POSITIVELY CHILLICOTHE

Career center initiative gaining attention

Chris Balusik
Reporter

CHILLICOTHE – A teacher-driven approach at the Pickaway-Ross Career and Technology Center to reduce the distractions to student achievement is getting attention outside of the two counties the center serves.

Last week, staff involved with the school’s High Schools That Work initiative presented their work at the Ohio High Schools That Work Central and Southeast Region Best Practices Showcase in Athens, and the school has applied for the opportunity to also present at a national conference in Atlanta later this year.

The focus of the presentation by Dana Anderson, Kevin Krebs, Scott Snyder and Verdie Williams was “Making Time for Student Success.” Maximizing effective use of student time is particularly important for a career center, Pickaway-Ross Superintendent Dennis Franks said, because there is less of it to be had.

Career center students first ride their regular buses to their home school district and then must be transported to the career center in the morning. At the end of the day, they are then bused back to their home districts in time to catch district buses back to their homes.

“We start later than (home districts) do, and on the opposite side, we end sooner than they do,” Franks said. “What this initiative has done is it has allowed us to take some of the things we’re doing and combine them. (The staff) has done some really nice time study analysis of our day and working on trying to combine some things and get more time for the educational process by limiting the interruptions and moving some of the activities to common hours and common days and those sorts of things.”

The second component of the program involved creation of a learning lab designed to assist students by providing extra help with whatever academic needs they might have, ranging from passing credential tests to state achievement exams.

“High Schools That Work was really instrumental in how to staff the learning lab, what teachers should be there during different periods of time or their planning period,” Franks said. “Once again, just a really nice initiative that has proved very beneficial for our students.”

The final component is a Lab Lockout designed to motivate students who are falling behind in their classes by prohibiting them from their lab classwork until other areas are caught up. Instead of taking part in labs, students are sent to a resource room to tackle the work they still need to finish.

“Once a week, students who are slow to finish assignments are locked out of the lab and they’re sent to a resource room where they get some assistance and they work on their math skills and their reading skills and catching up on assignments,” Franks said. “It’s kind of a punitive example, but it tends to be working.”

High Schools That Work has been in place for seven or eight years at Pickaway-Ross, but Franks said that what’s impressive about the program is the teacher collaboration to continue adapting it to best meet student needs.

“These are all teachers, and they work together to come up with ideas to improve the efficiency of the operation,” he said. “From an old management technique, whenever you can have people make suggestions on how to improve what they’re doing, there’s a lot of buy-in into it. That’s why it’s a really good initiative.”

cbalusik@nncogannett.com

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Twitter: @chris_balusik