C’vanna Gibson: It was a hot mess. It was just mad crazy, everybody was fighting.
Jamahl King: “Some of the kids, you know, they were just fighting. Crazy. Disrespectful.”
Elaine Christiano: “A lot of the kids just didn’t want to come to school. The teachers were not respected. Adults were not respected.”
That’s 10th-grader C’vanna Gibson, school custodian Jamahl King, and retired teacher Elaine Christiano, now a regular substitute at Rochester’s East High School. They are describing the atmosphere two years ago, when East High was on the brink of closure because of poor performance. Discipline was a huge problem. Back in the 2014/15 school year, a whopping 2,500 students ended up with suspensions.
Nelms: With a quarter of them getting into a least one fight in that year—those numbers are appalling. I mean you’re really not describing a school setting.
That’s the school’s new superintendent, Shaun Nelms. In 2015, the University of Rochester entered into an educational partnership with the struggling school. The turnaround is a collaborative effort spearheaded by the University’s Warner School of Education. Nelms, who’s also faculty at the Warner School, doesn’t mince words:
Nelms: Most prisons don’t have 25 percent of their inmates fighting within a given year. So, we had a lot of work to do.
That work—as one would suspect—took more than adjusting the curriculum and providing stronger academic support. Much more. [nat sound cafeteria…”sit down ladies and gentlemen, please”] …Often change starts in the details, as school custodian King noticed in the cafeteria:
King: They pick up behind them, most of them. They pick up trash behind themselves. (Sandra: Is that a new thing that they pick after themselves?) King: Yeah, they never picked up nothing behind them [laughs].
The new routine is not a coincidence, says superintendent Nelms.
Nelms: The cafeteria was definitely a mess [laughs]. Kids did not treat it like a place that they cherished and we worked on that. We constantly talked to them about the importance of being in a clean environment and that there were adults that were paid to support them but not to clean up after them.
Small steps like these paved the road for change.
The culture itself is one that demands mutual respect in the classroom and outside the classroom and the cafeteria is one of those common spaces where kids have to function and eat. And so, our kids want to be in clean environments and that same goes for the hallways and the same goes for class. Our students are truly taking pride in their school.
But at a school like East High improving academic performance hinges on so many factors. Here, a parent’s job loss can quickly lead to homelessness and hunger.
[nat sound washing machine]That’s the school’s washing machine… Responding to suggestions from staff and students, it’s now used not just for the uniforms of its sport teams, but also to wash individual students’ clothes, if needed. The school also has a shared clothing closet.
Nelms: I mean, school has to both heal the heart and the mind. And part of healing the heart is being aware of the resources that are available to truly support students and their families so they can be successful academically. And that’s a community school.
In a nutshell—the school takes the lead in identifying available resources and outside support agencies so that parents and students aren’t left alone trying to navigate the maze.
Nelms: It takes a community-wide effort to support anyone and, and as a school in the middle of a, a growing community we have a unique opportunity to be the hub for the community.
Next came the introduction of Family Group, essentially making every teacher and administrator at East High a so-called carent, a contraction of caring and parent. The daily groups serve as a time to catch up on what’s happening in a student’s life. Building trust in a small group has translated into a much calmer school environment. Today, Nelm’s saunters into the classroom singing….
[nat sound Nelm’s singing—‘You are so beautiful’]
… and he’s is taking them for a little treat just up the road.
[nat sound “Let’s go to McDonald’s, ok?”]
At the fast-food restaurant I talk more to substitute teacher Christiano and 10th-grader C’vanna Gibson whom you heard both at the start of the story:
Christiano: It’s a slow process but I’ve seen a lot of progress over the last three years.
C’vanna Gibson: I’m definitely happier now than I was two years ago.
Christiano: Once you get the respect and the trust in the student you can accomplish anything.
How do you measure progress? Well, let’s go back to the original suspension rate of 2,500 students at the start of partnership with the University. Two years later that number is now down to around 220 suspensions, a staggering 91 percent decline. Students and teachers, I spoke to, agree that the mood here has changed. And while graduation rates are only slowly improving—10th grader Gibson clearly has bought into the message:
Gibson: I’m gonna graduate on time. I mean nobody is stopping me. (Sandra: Which means for you what?) Get out of here in 2020 and go about my life. (Sandra: What do you want to do, do you know?) Yes, I want to be a nurse.
For the University of Rochester’s Quadcast I’m Sandra Knispel.