learn math concepts, such as ratio and proportion. Students can also attend a two-day summer math program, sponsored by the Alliance and involving staff from Western, the high school, and the community college. In the program, students tour the community college, learn about admissions processes, work on the campus computers, and solve hands-on math activities at the high school.

  In addition, the school's drawing- and writing-based Algebra Project helps prepare seventh graders to take eighth-grade algebra. Through a series of activities, students learn precise mathematical terms and symbolic language. For example, one activity uses the transit system to teach algebraic concepts. Students ride the bus and learn about positive and negative integers by adding and subtracting streets as the bus changes directions. They count the number of people who get on the bus over a period of time and use this information to explore probability. They write stories to learn about substitution--perhaps about how to come up with a temporary solution for handling a cut without a bandaid. The writing activities help to prepare students for eighth-grade math and to develop the math portfolios required by the new state assessment system.

• Integrated language arts. In a professional development program spanning three summers, teachers are learning to implement a thematic, literature-based integrated language arts program at Western. They have learned how to give students rich backgrounds to enhance the reading of novels as well as how to integrate social studies and science with language arts. For example, in 1993-94, language arts and social studies teachers jointly created an eighth-grade thematic unit about growing up in times of challenge and change. Students read novels about World War II and the Holocaust, including The Diary of Anne Frank, drew timelines of the historical period, and wrote narratives from the point of view of historical and fictional characters.

Career Focus

• Job shadowing. A job shadowing program provides all eighth graders with at least one visit to a workplace that interests them. In preparation for an eighth-grade job-shadowing program, seventh graders have the opportunity to attend at least one school lunch session featuring guest speakers, including representatives from business, board of education members, architects, and medical professionals. Speakers discuss their careers and the preparation needed to perform their jobs. Once students have decided on their career interests and goals, teachers and a school-based job shadowing scheduler (paid through an Edna McConnell Clark foundation grant) help them find an appropriate job-shadowing experience. Eighth graders participate in job shadowing at least once; in 1993-94, about half had two job-shadowing experiences.

  Teachers take small groups of students to visit a local business, industry, hospital, or other workplace of interest. At the site, each student is paired with a worker who teaches on-the-job skills. For example, one student entered payroll information on a computer as part of a job-shadowing experience at an insurance company. Another group worked with naturalists at a local nature preserve to check the condition of native plants. In collaboration with a local aviation magnet high school, a larger group of 120 students journeyed to a local airport. Students went up in a small plane in groups of four; one student in each group helped fly the plane. Back at Western, students worked on a two-week aviation and aeronautics unit. Twenty-one eighth-graders later decided to attend the aviation magnet program.

• Career days. Twice each year Western also sponsors career days that focus on postsecondary education and a wide range of technical and nontechnical career options. During these days, students listen to various guest speakers describe their fields. Past guests have included lawyers, retail workers, plumbers, typesetters, university professors, veterinarians, and medical professionals. Speakers discuss such topics as preparation, job responsibilities, and salary. Students are encouraged to ask speakers questions that they have formulated during previous class time.

• Mentoring. School staff believe one way to help adolescents mature and grow is to pair them with successful community members who serve as mentors and reinforce the importance of a solid education. Originally targeting at-risk African American males, the program now serves more than 40 diverse boys and girls; students considered most at risk are given priority.

  Mentors, including business people, retired school staff, central office administrators, executives, and university students, receive training and support through the district-sponsored volunteer talent center. The center also provides programs for mentors and mentees, such as multicultural awareness and conflict resolution. Although mentors do not tutor students in academics, they do try to influence students in that area by reinforcing the importance of a good education during their weekly or twice-weekly sessions. Currently, students are pulled from elective classes or, on occasion, academic classes; staff and mentors are trying to move the meeting time to after-school.

  Some mentors work with one student; others have up to three. Mentors work with students in a variety of ways, and each relationship is different. The Aquatic Resources Group, cosponsored by the Volunteer Talent Center and the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commission, teaches fishing at a nearby lake. Students from a local university take their protgés on campus tours. Mentors occasionally take students to lunch or sponsor pizza parties. Some mentors contact students' parents and meet with students outside of school and on weekends.

Organization and Extended Services

• Team structure. Western uses a team structure to group students. Each grade has two teams that include a science, language arts, math, and social studies teacher. For especially large teams, a reading teacher is added. Each team also collaborates with a member of the special education staff. Use of time is flexible; each team develops its own schedule to fit its own instructional needs.

• Extended school services. Through state funding from KERA, Western offers students after-school and summer programs, including tutoring and enrichment activities. Students who need to catch up can work with KERA-paid Western teachers on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays for one-and-a-half hours after school. On the same days, other teachers take students on field trips. For example, students worked on a unit on animals that included a trip to the local zoo.

Support for Implementation

Funding

Professional Development

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation grant pays for the majority of the faculty's professional development. The grant has funded training in a variety of programs, including the Algebra Project, student-based inquiry and problem solving methods, and the integrated language arts program. Funds also pay for travel to staff development seminars and conferences, after-school meetings, and planning time to review curriculum. For example, through the Algebra Project, some teachers attended a training conference in San Francisco to become better versed in the hands-on curriculum. Training topics included using manipulatives and relating algebra to real-world settings.

Evidence of Success

Western students have been selected to attend 22 of the 23 high schools that offer many special programs in the district, some with a competitive admissions process. For example, 41 students were accepted last year to a law, medicine, and computer magnet whose freshman class is only 300 students; 20 other middle schools in the district had students competing for those slots. Staff note that these statistics are evidence that students are looking for options that will help them go on to achieve career goals, rather than attending the closest high school for convenience.
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