When Wilbur Cross student Rachel Markey returns to school this fall, she’ll find a new “house” awaiting her, as the city’s largest public high school begins undergoing its own version of dramatic reform.
As part of a package of reforms planned for the fall, the school will be divided up into four new houses, or smaller learning communities.
Allan Appel Photo
Markey (at right in photo) and her fellow students won’t put their names in a sorting hat to discover what house they’ll join. But like the characters entering Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series, they’ll be assigned a group of students with whom they’ll form an identity over the years at Cross.
Principal Rose Coggins and her staff unveiled the plans to 100 students, teachers, and parents in the sun-lit foyer of the school at a meeting last Thursdy night.
Cross was not among the initial group of schools that were graded in the spring and will pilot specific reforms as part of the city’s school change campaign.
With the help of a state grant, Coggins and her staff are getting a head start on transforming their school in a different way.
The changes come at time when Cross parents and students have been up in arms about overcrowding at the high school, which served 1,385 students in the academic year that just finished.
Although Cross’s honors and Advanced Placement courses are well respected, schoolwide academic scores are low.
The “house structure” reflects an attempt to remedy this. Breaking up the school into four houses is similar to the approach Hillhouse High began doing years ago and is developing further in the fall. One difference is that the houses at Cross won’t have names or identities or themes as separate schools, at least for the first year, Coggins said. At Hillhouse, the houses reflect different educational tracks, like media studies or business. That may happen eventually at Cross, but not the first year.
Each Cross house will be in a different wing of the school’s second and third floors and have about 330 kids across grades 9 through 12. Core classes will be clustered in the house. For specialized classes like shop, science, gym, or technology, all students will go where the equipment is.
Instead of hanging out just with their peers, ninth graders will now share their house with upper classmen.
Coggins said she hopes a house’s older kids will serve as role models for the younger ones. “Research shows that large schools don’t work,” added the principal.
Coggins (on right in picture) was set to retire in June. However, when a search produced no successor, the longtime school leader agreed to stay on at least until August. She said she will mentor her successor in the new house model.
Each “house” of 330 kids will have approximately 30 staff members. They will be led by an administrator, a dean in charge of curriculum and discipline, two guidance counselors, and a lead teacher. Dean and lead teacher will be in the classroom three periods a day, and know the kids.
The single feature that caught parents’ attention most at last Thursday’s meeting was the “advisory.” In addition to instructing, each teacher in a house will take on ten to 15 students, whom he or she doesn’t teach, but advises.
Elite private schools run on a similar system. The hope is it will allow kids to become known and supported by adults other than guidance counselors. The latter are universally acknowledged to be overwhelmed at Cross.
Rachel Markey (in photo at the top of this story) said she likes the advisory idea. Of her relationship to advisors or guidance counselors over the years at Cross, she said, “They’re there when you need them, but no bond” is formed.
The idea is that more adults will know more kids emotionally as well as academically, and fewer will fall between the cracks.
Markey’s mom Janice is a teacher at Truman. She noted that most of the kids at Thursday’s Cross briefing were in the well-respected honors and A.P. track. The reconfiguration is “a good way to engage kids who are not performing,” she said.
For example, Markey said that of the 600 kids she began with as a freshman, only 300 are still at Cross.
The house model also pleased Christine Beagle (pictured), for a different reason. She identified herself as a parent who lobbied in 2003 for the first anti-bullying laws.
“The smaller areas will enable students and teachers to see more,” she said.
Funding for the reconfiguration efforts is coming through a state school reform grant that was written in April by a team led by Assistant Principal Michele Sherban-Kline (pictured with Coggins). The money will be paying for at least three professional development coaches to come in, and for some equipment.
The key thing is teacher “buy in,” said Coggins.
Half the teaching staff has been attending early morning meetings since graduation, she said. Planning will continue throughout the summer.
The schedule and identity of the “houses” will all be uniform for the first year. Valencia Goodridge, a mother of 11th and 12th graders, said she hopes that will change.
“I’d love to see specialized houses [in the future, like], health,” she said.
She added that a “house” developing in effect its own identity would provide “stronger alliances with Pfizer,” and other corporations.
“Our kids’ careers depend on internships,” she said.
Rachel Markey, who plans to study biology in college, didn’t buy into the “house” idea. When she returns as a senior, the new “house” structure will have less impact on her because many of her classes are one-of‑a kind A.P. courses, and she’ll take them in whatever classroom they’re offered, no matter the house.
But she wouldn’t want to sacrifice the great mixing of kids that she likes about Cross, she said. If the new houses become separate, “you don’t get to meet kids with other aspirations,” she said.
Advisory groups should begin in seventh grade whe kids start switching classes. This way one teacher could serve as the liaison between student, home, and school. Students and parents could form relationships with one teacher. This teacher could be there throughout the year to help students out. Some teachers see up to 140 kids a day. It is hard to build relationships with that many students and parents. Additionally, most parents don't want calls from
6 or more teachers when problems arise. Advisory teachers would be responsible for knowing their students and parents on a more personal level, having correct contact information on them, so that if and when problems or concerns arise they can be available for support.