One School One Story

By Kerry Martin Dean of Studies

Amajor Teaching & Learning Goal in our Strategic Plan is to “seize upon meaningful interdisciplinary connections…to enhance student engagement.” Student engagement can be a difficult quality to define, measure, and deliberately build. Based on recent educational research and data, the criteria that has the most positive impact on student engagement are student choice, personal relevance, the student-teacher relationship, and connections to the real world outside the classroom walls.

One initiative we started this school year to build on those criteria was a new approach to Summer Reading. Students often dread summer work, in part because they do not have a voice or choice in what they read, so we decided to involve them in the selection process for our summer reading. ONE SCHOOL, ONE STORY is a program whereby community members submit suggestions for books or podcasts for the entire school to read together over the summer. We then reviewed and reduced that initial list, which became the ‘Sweet 16 Summer Reading Bracket.’

We enlisted the help of our Digital Broadcast Journalism students who, with the support of Mrs. Chris Schaefer and Mr. Sean Mier, conceived, wrote, and produced promo videos to help inform and excite the entire PHS community about the “One School, One Story” process. Curious? You can watch the final two videos by scanning the QR codes below:

THE FINAL ROUND:

The goals of this school-wide initiative were to:

• Increase student engagement by emphasizing student voice and choice • Develop opportunities for interdisciplinary learning in and outside the classroom • Cultivate opportunities for larger community-wide

conversations on relevant topics and issues • Enhance our already strong sense of community by providing a way for students to immediately connect with their peers, teachers, and staff • Set students up for success in their next academic year by honing essential cross-curricular skills of empathy, critical reading, and textual analysis

Students, faculty, and staff voted during the open windows for each round starting in January of 2018. By April, we had a winner! The entire faculty and staff received copies of the winning novel, John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down during Faculty/Staff Appreciation Week and teachers held brainstorming sessions to develop innovative approaches to interdisciplinary discussions, activities, and community outreach involving the major themes of the novel.

A particularly interesting element of the student-selected summer reading is that the protagonist of Turtles All the Way Down lives with mental health issues, a topic on which students have actively sought more information and requested more discussions. The selection of this novel is indeed, as we like to say, providential! As an educational community and part of the Providence St. Joseph Health organization, we are keenly aware of the need to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health issues and build resilience, especially for the adolescents we serve. We are fortunate that as part of PSJH, we were able to connect with the Well Being Trust and Project 375’s “Mind Over Matter” program to bring in guest speakers Brandon and Michi Marshall earlier this year.

We are excited about the additional opportunities to connect with community organizations and engage in school-wide discussions about Turtles All The Way Down by John Green in the fall of 2018. Then, it will be time to start submitting suggestions for our 2019 “One School, One Story” Summer Reading (or podcast or blog series). As always, as Pioneers following in the legacy of the Sisters of Providence, we will continue charting our own unique path as we strive to respond to the signs of the times for our students here at Providence High School. GO PIONEERS!