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When teachers at Kentucky’s Fairdale High School were planning the start of their Essential School program, principal Marilyn Hohmann likes to recall, some of them spent a full week shadowing students through their daily schedules. By week’s end, they were overwhelmed – not by the demands of student life, but by its passive and anonymous nature. If their program could do only one thing, they decided, it must be to turn those qualities around, to energize the students into forging an active personal stake in their own education. Today, Fairdale schedules a daily half-hour Teacher Guided Assistance period for all students – an advisory group in which 17 mixed-grade students work individually and together on both personal and academic matters. A whopping 90 percent of students call it the best thing about their school.
Learn MoreWhen teachers at Kentucky’s Fairdale High School were planning the start of their Essential School program, principal Marilyn Hohmann likes to recall, some of them spent a full week shadowing students through their daily schedules. By week’s end, they were overwhelmed – not by the demands of student life, but by its passive and anonymous nature. If their program could do only one thing, they decided, it must be to turn those qualities around, to energize the students into forging an active personal stake in their own education. Today, Fairdale schedules a daily half-hour Teacher Guided Assistance period for all students – an advisory group in which 17 mixed-grade students work individually and together on both personal and academic matters. A whopping 90 percent of students call it the best thing about their school.
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