Freshman Success Academy Attend BARR Grant Workshop in Minneapolis

The four high schools in the United States that recieved the Building Assets Reducing Risks grant met in Minneapolis from Sunday April 3rd to Thursday April 7th to attend a workshop.  The schools are Bucksport High School, Hemet High School of California who have an enrollment of 2400, St. Louis Park High School of Minnesota who have an enrollment of 1400 and Sanford High School of Maine who have an enrollment of 1200.  Maryanne Mytar, Bob Cloutier, Bill Tracy, Josh Tripp and Dan Clifford represented BHS at the workshop along with teachers and administrators from the other four high schools.

Monday April 4th
The workshop was kicked off by a presentation by each school to see the progress that has been made since receiving the BARR grant.  BHS learned that we are ahead of most schools because Maryanne Mytar our site coordinator, has been instrumental in leading our effort into this grant.  Our freshman team of teachers have been chosen, our budget for the year is almost complete, and our freshman step-up night and eighth grade visits were very successful.
The highly respected Peter Benson who is the President of the Search Institute from where the BARR grant was established spoke to and met with each group about his 40 Assets model of successful teens.

Tuesday April 5th
All schools met at St. Louis Park High School just outside Minneapolis to observe their model of the highly successful freshman teaming program.  St. Louis Park High School is recognized as one of the most successful public high schools in all of Minnesota.  We spent the day observing classes, teacher meetings, therapist meetings and interviewing administration, students and teachers of St. Louis Park.  They have about 380 freshman and right now their failure rate for freshman is about 15% which is much better than it was the first quarter of the year.  St. Louis Park has had freshman teaming the last twelve years and now they are adding the teaming concept in grades 10, 11 and 12.  The BHS members learned that St. Louis Park although very successful has issues like any typical high school.  The freshman teaming concept will give BHS positive results just like it has for St. Louis Park.

Wednesday April 6th
All four high schools met at the Search Institute again and debriefed the last two days and worked with members of the Search Institute and St. Louis Park to review implementation plans and next steps.  BHS is in a great place and the Freshman Success Academy members have done a lot more work than the other schools.  The people BHS met with were very impressed and in some ways we have better data than other schools right now such as class failures, BHS freshman are at about 3-4% through three quarters.  The workshop was a great learning experience for everyone and BHS left feeling really good about our school and our Freshman Success Academy.  There will be more training on the 40 Assets and the BARR grant this spring and summer to get ready for the 2011-12 school year.