New Foxfire electives give students place to belong

ZANESVILLE - Every day at Foxfire High School, senior Ethan Maxwell rolls in for his first class of the day — not math or English or science or history, but archery, with real bows, set up in the gymnasium.

Here, archery comes with real credit and real pass/fail grades. Maxwell will receive one-fourth of a credit upon passing.

"This is like my favorite class in the morning," he said.

For 40 minutes, Maxwell practices shooting targets while down the hall, his classmates plan and build a mobile book cart in their industrial arts class. Nearby is the drama club and firefighter/EMT training. There is screen printing and a school store, weightlifting and eight more electives students can take that the school has never had before.

In a single year, Foxfire High School went from offering zero electives to more than a dozen. Every student takes one, and as a result of the new program, many are excited, for the first time, about coming to school.

"We're hoping it changes (their) outlook," Principal Jason Lee said. "Kids don't want to miss their classes."

How it started

The idea, according to Lee, is first to get the students to come to school, on time. That's why the electives are the first class of the day. And since the program started in the fall, attendance has gone up — from 77 percent last year to 82 percent this year — and tardiness has gone down.

There is no data that proves definitively that attendance is up (5 percent from last year) directly because of the elective program, but Lee said the numbers indicate that, for some reason, more students want to be at school. And this is a school with chronic truancy.

This is also a school with a significant student population at risk of dropping out. There are students with behavior and social problems. Some have to work full-time outside of school, and some have children to care for. Some had bad experiences, with bullying and other issues, at schools before they came to Foxfire. Often, the school is billed as a "last resort" for students.

"I wasn't a very good kid at Maysville," Maxwell said.

Maxwell started at Foxfire last year, when electives weren't offered, and was one of many students who called it boring. Now, though, with archery, he can come to school and immediately focus on something he enjoys.

"It puts me in a good mood," he said. "It gives me the (confidence) to think I might be able to compete at other schools."

Program goals

Archery, while officially an elective, is a club right now, and Lee hopes to eventually have an archery team that competes with other local districts. Screen printing students design logos for T-shirts that are sold in the school store. The art students showed their work in a gallery during the First Friday Art Walk this month.

Other electives, such as industrial arts and EMT training, are designed to give students practical skills they can use to get a job. Even students who run the school store learn how to budget a business and complete transactions.

Because the reality at Foxfire, Lee said, is that a majority of students will go straight into the workforce or military after graduation. Vocational schools are tough to get into, because of their limited open slots, and Lee wanted to help the students prepare for life after school as much as possible.

"That's the goal of the electives, to have them come out with something they can put on their resume," he said.

But a far more short-term goal is to simply give the students something to belong to.

"The kids have never really been part of a team before," said Ginny Strock, the drama club instructor. "They're responding beautifully to that (responsibility)."

One drama student, senior Elizabeth Sorenson, had to step up to a major role in a recent performance after another student could not make it to the show. She was nervous.

"The play was the next day," she said.

But she knew someone had to do it, so she did, because she wanted the show to be good.

"Before I came (to Foxfire), I never wanted to come to school," Sorenson said. "After drama started, I have a reason to come to school."

Before she was the drama club instructor, Strock was the senior adviser, a job she still performs. She volunteered to run the drama club because of her background in theater. To get the electives off the ground, many teachers have volunteered to run the classes and clubs based on their own experience, talent or interest areas. Some teachers even provide the needed equipment, such as art notebooks or industrial arts materials.

Without them, Lee said, it would be tough for Foxfire to have the electives.

Some electives, including archery and screen printing, were paid for by a grant. Maysville Local School District helped Foxfire start its archery program, as well. The EMT training is a service trade; Foxfire offers its labs to training firefighters, and, as a result, the school's students can take the training for free.

The school has some funds set aside, but the staff has to get creative, Lee said, in bringing these opportunities to students.

Program effects and importance

Senior Thomas Gess is one of Foxfire's few students who are dual enrolled at Zane State College. Gess has attended Foxfire since sixth grade and while he's taking history classes at Zane State, he spends much of his time at Foxfire in the screen printing lab, designing logos for school. Eventually he started working on logos for every elective, to put on T-shirts.

The computer program, he said, "is pretty simple once you get used to it." And even though his plans are to become an archaeologist or historian, the electives have given him the opportunity to gain skills he can fall back on, if he needs to, or if he changes his mind.

"It's actually been pretty fun," he said.

Gess said he was bullied at the three elementary schools he attended before Foxfire, and this is the first place he found his niche, and felt supported. A teacher encouraged him to join a summer work program to make the T-shirts. Seeing the shirts with his work on them gives him something to be proud of, Gess said.

As an alternative school, Foxfire has to follow the same state requirements as other school districts, Lee said, though its primary function is to graduate students.

"It would be easy for us to move them on and get them credits and graduate," he said. "We don't have to (offer electives)."

But students have a stronger connection with their school now, and Lee believes giving them these chances is not only the right thing to do but also could be the best thing to do. After this year, he said the staff will evaluate what worked and what didn't, but so far it seems the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

"It goes back to our vision," he said, "of why we're here in the first place."

ksnyder2@zanesvilletimesrecorder.com

740-450-6752

Twitter: @KL_Snyder

Firefox High School elective list:

Archery Club

Choir

Compass Class

Drama/Theatre

Firefighter/EMT Training

Fishing Club

Industrial Arts

Introduction to Psychology

Intramurals

School Store

Screen Printing

Technology

Visual Art

Weightlifting

Yearbook/Newspaper