Robert is a nice awkward kid who refused to do his research paper. Weeks went by and despite his proven ability to do the work, he refused to complete the paper. He and I met weekly for three weeks to talk about strategies. I wanted to understand the context of the kid. He listened, but still did nothing.

The following list came out of a discussion during our weekly staff meeting about how to impact a student in less than five minutes.

This is the list that we came up with.

So what do parents want when they come to conferences? As I sat at conferences last night and watched parents navigate the maze, I had time to consider and observe.

They want a clean, well-lighted environment that is safe and easy to navigate. Part of that starts with being greeted as soon as they come into the building. The plan for the evening should be immediately evident.

I doubt any student leaders get up in the morning and say “I’m smart and scary!” but that’s what I told the tutors at our training last week.

Last year as I was being introduced to a group of eighth graders at a middle school, the 8th grade teacher paid Connections a wonderful compliment. She said, “In all the years that I’ve had my eighth graders come back and talk to me about high school, I’ve never had one say they didn’t enjoy Connections.

Connections is ten days long. We start at 8:00 and end at 3:15. In ten days students go from concerned eighth graders to more knowledgeable freshmen who can better manage themselves and lead others through the first month of high school. They are still nervous, but knowledge and experience are good ballast for the open waters of high school.

This is the most intense and the most difficult event of the team challenges. We wanted to do two things: 1.) We wanted to amp up the difficulty and really put pressure on students to deal with each other. 2.) We wanted students to have a common experience.

We created this to help establish a team type atmosphere amongst our groups.  It is done on 2 different days in our afternoon sessions. One day fairly early on in the session (Day 3 or so).  The second day around day 6 or 7.  This helps set the tone for our Team Competition for the session.

I want to declare to teachers the importance of homework:

Homework is the currency of learning. Just like other currencies, the value is not in the paper but in what it means, what it represents. In this case it represents learning.

Freshmen can benefit from so many pieces of information during their first month of high school. Getting a handle on lunch, the location of rooms, the nuances of schedules that are sometimes altered, the homework load, Homecoming, joining clubs, and digesting the details of high school. The list is a mountain of small details that will be mastered by most in the coming weeks.

We did a training yesterday for our Peer Tutors working in our online classrooms. This a pilot program for our Apex platform. Many students who fail classes and are moved to the Apex learning platform are in need of constant attention.