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| Mark Mauro |
Mark Marrow, Principal J.O. Combs Middle School
Principal Mark Marrow of J.O Combs Middle School spoke to ASBA conference attendees about the Cougar Skills for Success Mentoring Program (C.S.S.) that has proven to be a key to success at their middle school. The program is a 30-minute block of time built into the school schedule to provide opportunities for students to be mentored one-on-one, receive tutoring, improve reading comprehension, learn note-taking techniques and examine their organizational skills. The overall goal of this program is to teach students how to learn and to keep them accountable for their own achievement.
Mr. Marrow said, “As with any program you start with your mission statement.” His school’s mission statement is “To create motivated life-long learners and socially responsible individuals.” To accomplish this, the students are required to rank themselves in eight areas of academic achievement. Mr. Marrow said, “Students were far more critical of themselves than if teachers had ranked them.”
The areas of academic achievement became a common language to use when communicating about students’ achievements and challenges. The language was the eight areas of academic achievement: content knowledge; brings the needed materials for class; accurately takes notes using the Cornell note taking system; asking questions; completing the homework; attending tutoring; school attendance; and work ethic. Mr. Marrow said, “Now, if we have a conversation with teachers about a student we go back to the same eight areas. Instead of talking about the student’s achievements and challenges in an abstract, we have context of those eight areas to measure their progress.”
Based on their personal rankings in the areas of academic achievement, the students choose one area to work on improvement and set a goal and develop a plan to accomplish that goal. This ranking and goal setting is done on the goal setting sheet developed at the school. Mr. Marrow said, “Too often when a parent comes in they are frustrated, the first reaction is to blame the educator. This sheet helps to shape those conversations.”
He added, “The student only picks one area to develop a goal and plan for, but they will keep working to improve in other ways as well.” The student council helped to word the student pledge that students sign to affirm their commitment to improving their school success habits.
The key piece to the success of the program was the mentoring component. Mentors sit with the kids and look at Jupiter grades system, check on their homework and attendance. They help them to feel comfortable answering questions and check on their comprehension of content being taught in classes. If students need additional help outside of their C.S.S. time, they are offered tutoring before- and after-school as well.
The Jupiter Grades system plays a key role in keeping parents informed of their student’s progress. In the system, 90 percent is based on assessment, and 10 percent is based on homework. This decision was made because there was disconnect between what had been taught and what had been learned. Mr. Marrow said, “Students get too much help with homework and may do well on it, but then do poorly on the corresponding assessments.”
The learning process they focus on is: record, retain, recall. The record phase is the initial imprint; they use teachable moments and Cornell note-taking techniques. Second is the retain phase. This is practice and homework. Mr. Marrow said, “50 percent of students will not do the homework no matter what. So we had to substitute it with in-school studying.”
Retained information is the overall goal for teaching. Mr. Marrow said, “retain is being able to know the information on a snap, just like they know with confidence that two plus two equals four.”
The AIMS results in 2013 showed significant improvements throughout the school, particularly in the areas of reading and math. Mr. Marrow said, “Students want to learn, they want to be successful. We developed specific areas where we can help them to improve their learning skills and gain confidence with this program.”
ASPRA Reporter Sarah Pacheco, Sierra Vista Unified
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