Schools

High School Welcomes 9th-Graders, Launches New Freshman Academy

The Fort Lee school district's new program for incoming freshman officially kicked off Friday with orientation

Fort Lee High School teachers, administrators, guidance counselors, PTA members and parent volunteers welcomed the school’s incoming freshmen class Friday for orientation, or what high school principal Priscilla Church called “convocation.” The 250 students, who will officially make the transition from middle to high school Tuesday, are Fort Lee High School’s first to be part of the school district’s new Freshman Academy.

Church, whose idea it was—along with a committee formed last year—to start the academy in order to create a more supportive and meaningful learning experience and ease ninth-graders through the transition to high school and beyond, described the Freshman Academy as a “school-within-a-school.”

“We set it up this year because we thought there was a need,” Church said. “All the research tells us that the first year is the predictor of their four years in high school. We want to give them a lot of support so that hopefully they’ll have a solid year. We’re able to academically keep them on solid footing. We can have them in a group so that they start to bond and so, as they move through their school years, they’ll really be a great class with a lot of school spirit.”

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On Friday, the freshmen received their ID tags, had lunch in the cafeteria, were introduced to their core group of teachers, shown the wing of the school where they’ll be spending most of their in-school time this year and were even assigned lockers, Church said, “so they can spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to do the lock for the first time.”

“The biggest thing is, they’re going to meet us,” Church said. “They’re going to meet their teachers at lunch. So when they come in, they’re going to come in like all the other students, except they’re going to be used to us. I think it’s going to be great; it’s very exciting.”

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The freshmen also got to meet with their “Fort Leaders”—upperclassmen with whom they were matched to make the transition process that much smoother, but whom many of them had already met when they were bussed to the high school from the middle school last spring for a “shadowing day.”

“They sat in our classrooms; they had lunch in the cafeteria so that when they came here today and Tuesday, this really would not be a strange place for them,” Church said.

Standing on the front steps of Fort Lee High School, scanning the crowd gathered to collect their ID cards was high school senior and Fort Leader Tyler Sanders.

“Basically we have to take the new freshmen that are coming into the school and show them around and give them a good experience of Fort Lee High School so that they don’t feel like they’re lost when they come in,” Sanders explained of his responsibilities.

Asked if he thought such a program would have been beneficial to him when he was a freshman, Sanders said, “Big time.”

“When I came here, I didn’t feel really welcomed,” he said. “You just came in the school and you got thrown in. You didn’t get shown where your classes are so it’s kind of hard freshman year.”

In fact, Sanders said, finding where those classes were was probably the hardest thing he faced in his initial days as a freshman.

“I was late to every class the first couple days,” he said.

But the Freshman Academy goes beyond orientation day or the first couple days of school.

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Steven Engravalle, who gave all the credit to Church for getting the academy off the ground, said in a previous interview, “It’s going to help our ninth-graders become inducted into the high school process.”

“We saw that there was a really big rate of failure from eighth grade to ninth grade,” Engravalle said. “It was because the kids were kind of left to flounder. [Church] identified that as a weakness in the school. She examined all the failures and found that a large percentage of freshmen failed at least one course in the first half of the year. Clearly that’s our problem. We’re doing something wrong. So she really is trying to provide a more supportive environment to those ninth-graders coming in.”

As part of her research, Church took a survey, asking kids, among other things, whether they felt connected to an adult in the school. As it turned out, a surprisingly large number said they did not.

“You have kids that are lost if you’re getting 30 percent of your kids saying, ‘I’m not connected,’” Engravalle said. “I don’t care if it’s one percent. You’ve got to be connected to somebody. It doesn’t matter if it’s your after-school dance coach or a custodian.”

The Freshman Academy aims to ease and support the transition from eighth to ninth grade; build relationships through “smaller learning communities;” enhance the core curriculum to promote engagement; decrease failures and attendance and disciplinary problems; and inspire increased extracurricular and community involvement, according to the school district.

It does so in part by teaming core Math, Science, Social Studies and English teachers with the freshmen and homeroom teachers with a specific group of students—all housed in a dedicated area of the high school. During their 15-minute homeroom period, students do everything from learn about school news and develop and regularly assess progress toward long- and short-term academic goals, to recognize birthdays and accomplishments and discuss college and career plans.

There’s also a “family advocacy” component of the academy in which someone works with families of students who may not be making the transition so smoothly and goes out of his or her way to check in and make sure everything’s okay and that “kids don’t get lost in the shuffle,” as Engravalle put it.

“The parents reach out to the families if a student is absent for multiple days,” Church said by way of example. “If we’re worried, we want to know if everything’s alright.”

PTA and Freshman Academy committee member Julie Liapes, whose oldest son graduated from Fort Lee High School in June, is also the mother of a freshman this year—her younger son. She said she thinks the academy “is going to be great for the kids” and that “it’s going to make a big difference.”

“Priscilla Church is just brilliant,” Liapes said. “This is a fantastic idea. It’s going to help acclimate the kids tremendously. It’s overwhelming for freshmen to come to high school.”

Liapes added, “It’s a good group of kids, and this place is in great hands. [Church] has already turned the place around in just one year. We have a lot of faith in her. I’ve never been so comfortable. It was a very different feeling when my oldest was attending.”

Ilyssa Kleinfeld, who volunteered at the high school for Friday’s event and whose daughter is also entering the ninth grade this year, agreed, saying she’s known Church from her days as principal of Fort Lee School No. 2.

“It’s amazing,” Kleinfeld said. “I cry every time I walk in here thinking my daughter is going to have this wonderful experience, when three years ago, I was worried, ‘Do I have to look at private high schools?’ I’m so excited. I think it’s going to be a fabulous high school.”

Looking out Friday over a cafeteria filled with members of Fort Lee High School’s inaugural Freshman Academy class, Engravalle said, “This is what it’s all about; we’re here because of them.”

“We want them to feel from day one that they have an instant connection to the school and the staff,” he said. “It’s about relationships. They need to know that someone cares. More importantly it’s going to be a teacher who cared.”

Church then addressed the group of freshmen before introducing their new teachers, vice principals and guidance counselors one-by-one.

“You’re here on the precipice of a whole different part of your life starting right before school opens, and it’s a wonderful position to be in,” Church told the kids as they finished up their lunches. “And we’re very happy to have you here because we’ve been talking about you for a long, long time. We started this conversation last year. We wanted to do something that was different for the freshman, and out of it came our Freshman Academy. You are our first freshman class.”


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