SEELEY LAKE - A team of eight Seeley-Swan High School (SSHS) parents, students, and Missoula County Public Schools staff and administration attended the Challenge Success conference at the end of September at Stanford University. At the Missoula County Public School (MCPS) Board of Trustees’ October meeting, the team shared their experience, their mission statement for SSHS and an action plan that they will work to implement over the next year.
“Seeley-Swan High School is taking an exciting and innovating new direction in problem solving that involves all of its stakeholders,” said Principal Dr. Kathleen Pecora.
After the SSHS staff read the book “Overloaded and Underprepared” written by the co-founders of Challenge Success at Stanford University, SSHS applied to the Challenge Success program and was accepted. There are 21 states that are currently participating in the program and 150 schools, 65 percent high schools, 25 percent middle schools and 10 percent elementary schools.
Challenge Success partners with schools and families to provide students with the academic, social and emotional skills needed to succeed. The program is under the direction of the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, which is ranked number one in the country.
“The purpose of Challenge Success is to create a school program that values and fosters interpersonal and collaborative skills, adaptability and resilience and critical thinking and the creativity needed to solve complex problems,” said Pecora.
The team included parents Charity Townsend from Condon and Carrie Sokoloski of Seeley Lake, SSHS seniors Bradley Miller and Trinitey Bartlett, MCPS Instructional Coach Seena Demmons, SSHS teachers Katrina Stout and Mary Stone and Dr. Pecora. Dr. Pecora chose the students because of their outgoing personalities, respect with their peers and their leadership in the classroom.
“There were 150 Challenge Success schools and when our kids spoke people listened and they looked,” said Demmons. “That’s pretty amazing when you think that schools around the nation are looking at our two students.”
The Challenge Success conference Sept. 29-Oct. 1 included informational meetings, round table discussions and the team worked with the Stanford coach who will continue to work with them throughout the year.
Miller said they discussed stressors and root causes for those stressors. By the end of the conference they narrowed down the root causes and developed a mission statement for SSHS and decided how they would bring the information back to the school.
Bartlett shared the four main barriers to success that the team identified: small mindedness; geographic isolations; lack of diversity and bad home life.
“We definitely focused on the students themselves and helping them as they become adults and go into the real world,” said Bartlett. “Living in small town Seeley Lake we don’t know much about the big world, even Missoula.”
Bartlett said small mindedness comes from learning from their parents and the Internet. “This really limits what we think of the world,” said Bartlett. “We have problems not accepting people and there is stuff that shouldn’t be said [that is at SSHS including racist and sexist slurs].”
Geographic isolation was a barrier because SSHS attracts students from a 30-mile radius from Seeley Lake, north to Condon and south to Ovando. Students coming from outlying areas don’t know Seeley Lake or the students when they come to high school.
“We want to bring these schools together and integrate them more thoroughly,” said Bartlett.
Lack of diversity is a barrier because Bartlett said, “Students have to dilute themselves. They know who they are but they aren’t who they say they are at school. Our school selection of groups and cliques is so small that you have to make yourself fit the Seeley-Swan mold.”
The final barrier was the bad home life and poverty that touches many students’ lives. “We want to make sure that even though we cannot be able to help their home life, their financial situation, or their parents, we want to make sure they have a safe place to be at school,” said Bartlett.
Bartlett also shared seven things the team identified as ways to improve SSHS.
1. Teach how words fall on each other. What students say has an impact.
2. Teach students about the world outside of Seeley Lake.
3. Time management, social and academic stress reduction and relaxation.
4. Students shadow a teacher: Allows students to see what kinds of things a teacher deals with each day.
5. Encourage positive student and faculty relationships. Make sure every student has at least one adult they can talk to and confide in.
6. Advisory group focused on social/emotional learning and finding faculty advocates.
7. Educate parents and students on vision, how to reduce stress and improve wellbeing.
Sokoloski shared her perspective as a parent from the Challenge Success conference. She said that it was very interesting identifying how parents define success for their children.
“We need to help make sure our kids’ expectations are realistic and don’t confine them to one definition of what success is,” said Sokoloski. “Challenge Success sets up our children for success beyond the walls of any learning institution and helps them to recognize their own strengths and be successful in the real world and life.”
A coach from Stanford will work with the team and the school throughout the year to provide continuity. The program is being funded through Title 1 resources since it impacts all of the students.
“Challenge Success makes sense to me because it’s not a canned curriculum,” said Demmons. “It is an integrated approach. It acknowledges and asks for student voice. Our students led the way for us and our team. It gives parents the tools to raise their kids in a healthy motivated environment. We’ve got the student connection and the parent and family engage connection.”
Several of the trustees commended the group on their presentation and for pursuing the opportunity at Stanford University. They asked the group to come back and present at the spring MCPS board meeting at SSHS to give an update including those strategies that worked and those that didn’t. A few of the trustees also expressed their hope that what was learned here, would spread to other MCPS schools.
“I would like to commend the students and the team. The students are so articulate and I think that is really impressive,” said MCPS Superintendent Mark Thane. “What you are talking about are ways to impact the climate and culture of Seeley-Swan High School. Everything else is really secondary to that. Once you’ve addressed the issues that you’ve identified, all the other successes will follow.”
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