Welcome to Bowling Green High School
Home of the Bobcats
By Darin Powell
January 14, 2009
Welcome to the Bowling Green High School's Home Page!
During the 2009-2010 school year, the staff at Bowling Green High School began the five year journey of implementing the High Schools That Work (HSTW) high school improvement model. The HSTW model has identified a set of 10 Key Practices that provide direction and meaning to comprehensive school improvement and improvement in student learning and achievement:
1. High Expectations — Motivate more students to meet high expectations by integrating high expectations into classroom practices and giving students frequent feedback.
2. Program of Study — Require each student to complete an upgraded academic core and a concentration.
3. Academic Studies —Teach more students the essential concepts of the college-preparatory curriculum by encouraging them to apply academic content and skills to real-world problems and projects.
4. Career/Technical Studies — Provide more students access to intellectually challenging career/technical studies in high-demand fields that emphasize the higher-level mathematics, science, literacy and problem-solving skills needed in the workplace and in further education.
5. Work-Based Learning — Enable students and their parents to choose from programs that integrate challenging high school studies and work-based learning and are planned by educators, employers, and students.
6. Teachers Working Together — Provide teams of teachers from several disciplines the time and support to work together to help students succeed in challenging academic and career/technical studies.
7. Students Actively Engaged — Engage students in academic and career/technical classrooms in rigorous and challenging proficient-level assignments using research-based instructional strategies and technology.
8. Guidance — Involve students and their parents in a guidance and advisement system that develops positive relationships and ensures completion of an accelerated program of study with an academic or career/technical concentration.
9. Extra Help — Provide a structured system of extra help to assist students in completing accelerated programs of study with high-level academic and technical content.
10. Culture of Continuous Improvement — Use student assessment and program evaluation data continuously to improve school culture, organization, management, curriculum and instruction to advance student learning.
Over the next few months, we will give our community a brief synopsis of what we are currently doing at BGHS to implement some of these key practices. This month we will focus on the key practice of Extra Help.
Extra Help Interventions
CAT Time
A key piece to developing an extra help plan for our students at BGHS has been our CAT Time. This is a daily 38 minute period where students focus on getting extra tutoring from any teacher on their schedule. We also coordinate our Homework on Time (HOT) E-Mail Program during this time. One of the primary goals of CAT Time and HOT E-Mails is to assist students who are not being successful academically before they fail a class.
After and Before School Tutoring
Students who reach certain levels in the HOT Program may be mandated for after school or before school tutoring. This is used in addition to the tutoring they receive during CAT Time. This schedule is developed in collaboration with the student’s parents and classroom teacher’s. All students have the opportunity to receive extra tutoring from their teachers before and after school.
Credit Recovery
If a student fails a required core class first semester, he is now assigned to the credit recovery program. The goal of this program is to have every student at every grade level stay on pace for graduation. Our credit recovery program uses the A+ Learning System to develop an individualized plan to address the specific areas that the student did not understand in that course. Once a student completes that individualized plan, he is giving credit for passing the class he had originally failed.
Credit recovery opportunities are available at many different times during the day and school year. Students who failed a required class first semester were eligible for our three day credit recovery program that occurred over Christmas break. This program had 38 students participate in it and six students completed credit recovery in a required class they failed. Students who still need to complete credit recovery on a class they failed first semester may do so using the following opportunities:
1. After school on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from 3:15 PM – 4:45 PM. Students must arrive prior to 3:30 or the computer lab will be closed and the supervising teachers will leave.
2. On Saturdays from 9 AM – 12 Noon. This opportunity is available by appointment only and must be scheduled with Mr. Kurz or Mr. Powell.
3. During CAT Time if they are passing all current classes, have no outstanding HOT E-Mails, and have permission of their CAT Time teacher.
Students who have failed several required classes first semester and are severely credit deficient may be removed from an elective class and assigned one block of credit recovery during second semester with Mr. Barr in our alternative education room. Students who fail a required core class second semester are mandated to attend summer school until they complete credit recovery in the classes they have failed during the 2009-2010 school year.
We hope you enjoy your cyber-visit to our school. If you would like any further information about any area of our school, its programs, or the High Schools That Work initiative, please e-mail me at dpowell@bgschools.k12.mo.us or call me at (573) 324-5341. If you are in Bowling Green and would like to stop by the school, we would be excited to greet you and answer any questions.
Respectfully yours,
Darin Powell, Principal
Bowling Green High School
