South Middle School Assistant Principal Jessica Kennedy (left) tries out a saw with Shop Instructor Dan Sheehan in the school’s first woodshop in 10 years. (Photo by Peter Francis)
WESTFIELD – For Dennis Duquette, principal of South Middle School, every day there is something new and exciting going on at work worth being proud of.
With a student body composed of 620 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders, many of whom reside in or near downtown Westfield, South Middle faces many challenges shared by urban schools throughout the Commonwealth.
“We have a higher free and reduced lunch population, we have a higher population of students who speak English as a second language, we have a behavior program… But our kids can learn just as well as anybody else,” said Duquette Friday afternoon.
Duquette stood out like a beacon in the school’s main hallway as students clad in blue t-shirts, with the word “South” placed prominently on their chests, milled into their classrooms.
“We started it last year just with the words on the back,” said Duquette, turning around to showcase the words ‘kindness, respect, responsibility, courage and honesty’ emblazoned on the back of the blue t-shirt. “We’re trying to ingrain pride in the students and the teachers to build identity here.”
Duquette stated that everyone employed by or attending the school had received their own blue South t-shirt and that the entire building was wearing them Friday.
“Students got their shirts yesterday during an assembly, but the teachers got theirs last Friday for professional development and wanted them to wear theirs for the first day of school,” he said. “The kids went nuts asking ‘where’d you get those? How do we get one?’”
Duquette added that, by building a level of pride and confidence in the students, the school will be able to implement changes and continue making progress toward improving their academic standing with the state.
“We’re in the 12th percentile in the state. We’re a level three school district and a level three school,” said Duquette referencing evaluations made by the state’s Department of Education.
“We’ve changed and redesigned the schedule tremendously this year. We got an outside consultant and asked ‘what has worked?’” he said. “By changing the schedule this year, we’ve increased the amount of time the kids are going to be in math, language arts, science, social studies and allied arts, so they’re getting more time.”
Duquette said that the school has implemented a “teach, re-teach and enrich”, or “TRE”, block during it’s daily lunch period.
“For 90 minutes every lunch block, they spend 25 minutes eating lunch, and another 60 to 65 minutes in which we do interventions, remediation or acceleration,” he explained. “On the next day, we do enrichment, when we offer the kids a variety of coursework, from right flight, inventions, poetry, building things in wood shop.”
“We have the Math 180 and Read 180 intervention programs for support,” said South Assistant Principal Jessica Kennedy, who added that the students in each grade are working together to decide on a name with which to go by this year.
“Each grade had two teams, which have historically just been numbers – 61,62, 71, 72 and 81,82 – and during this TRE period they’re actually naming their teams,” she said. “Kids are actually debating about names and giving powerpoints about why we should be ‘Team Phoenix’ or ‘Team Eagle.’”
Woodshop has also been an instant hit among the student body, who have flocked to the nascent program, according to instructor Dan Sheehan.
“We have lots of kids adding this class, because they heard it was good or their parents wanted them to do it. We haven’t had any drop yet,” he said.
What was a storage room for the past 10 years toward the rear of the school is now a sunny room full of saws, drills and several tables with chairs for students to learn their way around wood.
“I think it’s really important for the community. We’re a hotbed for aerospace manufacturing and I’ll bet the people who built the space shuttle started in middle school woodshop,” said Sheehan. “It’s foundational skills that you learn here – quality control, how to use your hands, how to work safely – and I think the economy is going to need those.”
The addition of the TRE block, woodshop and other tweaks to the school day, have South students very excited, but these changes have been a long time coming.
“Last January we started work on a new schedule, because we knew we and to make some changes,” Duquette said. “We’ve gone from having seven 47 minute periods the last 10 years to 85 minute periods for math and language arts and 50 minute periods for science and social studies for the sixth graders. In seventh and eighth grade, they’ve jumped to 75 minutes for all classes.”
“(The time) is up substantially, but something has to go. If we’re going to give them the time learning and give the teachers a chance to really let the kids get into it – small group discussion, asking questions,” Duquette added. “The fever that the teachers are feeling about it, the kids are going to benefit from this. No kid is going to slip through the cracks.”
So far, student reaction has been positive to the changes.
“You get to see your friends more often in classes, also you get band or gym or one of your favorite subjects for a lot longer (class periods),” said eighth-grader Diana Diannastuzhuk of the schedule changes.
“The longer you have in class, the more you learn, and you can ask a question and not get skipped over,” said Diannastuzhuk’s classmate Abigail Laveck.
Students in the lower grades are also pleased with the schedule changes.
“I like the changes. They help us learn and get a better academic education,” said sventh-grader Chris Gage. “All of the stuff (the administration) has done, they’re thinking of us.”
“I think it’s better that the classes are longer so we get practically everything we need to get done,” said Gage’s classmate Deja Barbour.
Duquette said teachers will be better able to monitor and track student performance, and that the remedial time granted during student’s lunch periods will make a huge difference.
“After two weeks, we find out right away if kids have slipped and then at the four-week mark,” he said. “We’re not waiting for a whole trimester or half the year to get over with before we find out (kids are slipping). That’s how we’re going to get every kid successful.”
It is the hope of South Middle School’s administration that it will be able to raise the school’s scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Systems (MCAS) test in short period of time.
“I think our MCAS scores are going to jump dramatically just in the first year,” said Duquette. “They may jump each year in smaller amounts, but we’re going to bring up an awful lot of kids all at one time.”
