[00:00:00] Ellie: Hello and welcome to the Teaching Toolbox as we spend another week looking at transitions for middle schoolers. I'm Ellie, and I'm here with Brittany.

[00:00:28] Brittany: Hello.

[00:00:30] Ellie: Today we have Andrea here from History Gal to talk about the transition to high school.

[00:00:35] Andrea: Hello.

[00:00:37] Brittany: Andrea had the opportunity to work in a freshman academy, which gave students a year to prepare for transitioning to high school, which sounds like a fantastic experience to me. Thank you, Andrea, for joining us. Could you introduce yourself to our listeners?

[00:00:54] Andrea: Sure. I'm so happy to be here. My name is Andrea. You may know me as History Gal. All of my teaching experience is in high school. I taught ninth, 10th and 11th graders, mostly US history, world history, and then I had this one amazing year as part of the freshman academy where I taught world history.

[00:01:17] Brittany: Do you wanna talk about your store at all?

[00:01:20] Andrea: I have resources for middle and high school for US history, world history, and civics, and my goal is to make them as engaging as possible for students and as easy for our teachers to use.

[00:01:34] Ellie: Ooh, love that.

[00:01:35] Brittany: Great. Well, we are so happy to have you here today to talk about transitional challenges. Can you tell us about your freshman academy and how it worked?

[00:01:46] Andrea: Sure.

[00:01:47] So the idea for the freshman academy came from the fact that freshmen have a very high failure rate, especially when you look at freshman only classes like health, those tend to be the classes with the greatest failure rates. And so the idea was born to try to figure out how to help freshmen with the transition and kind of reduce that failure rate.

[00:02:12] And so ended up incorporating kind of the team approach that you guys use in middle school all the

[00:02:18] time.

[00:02:19] So we had teams, and our teams consisted of a history teacher, an English teacher, a health or PE teacher, and a science teacher. We did not have a math teacher in our team just because the high school level, there's so many different math classes.

[00:02:39] It was really hard for them to figure out a schedule

[00:02:42] to make because it ends up being this huge puzzle with trying to get classes fitting and everything all together. And so we had, our team of four, we had a dedicated counselor, and then there was an assistant principal that was dedicated over, we had two sections of the freshman academy.

[00:03:04] so we had lots of meetings, lots of prep, and then, so in high school we were on the block schedule, so it's a 90 minute class.

[00:03:14] Ellie: Okay.

[00:03:14] Andrea: Our school was on what they call an alternating block schedule. So it means you have your eight classes, but you only have four each day. So it's an AB block, A Day

[00:03:26] you have four classes, B Day you have four classes. They're different and they rotate.

[00:03:31] so as a teacher, you're seeing your kids every other day.

[00:03:35] Ellie: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:36] Andrea: and so one of their eight classes that they had to take was a study skills, all character ed, all kinds of trying to, we call it freshman focus.

[00:03:46] Just a lot of brainstorming and trying to figure out what we all felt freshmen needed more support with. And so there was this entire class that was dedicated to how do you study, time management.

[00:04:02] Ellie: Oh that's fantastic.

[00:04:03] Andrea: And then something that kids are usually used to in middle school is teachers have kind of the same, oh, now I'm blanking on what the words are, but same procedures

[00:04:11] Ellie: Mm. Like on a team, they might have the same procedures and expectations,

[00:04:16] but then in high school it's like everybody's different.

[00:04:19] Andrea: Yes. So it could be one teacher has their policy and late work is this, and another teacher one is X one and is y and so there was a lot of making sure everything is the same in those teams.

[00:04:32] So students kinda knew what those expectations were and sometimes those are done at the school level too.

[00:04:40] Ellie: Yeah.

[00:04:41] Andrea: I know there's a movement, where there's a specific late work policy or there's a specific, if you are acting out in your class, this is what you know the procedure is for

[00:04:52] we're gonna contact your parent first. But when I was doing it, each high school teacher had some autonomy to kind of tweak things and

[00:05:01] do things their own way. And so in the Academy year four core teachers had the same policy. And we actually had like a homework box and

[00:05:13] every kid before school had to drop their homework off in the homework box.

[00:05:18] Ellie: Okay.

[00:05:19] Andrea: so it was a way of trying to minimize, oh, I handed it to you. No you

[00:05:24] didn't. Trying to really work on getting the homework in. And of course now everything is, I'm kind of dating myself a bit, everything now can be submitted electronically.

[00:05:34] Ellie: A lot. Yeah, that's true.

[00:05:36] Brittany: Yeah.

[00:05:36] Andrea: So there was a lot of trying to catch kids before they fell through the cracks. There was a lot of, meetings, a lot of meeting with parents, a lot of meeting together as a team with the counselor trying to

[00:05:50] Help kids because we want kids to be successful as their freshman year, so then they can continue on. If you end up failing your freshman year, it's really hard to dig out of that, and then you end up seeing those kids just you know, dropping out or just being a fifth year freshman and you're just, you're not really helping.

[00:06:17] So that was kind of the purpose of it.

[00:06:20] Ellie: sounds like a fantastic support for those students.

[00:06:24] Brittany: Did you feel it was successful?

[00:06:26] Andrea: Yeah, so I reached out to the, um, counselor who was over my team, and I said, Hey, do you have any of the stats? And he was like, I know it was successful, but I don't have any of the hard stats anymore. Uh, it was just kind of a bummer, but it was a lot of work for scheduling.

[00:06:45] It was a lot of work 'cause it was in a high school, so we had basically a wing,

[00:06:50] Ellie: okay.

[00:06:51] Andrea: so it was a lot of moving teachers and trying to get everybody in one area. And so it was really dependent on the principal supporting the project. And then, so eventually, you start getting some tensions like we wanna offer AP world history, but we can't offer it if we have the freshman academy because in the freshman academy we're having everybody taking the same classes and they're not gonna be an AP level class.

[00:07:24] So you start seeing some of that tension. And the freshman focus class is something that's required, kind of school specific, it's not a state requirement, so you have students that would rather be taking another class that's gonna get them to where they wanna graduate

[00:07:42] you know, whether they want another more AP classes, more honor level classes. They wanna go on a certain track,

[00:07:49] so there ends up being a lot of tension of.

[00:07:52] Ellie: Like, I don't need that study skills thing. I wanna take something else that's gonna get me farther ahead.

[00:07:57] Andrea: It ended up being, you know, kind of shorter lived . It's not in existence anymore.

[00:08:04] Ellie: How did things like music or band or things like that, was that something that played into their schedule or that they had time for? Was that extracurricular stuff?

[00:08:13] Andrea: No, so you have basically the block schedule. You have eight slots

[00:08:17] so you've got four of them are your team classes, and then you're gonna have a math class, which makes five. You gotta get a foreign language in somewhere, which makes six.

[00:08:31] Ellie: And then you had the study skills ,

[00:08:32] Andrea: they had the freshman focus class, so then you, you end up as a freshman with kind of one

[00:08:36] elective. which again, if you have sometimes, because the ab schedule makes things harder. And so if you have a band class that's trained to meet on both AB days and that takes two slot,

[00:08:51] Ellie: Mm. So yeah, it can get complicated.

[00:08:54] Andrea: it gets really complicated.

[00:08:56] Ellie: So you've got pros and cons for sure.

[00:08:59] Andrea: Yeah. I think unfortunately without a freshman Academy, it's up to the individual teacher to try to incorporate study skills or, um, if you need to work on your students on how they're writing, you are doing that yourself. Like as a history teacher, it'd be nice to be able to coordinate, with the English teacher,

[00:09:24] you know, where we could actually say, you know, they're gonna be reading this book the same time that we're gonna be teaching this and they're gonna be doing some writing in English and in history, we can help support that.

[00:09:36] And without that team connection, it's really hard to do because your students don't have the same English teacher.

[00:09:44] Ellie: I, yeah, that makes sense. I was gonna say, did you ever have that experience at any other level where you could collaborate like that? But if they all have different English teachers and they're doing different things.

[00:09:54] Andrea: yeah, so it ends up being difficult 'cause there's usually several English teachers that are teaching, you know, ninth grade English.

[00:09:59] Ellie: For sure. Yeah. Because it's hard to tie all of those skills that they might need into your subject area 'cause you're seeing it there and trying to work on all those things, just you, in the midst of your

[00:10:10] Andrea: curriculum.

[00:10:10] Yeah, so what was really nice about the freshman academy was that they were getting it in multiple places. They were getting reinforced. The skills are getting reinforced, and it's just, unfortunately the nature of high school is, it's harder to do

[00:10:22] Ellie: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:24] Andrea: without something like that.

[00:10:25] Ellie: Do you recall like what specific types of study skills were worked on? Like test taking strategies or research, like what types of, you know, how to study type stuff?

[00:10:38] Andrea: yeah. So the beginning is gonna be just really basic, like how do you

[00:10:43] take this information that your teacher is giving you and what are different strategies? You know, some people are oral, some people, it helps when they're moving and learning and others it help, you know, if you're teaching somebody else.

[00:10:56] So we did a lot of those, kind of Myers-Briggs kind of personality tests

[00:11:02] where you're

[00:11:03] trying to figure out like what kind of learner are you and based on what kind of learner are you then these are some strategies that will work for you.

[00:11:12] And not everything can work the same for everybody.

[00:11:18] It's different. And then towards the spring when we have, you know, the state testing push, there's a lot of like, how do you take a state test? You look at the information that they give you, how do you eliminate something and, um, time management while you're taking a test.

[00:11:37] Ellie: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:38] Andrea: We're able to kind of build upon.

[00:11:41] Brittany: Like how do you read a question and decipher what they're asking that kind of thing?

[00:11:47] Andrea: Yep. And I mean a lot of it is on also with time management with tests, but time management in general. Like you have a project due on this day, , the freshmen all had planners and so they're expected to put things in their planner and we're checking to make sure that

[00:12:04] you know, they're writing things down so trying to give them the skills to know , how are you gonna know what's due? it's a little easier now where they can look on canvas or they can look in Google classroom and see due dates and

[00:12:20] those kind of things.

[00:12:21] Ellie: But they still have to work it into their life and how they're gonna get everything

[00:12:25] Brittany: done.

[00:12:25] Yeah The prioritization of what's more important right now.

[00:12:29] Andrea: You know, what hours are you working in your job? When do you have practice after school? And trying to help them figure out how to get everything done.

[00:12:40] Ellie: Yeah. I think that's really critical. Sometimes, I feel like we assume by the time they reach us or the time they reach middle school or high school, they've been doing homework for years. They've been doing projects for years by now they probably have a good handle on it, but a lot of them just don't, and maybe nobody else really taught them how to manage their time like that, so that's really important.

[00:13:00] Andrea: And things like sleep,

[00:13:02] Ellie: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:05] Brittany: I told my daughter she had midterms this week and her biggest, uh, midterm was on Wednesday, and I told her on Tuesday afternoon. I'm like, the chances you're gonna learn something this afternoon that's gonna help you is very slim. The chances that a good night's sleep is gonna help you is very high.

[00:13:27] So go to

[00:13:28] bed, get some sleep.

[00:13:30] Ellie: Well, they say like, studies I've heard say that if you sleep after you study, you retain it much better because your brain is working on it while you're sleeping.

[00:13:41] Andrea: Good strategy.

[00:13:43] Ellie: Did you ever get to like, talk to the middle school teachers before you know that of the students who were coming to you to ever, I don't know, work together on transitions or was that No Communication?

[00:13:53] Andrea: We did not, and actually that would've been an amazing idea. I'm not really sure why that was.

[00:14:00] Ellie: We never really, I mean, I, I didn't teach eighth grade, so I can't say that there was not a lot of communication. Maybe between eighth and ninth grade there was, but there's so many teachers in the eighth grade level across our district, and then so many in the freshman level, I don't know that they ever actually met.

[00:14:17] Andrea: I would be really nice, I think to have eighth grade teachers and ninth grade teachers get together and be like, what do you wish we knew? Or What do you wish the kids are coming with?

[00:14:27] Ellie: If you could pick two or three things that you really wish kids came from middle school with. Do you have anything that's like at the top of your list, you're like, I really wish they could do this.

[00:14:38] Andrea: time management?

[00:14:40] just 'cause it seems to be different in that middle school maybe a little bit easier to like turn in late work

[00:14:50] and then high school classes tend to, especially if you're doing a block schedule a class that's meeting for 90 minutes. It's either meeting for 90 minutes for just a semester or you're getting that 90 minutes every other day you're getting a whole lot more material and like one sitting.

[00:15:10] And, that's gonna help when you make that transition to college because that's gonna be even crazier with the amount of content that you're getting and having to

[00:15:19] Just trying to keep track of what you need to be doing. What's going on with your classes? How much time you need to be studying, how much time you need to be allocating for working on your project or

[00:15:34] Ellie: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:34] Andrea: so just really working on time management. And then is, is homework.

[00:15:41] Ellie: Uh,

[00:15:43] Andrea: you know, get, actually do the homework and turn it in on time.

[00:15:49] Ellie: Hmm.

[00:15:50] Andrea: I'd like to think most teachers have a reason for why they're assigning it for homework. It's not just busy work,

[00:15:55] Ellie: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:55] Andrea: but I think a lot of times freshmen don't realize how all of those zeros add up.

[00:16:02] Ellie: Yeah. Yeah. They don't understand the consequence of that.

[00:16:06] Andrea: and so it's like, oh, I just didn't do a couple homework assignments. Well, yeah, but now if you look at your grade. Your grade is significantly lower than what it could have been, and the homework is an easy way

[00:16:17] pull that up.

[00:16:19] Ellie: Yeah.

[00:16:20] Andrea: and you asked for a third one.

[00:16:22] Ellie: If you have one, like is there anything academic that you think really like, I wish these kids could do this, or the students could do this academically when they come to high school?

[00:16:32] Andrea: So plagiarism is.

[00:16:34] Ellie: Ooh.

[00:16:35] Andrea: A major, and even now with ai, it ends up being a whole nother

[00:16:41] Ellie: Hmm.

[00:16:41] Andrea: ball game. But just understanding the concept of plagiarism, just because you copied something and pasted it into something new, it doesn't make it yours.

[00:16:56] Brittany: Yeah,

[00:16:57] Andrea: It's just not so much malice involved, just kind of

[00:17:04] Ellie: Like

[00:17:04] Andrea: ignorance and not really thinking about it

[00:17:07] Ellie: Right, right. Well, like I only took a little bit, I didn't take three pages. It was only a little bit,

[00:17:14] Brittany: or, my brother used this years ago. It's okay now.

[00:17:18] Andrea: um, and so obviously now with AI you're gonna write it in class

[00:17:24] as opposed to turning it in.

[00:17:29] But just really this, this realization about what it is, why it's important to do your own work. but that's just kind of a constant beast of having to fight, I think all throughout school.

[00:17:42] I dunno about elementary school now, but definitely

[00:17:45] middle through high

[00:17:46] Ellie: But as they start like doing research papers and research reports and then having to take you know, information from different sources that just increases as they progress.

[00:17:54] Brittany: Kind of along those same lines, are there any key differences in expectations between middle school and high school? Like one year I, in middle school, I had kids come from elementary school and think that they just could leave the classroom whenever they wanted to, like go to the bathroom or whatever.

[00:18:14] And so the first day of school, they're just like getting up and walking out of the room.

[00:18:19] Ellie: like, where are you going?

[00:18:21] Brittany: Like where are you going? What do you think you're doing? And they're like, well, it's middle school. We can just like leave the classroom to go to the bathroom. And I was just like, no, you can't. Like that doesn't happen till college people. Is there anything that in high school, you get to do differently than in middle school?

[00:18:42] Andrea: That's a really good question. I am not sure. Trying to think of,

[00:18:48] Brittany: privileges you get in high school.

[00:18:50] Andrea: Lunch is sometimes a little bit more free

[00:18:53] in high school than, middle school and obviously it's when you get older sometimes there's something called open lunch and you actually get to leave for lunch

[00:19:02] and come

[00:19:02] back.

[00:19:03] Brittany: yeah,

[00:19:04] Ellie: that's true. And I'm sure it varies from school to school and teacher to teacher, and I'm sure there are a lot of differences. I know like at our school, if you have a study hall at the end of the day, you can leave it early, which that would never happen in middle school or I don't know if they have late starts too, like if there's a study hall in the morning they can come late.

[00:19:25] Andrea: yep. Come late.

[00:19:27] Ellie: I don't know if that's for freshmen though, so that might be a little bit

[00:19:29] Andrea: Usually upperclassmen

[00:19:31] when they have extra slots in their schedule.

[00:19:33] Ellie: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:35] Brittany: And then of course driving. But that wouldn't be for freshmen.

[00:19:38] Unless they're a fifth year freshman.

[00:19:41] Andrea: But in high school you do have more opportunities to do different kind of electives or different tracks and so sometimes especially now coming in as a freshman, it can be a little daunting to figure out whether you want to be, you know, gungho, ap, taking all the AP classes, or whether you want to try the tech classes or whether you're going to the, in, like the ag classes or

[00:20:11] just

[00:20:12] a lot more opportunities for trying different things out.

[00:20:18] Brittany: Yeah, like going through different like art classes and there's not just a general art.

[00:20:24] There's like physical and sculpture and pottery and Yeah.

[00:20:29] Ellie: It's a great thing to encourage middle schoolers as they're getting ready to go to high schools, to just think about things with an open mind and be willing to try some of those things that maybe you don't think is what you're interested in, but give it a try because you might discover something new that you love.

[00:20:44] Brittany: You might find a passion you didn't know you had.

[00:20:47] Ellie: So shall we wrap up with a few thoughts for parents?

[00:20:51] Brittany: Sure. Let's wrap up with parental support. How could parents support their child's transition into high school? Are there any particular strategies that help students develop independence or responsibility? A passion for learning?

[00:21:10] Andrea: I guess the first thing is to understand that high school's a whole different beast than middle school, which is a whole different beast than elementary school. So there's a transition for parents as well as students.

[00:21:20] Some of it is that there's not as much communication as there was in middle school.

[00:21:27] Ellie: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:28] Andrea: I think every teacher has ways that they are happy for parents to contact them but the teacher is not necessarily going to be contacting you if your child fails a test.. expectation is that that student

[00:21:45] needs

[00:21:45] to take that responsibility of, well, telling the parents that they fail the test. But you know what they need to do is, does the teacher offer makeup work? Does the teacher offer study sessions? It's really trying to get the student to start advocating for themselves and knowing where help is available and how to get that and so sometimes parents can support that by saying, Hey, did you talk to your teacher about X?

[00:22:14] Or, Hey, why don't you go talk to the guidance counselor about what class is gonna come after this class, and whether they think you need to be in this class or this class, or, let me bring you to the early morning study sessions, or pick you up after school if there's a study session.. really just trying to get your child to be the point of first contact, instead of you being the point of first contact.

[00:22:40] Ellie: Yeah. Yeah, because they have to learn how to solve problems and it's a safe space in which to do it, to start learning those skills.

[00:22:48] Andrea: But I would also say that a lot of times parents stop volunteering by the time kids are in high school and there's still lots and lots of opportunities for volunteering in high

[00:22:59] schools. High schools love for parents to help, but the PTAs are usually pretty bare bones because parents are kind of worn out, burned out, but there's still ways for parents who want to kind of tap into their high school community to tap in and not necessarily be lording over their student and watching their student.

[00:23:21] But there's ways where you can be part of the community and benefiting, helping

[00:23:26] the high school

[00:23:27] grow and be better.

[00:23:29] Brittany: those teachers still need like, love

[00:23:32] and care. They still need you know, the chili lunches or the, the little gift bags and stuff like that.

[00:23:39] Andrea: 100%

[00:23:41] and it's even more well received because it doesn't happen

[00:23:46] Brittany: Yeah.

[00:23:46] Andrea: as often..

[00:23:46] Brittany: Yeah.

[00:23:46] Ellie: Yeah. Right, right. Well, this has been so helpful and insightful. Thank you so much for joining us today and helping us to understand a little bit more about this type of transition. Is there anything else you wanna add as we wrap up?

[00:24:00] Andrea: I don't think so. I'm sure there'll be something once we sign off that.

[00:24:04] Ellie: Yeah. Right. Well, where can our audience find you?

[00:24:08] Andrea: You can find me on my website, History Gal.Com. Also, obviously on teacherspayteachers and

[00:24:16] History Gal is on Instagram and Facebook.

[00:24:19] Brittany: Great. Well, whether you're helping kids come in or go out of middle school, we hope you have found some understanding and empathy from a different tool in the toolbox. If you enjoyed this episode, please shout it out out on your favorite social media platform, and thank you for listening.

[00:24:39] Ellie: Bye.