Learning To Learn Rogers High Is Helping Kids Stay In School By Showing Them How To Become Better Students

From his office window at Rogers High School, Maurice Paul can see the school’s front door.

Each year, he watches hundreds of kids walk out the front door and not return. Paul estimates an average of 50 or 60 freshmen - 10 percent or more of the class - drop out every year.

To stop that trend, Rogers has started a dramatic experiment aimed at getting students interested in school again.

One period a day this year, Rogers freshmen are being taught the basics of being students. Rather than assume freshmen will show up eager as pups, the school is teaching them how to learn.

“One - just one kid - and this will be worth it,” said Paul, the grey-bearded, steel-eyed vice principal for discipline at Rogers.

The GOLD (for Goals Orientation Leadership Decision) program is based on the idea that many students drop out because they feel like failures or don’t see the relevance in what they are learning.

The skills being taught are the most basic. At one point, students will be taught the best way to read a novel.

In a humid afternoon class last week, Chris Engelhardt practiced a new way of taking notes, a method in which a piece of paper is divided into two columns - “main idea” and “detail.”

“I used to just write it down like (I was writing) a letter,” said Engelhardt, his blond buzz cut hunched over a paper about John Rogers, the former Washington governor for whom the school is named. “This way is a lot faster.”

The same day, students were given thick three-ring binders organized by subject, week, day and hour. Teacher Edie Coleman reminded students that she will periodically check the binder to make sure students are caught up - a level of surveillance not usually found in high school.

Rogers faculty also know some students come to school more for clubs or sports than for class. The first week of school, football coach David Pomante and journalism teacher Clay Swisher took turns giving a pitch to the GOLD classes.

Self-esteem and emotional management skills are taught. For most of October, students will hear lessons in areas such as anger management, conflict resolution, empathy and refusal. They will be introduced to the school’s successful peer mediation program.

Because of a special state grant, counselors and teachers will have more time to talk one-on-one.

“In the past, when kids fell out of the tree, they may have hit a few branches on the way down,” said Paul. “What we’re doing now is building a safety net.”

Many of the teaching responsibilities in the new program were in the past left to counselors or parents - jobs that were more social worker than traditional teaching.

Coleman, the teacher who helped develop the freshman curriculum, said the program should work because it tries to help students who are prone to dropping out solve their own problems.

“I don’t see how it can’t be effective,” said Coleman, noting that in the past there has been just one counselor for the 500 students in the freshman class.

“Everyone talks about how ninth graders fall through the cracks. This is a real stop-gap. It’s an answer to ‘Help me.”’

If students are discouraged by their performance in school, they can become better at studying. If they are upset about an abusive home situation, they can learn how to deal with their own anger and will have counselors readily available.

The types of problems students have are not new. But in the past, teachers have often been too busy teaching Shakespeare to help students learn to blow off steam after a conflict.

Not now.

“We are turning into a social service agency and we had better get good at it,” said Sandra MacQuinn, a Rogers English teacher.

Rogers, like all other schools in the state, is in the midst of significant change, much of which is required. In 1992 the state Legislature passed what many say is the most comprehensive education restructuring law in the country.

The law is designed to make schools more relevant and informative to students. To do that, a state board is developing new guidelines for math, science and humanities lessons which emphasize career goals and skills.

After the first year of GOLD, students will pick one of five career paths with such real world titles as “business and marketing” and “industry and technology.”

As they progress on the track, they will see the jobs in the “real world” through internships arranged in the community, or in-class lectures given by people in those jobs.

Although much of the restructuring is mandated, individual schools has been given the freedom and funding to make their own changes.

Each school is required to have parental input, but the law doesn’t specify how much. Block grants are given to improve student learning in the best way for each area and student body.

Rogers administrators, teachers and parents decided last year to use their block grant to address the school’s most serious problem - the highest drop-out rate in the city.

The turnover is in part due to the high numbers of families that move in and out of the Hillyard neighborhood.

But school officials take much of the blame for the high drop-out rate. Paul says the school has sometimes failed students. That feeling is shared by principals and teachers, not just at Rogers.

“The needs of kids now are far more than 20 years ago,” said Mike Dunn, Shadle Park High School principal.

It will take at least four years to see if the GOLD program is a success. At each step, results will be recorded.

At the end of its second week, it showed early signs of success. Only six discipline cases had been reported, an all-time low. And no freshman has dropped out.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)