Program designed to help struggling freshmen

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NAUGATUCK — About 25 percent of Naugatuck High School freshmen failed at least one course during the first semester this school year, and officials are hoping a new program will reduce that figure moving forward.

The Board of Education last week approved a freshman seminar program for the 2018-19 school year. The program is designed to help incoming freshman who the district determine to be at risk of failing one or more classes.

“We designed this course to help these struggling students to recognize their passion, recognize an interest and see some success in high school early on,” Naugatuck High School Associate Principal John Harris said.

Harris said 77 freshmen, about a quarter of the class, failed at least one class during the first semester. According to Harris, the failure rate among freshmen has been an ongoing problem for years.

Curriculum Director Caroline Messenger said that students who fail in their freshman year are more likely to feel disconnected the rest of their time at the high school.

“What we are finding in research is that when kids aren’t connected to anything, and they aren’t passionate, and they can’t see themselves relevantly in what they are doing, then they are not interested,” Messenger said.

The pilot program will be broken into two classes with 15 students in each, Harris said.

The class, which will last one semester, is “designed to engage students in questioning their identity, questioning what their goals might be beyond high school, and to start getting them to think about what they need to accomplish in high school to make that happen and the skills they will need to be successful,” Harris said.

The class will culminate in a project that focuses on a problem, personal goal or personal project that interests the student, Harris said.

Harris said the program, at least in the pilot phase, won’t be open to all students. Rather, high school officials will work with City Hill Middle School to identify students that could benefit from the program.

The students selected would be those who are on the brink of failing and would benefit from intervention.

“We are designing it to try to treat the cause of these failures rather than the symptoms. So when we talk about the symptoms, we are talking about things like missing or incomplete work, failure to attend classes, and things like that. When we really drill down and talk with the students and teachers, we are finding one of the big causes of these failures is students have real difficulty recognizing their passions, interests and goals for the future,” Harris said.

Messenger said the district has had 101 students drop out over the last four years.

“We have little to no opportunity to bring them back. That is 101 people in our society that have not had the benefit of an education. We don’t want that to happen. We want to intervene in freshman year, which we know is a critical year,” Messenger said.

The program will be taught by certified teachers already on staff, Harris said. Once the program has ended the students will have a study hall with the same teacher the next semester in order to reinforce the bond between the teacher and those students, Harris said.

Harris said the students will be monitored through the rest of their freshman year and their sophomore year.

“We hope to come back to you with some solid data on how those students performed in their freshman and sophomore years. We hope this program is effective. If the data shows that it is not effective, we will need to revisit our curriculum or the way we designed the program,” Harris said.

If the program proves to be effective the number of classes would be expanded to include all students deemed at risk, Messenger said.

“We want what is best for kids,” Messenger said.