In order to graduate high school, freshmen students must be successful in their English 9, Biology and Algebra 1 classes. However, the Sobrato Counseling Office has found that there are a large amount of students, who, in their freshmen year, are already in danger of not graduating due to low grades in these three courses. As they began to consider options to help these students along a path of success, they looked beyond traditional tutoring and calls home to parents and arrived at what they christened the “Academic Triathlon.”
Andrea Bird and Ted Thomas, the key counselors behind the Academic Triathlon, began with the idea of choosing a group of 20 freshmen students who had some combination of D’s and F’s in the above listed courses. These students would be split into two teams, with each team being guided by two academically successful senior students. These senior coaches would assist their “triathletes” with their homework, teach them lessons and motivate and support their team. At the end of May, the two teams would go head to head in a game show like competition to ascertain which team had learned the most.
I, along with Roger Kuo, Jessica Westall and Obi Mbonu, were all chosen as the senior students to act as the coaches for these teams. The Triathlon began in January with the selection of the students, and each team meets twice weekly. It has been close to three months now that we have been working with our respective teams, and certainly none of us would say that it has been an easy process. In fact, we have encountered many more difficulties than we had originally anticipated, and have found that it is quite taxing to attempt to reach that “something” in the students that is integral to their success.
Each of our teams had the opportunity to set their own rules, and choose their team name. The counselors created mini goals, that, if achieved, would result in awards for the team, such as a pizza party, or custom T-shirts. While none of the counselor’s “mini goals” have yet been met, we have observed improvement, albeit the magnitude of improvement is not as great as we would have liked. We have found that it is necessary to backtrack to basics such as multiplication tables and fractions to aid our teams in their Algebra 1 pursuits and that organization and motivation are difficult skills to instill in a person after years of disregard.
Now that April is here, we have added a guest speaker and competition preparation to our after school meeting agendas. Though the ultimate goal is to raise the grades of each member of our teams, it is expected that they all participate in the competition at the end of May, which will be open to the public. Questions are being written by Sobrato students, with the assistance of the coaches and counselors, and based on standards that freshmen are expected to have mastered in English, Biology and Algebra, along with topics that have been focused on during team meetings.
But, despite the obstacles we have encountered, there is not an acute unwillingness to participate on their parts. After all, they are there. They show up, and they have realized that something must be done. In the words of Mrs. Bird, they realized that though they are perfectly capable of attaining success, if they don’t take action now, they should “go home, look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m not graduating.’”
