WCPSS freshman camps welcome Class of 2009
August 11, 2005 - Groups of freshmen dashed around Enloe High today taking part in the Amazing Enloe Race scavenger hunt, a fun way to learn the campus and part of Enloe High's Flight School for approximately 700 new ninth-grade students. Assigned to teams, Enloe freshman discuss important sites on campus as they prepare for the Amazing Enloe Race. |
Enloe's Flight School is one of 15 WCPSS high school freshman camps this year. The camps are different from traditional freshman orientation and are part of the WCPSS effort to personalize high school for more than 10,000 ninth-graders.
Enloe registered freshmen and their parents to attend Flight School on one of four days and brought in a team of teachers, parent volunteers and upper classmen to provide fun and interesting activities that communicate the essential information freshmen and their families need to be successful.
Parents and students were welcomed with a fashion show where student models and a Powerpoint presentation were used to demonstrated the do's and don'ts of the school system dress code. Enloe teachers talked with parents about helping students make the transition from eighth grade to high school. Then in smaller groups, parents were able to talk with administrators, upper classmen, parent volunteers and teachers.
Freshmen learned the layout of their new campus, received advice from older students, finalized their schedules and took part in team building exercises. In one exercise, a team of 12 students was given short tubes and a marble. They worked together, racing from the start of the line to the line's end to build a trail for their marble. By the end of the day, the students earned a tee-shirt recognizing their participation in Flight School and focusing them on graduation as the class of 2009.
Teresa Pierrie, administrator for WCPSS's Small Learning Communities federal grant, helped schools organize the freshman camps. Pierrie says the camps provided opportunities to help students better adapt to high school Each school has created its own fun way to help students feel more comfortable about their transition.
 In a team building exercise, students create a moving marble run. |
WCPSS high school principals are focusing their attention on personalization, an initiative that followed WCPSS principals' work at the Summer 2004 Harvard University's summer institute, Redesigning American High Schools.
Personalization is a strategy recommended in the National Association of Secondary School Principal's 2004 publication, Breaking Ranks II: Strategies for Leading High School Reform. It addresses the need for large, comprehensive high schools to meet individual student needs for academic and social development. The results of a personalized high school experience include high achievement in a rigorous curriculum for all students and a sense of belonging to the academic community.
WCPSS high schools have created ninth-grade centers, freshman transition activities, career academies, purposeful scheduling, and advisory programs. Each of these strategies links students to at an adult in a relationship intended to insure their success throughout the high school experience. An additional benefit is that students are linked to a small group of students within the school, supporting their need for voice, connectedness and recognition within the school.
Efforts to strengthen high schools seek to provide relationships, rigor and relevance. This means setting high academic standards and providing rigorous, meaningful instruction and support so that all students can meet them. This structure makes it possible to give students individual attention. The teachers take an interest in students' lives, drawing on their real-world experiences and current understandings to build new knowledge. Teachers also show students the connections between success in school and long-term career plans.
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