That is a question asked across the nation. One answer is
“making bigger schools into smaller schools” to help make
connections person-to-person, said Pine Creek High School
Transitioning Principal Steve Moran, who leaves at the end of this
school year.
By By: Dan Barker
By Dan Barker
How do high school teachers, administrators and counselors
engage teens?
That is a question asked across the nation. One answer is
“making bigger schools into smaller schools” to help make
connections person-to-person, said Pine Creek High School
Transitioning Principal Steve Moran, who leaves at the end of this
school year.
Pine Creek decided to create its daily “seminar” class, where
students hook up with a specific staff person for the entire four
years of their high school career, seeing that person every morning
and making plans.
“Every kid in the building has an opportunity to connect with an
adult,” said Principal Todd Morse.
It is a comfortable, natural setting for character education. It
is not just an add-on, where students have to stop English or
history class to go through the character trait of the month, he
said.
“It’s a safe place for kids to talk openly with an adult who
cares,” Morse said.
Moran has seven seniors who have gone through all four years
with him, along with freshmen, sophomores and juniors.
They are assigned randomly, but before long, the different level
students get to know each other, Moran said.
“It brings kids together. They get to be friends” outside of
their normal circle, he said.
That was obvious when the Tribune visited Oct. 26. Teens greeted
one another, lightly bantering or asking about each others’
lives.
However, this is also about helping students plan for the
future. Over the four years, each staff member gets to know the
kids, helping them to decide where they want to head, Moran
said.
Part of this is a student-led conference each year, where the
student talks with parents about how classes have gone, grades and
ambitions, with the help of the staff member, he said.
Students also use a software program which helps give direction.
It looks at professions that include the kids’ interests and
information about schools which provide instruction in those areas,
he said.
During seminar, students get lessons on the character traits the
district has made a priority:
* Citizenship, meaning serving the community, being a team
player, selfless and charitable.
* Compassion, being empathetic, patient, caring, kind and
thoughtful.
* Excellence, doing one’s personal best in academic and
co-curricular endeavors, in personal relationships and in personal
behavior.
* Respect individual differences, not mistreating others and
being tolerant, fair, considerate, courteous and polite.
* Hope, meaning belief in oneself, promoting one’s own learning,
not becoming discouraged and being optimistic.
* Courage, making positive choices, not being swayed by peer
pressure, taking responsibility, holding others accountable,
confronting inner fears and struggles and being a positive role
model.
* Honesty, telling the truth, not cheating or misleading, not
withholding important information, and being straightforward,
trustworthy and sincere.
* Responsibility, following through on commitments, being
involved and reliable and being supportive of each other.
* Integrity, standing up for values, being honorable and
resisting pressures to do wrong.
* Perseverance, being steadfast, self-disciplined, committing to
keep going in difficult circumstances and be determined to learn
from situations and failures.
Those lessons come from members of the Life 101 class sponsored
by history teacher Heidi Rickard. It meets every Thursday and
students attend a four-day summer camp focused on instilling
positive attitudes.
Senior Ryan Campbell has been with the group since its beginning
two and a half years ago. The camp helps teens identify life’s
biggest troubles and issues, understand relationships and
understand why they act the way they do, he said.
The Life 101 group comes together as a support group and takes
the ideas to others in the school, Campbell said.
He started because he had questions about how to focus on the
positive, instead of the negative. He found tools to make that
happen, and now shares them, he said.
Life 101 members type up lessons on the character traits and
gather materials for individual seminars to use, Rickard
said.
Seminars do act as support groups to some extent, Moran said.
They help each other deal with issues, and can make a huge
difference in each others’ lives, as do the staff. Moran has even
done individual tutoring.
Each seminar is also expected to do humanitarian
projects.
Morse’s group has been involved in a walk for juvenile diabetes
the past two years, collecting coats for underprivileged teens,
picking up trash and setting up a petting zoo for the school’s
Founder’s Day.
Moran’s kids once sent semi-truck loads of goods to the Pine
Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, painted bathrooms in the
school and collected 400 coats for a soup kitchen.
There are school-wide projects organized through the seminars,
such as Buckets of Love, collecting toiletries and needed items,
for victims of Hurricane Katrina. With 90 seminars at Pine Creek,
Moran was told the annual Angel Tree – where students adopt a child
by giving a Christmas present – provides more charitable donations
than any similar tree program in the county.
The annual red wagon float parade during homecoming is a way for
the school to connect as a whole. Each seminar creates a wagon
float, and members can say they are a part. Perhaps that is why
1,100 kids showed up at the homecoming dance, Morse said.
“Everyone had at least a small connection to homecoming,” he
said.
This may seem like too much time is taken out of academics, but
the seminars also take care of housekeeping chores like
preregistration, surveys and Colorado Student Assessment Program
preparation. The school also has assemblies during that time, he
said.
“Teachers like it because (those things) don’t interrupt class
time,” Moran said.
Many schools have to do character education or CSAP prep in
class. Now, two high schools in the district and others outside the
district are picking up the model to try to get that connection, he
said.
“You have to understand how vast the impact is,” Moran
said.