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Kiana boots academics with study halls and tutoring

January 27th 2:34 pm | Hannah Heimbuch Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

Kiana high school students earned some bragging rights last semester, with grades that reflect a strong upward swing in student achievement.

Each of Kiana's 30 9th- through 12th-graders is enrolled in seven classes; meaning 210 grades are issued each semester. Last term 199, or 95 percent of those grades were passing. This is a significant step up from the recent past. In the 2008-2009 school year, passing grades hovered around 67 percent, and the following year they fell to 61 percent. Students were failing about a third of the time, said principal Scott Warren, a level both troubling and challenging to the faculty.

But the slump certainly seems to be over.

Warren credits a school- and community-wide effort to boost academics with a number of different tools — many of them based on increased hours by a dedicated staff, he said.

"Our teachers and our teacher assistants, and also a tutor provided by our Kiana Traditional Council have all put in many, many hours doing study halls and tutoring," Warren said.

The council has employed a tutor in the schools for a number of years in order to support the academic success of village youth.

Other new programs include twice-monthly progress reports sent home for 5th- to 12th-graders and opportunities like Power Hour and Homework Club.

"Our athletic coaches emphasize it as well," Warren said. "Our teams have a weekly study time together."

Students can and are required to check their grade progress online, and extra study opportunities abound.

"There are opportunities every day of the week (for) students K to 12 to work after school with teachers," Warren said.

He noted that a long-term aspect of student success is transferring more of the control and motivation into the students' hands — a process that didn't go over so smoothly at first.

"When we started the after-school thing, particularly secondary students weren't always enthusiastic about staying," he said. "But they're monitoring their grades themselves and being more proactive about trying to keep up."

It helps when they can see where their hard work is taking them, too.

"We also try to tie academic habits to future work place success for them," Warren said. "We're trying to make that connection explicit. We focus a lot on work habits, on college training or jobs. We want our students to be prepared for future successes both academically and in the work place."

All in all, Warren said, he and his staff have employed the usual tools of quality education, with a commitment to step it up a notch.

"There are lots of areas in which we need to grow, including student assessment, but it's a great start," he said.

 

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