The implementation of some new practices at Winkler's Northlands Parkway Collegiate (NPC) two years ago, aimed to improve the transition to high school for incoming grade 8 students, is proving successful.
NPC Vice-Principal, Jeff Osinski says the new practices were meant to enhance the school's existing transition plan, with the goal of getting their students feeling a sense of belonging sooner into the new school year.
When the new school year kicks off each fall, NPC welcomes students entering high school from five feeder schools. With none of the five feeder schools in the vicinity of the collegiate, Osinski says most of the students don't know each other and don't interact. He says that makes it much more of a challenge to build the group into one big Grade 9 team.
Developing a program to help better integrate the students two years ago, Osinski says they tapped into their Grade nine students who had just gone through the process the year before to act as mentors.
"So what we did, is we developed a program to help integrate the students. We tapped into our Grade nine students who had just gone through the process the year before and we asked if they wanted to be mentors. We had 15 students step forward and decide that you know what, we'd like to help the Grade 8s. We know what they need, and what questions they might have."
Osinski noted as a mentor team they met numerous times to plan their direction and get everyone on the same page.
In a better effort to hit the mark with knowing what the students are wanting to see and learn on DAY 1 of high school and beyond, Osiniski says they approached the previous Grade 9 class to gather ideas from them.
“Previously when we planned these Grade 8 tours it was always done by staff, so we would plan the highlights. What we thought would be the highlights of the school. Well, some of those ideas aren't necessarily what students might think are the highlights. So, the Grade 9 mentors would tell us these are the things that we should go show them. This is how long we should spend in certain rooms. These are some of the questions that we want to ask them, and then hope to get a response from the grade eight students as we're walking around.
The Grade 9 mentor team took charge of the Grade 8 tours that take place each year in June, and also welcomed the Grade 9 students on their day of high school, showing them the ropes.
It's tradition for each new Grade 9 student at NPC to receive a gym bag with some NPC gear in it on the first day of school. "We give them all a T-shirt so that everyone can feel a little connection with the school right away. Osisnski says they now have the Mentor team handing out the bags, which is another great way for the students to feel more engaged with their peers at the school.
"And then about a month later, our mentors planned, what we call a gym riot or a gym blast, and it was an activity where we mixed all the new grade nines up into teams with people that they didn't know and they participated in different activities for about an hour. Game-type activities, so that they could start getting to know each other a little bit, and that was also a very highly successful venture that we did with our mentor team."
At the start of the project 2 years ago, Osinski says they put forth a number of goals as a way to measure whether they were on the right track. One of the goals was to see a 5 % increase in student retention in Grade 9, meaning students that stay enrolled in Grade 9 from the beginning of September to the end of June.
In previous years, the rate of NPC students that stayed enrolled in Grade 9 was 88%. Once they ran this project, the rate of retention increased to 95 %.
"The second goal that we looked at was we wanted to see how many students are participating in extracurricular activities. These are the things that make school fun or enjoyable for a lot of our students. So we wanted to see, can we get an increase in that? Well over the last eight years that the school was open, we had a 29% rate of Grade 9s participating in extracurriculars. After running this pilot program that we did, we went up to 49%, so we had an increase of 20%.
"So both of those goals were very successful and show that we were on the right track."
There is also a Teacher's component along with the school's transition practices. You can read the full details on that in the second part of this story coming out next week.