PHOTO COURTESY OF BROOKS CLERGY

The 2008-2009 Columbia Junior High Cougar Ambassadors enthusiastically pitched in to help get things organized to kick off the new school year. This handpicked group of students worked at the All Cougar Kick Off Day welcoming new students, providing tours, and helping out with a variety of tasks.  They also will work during the school year with new students, breakfasts, lunches, doughnut feeds, and helping make CJH a better school for all students and staff.

Columbia Junior High beefs up school pride

By Matt Nagle

A new program has been instituted at Columbia Junior High (CJH) for students and it has already proven to be a big hit during this first week back at school. It’s an advisory period where 18-20 students are randomly selected twice a week to spend 20 minutes at the start of the day meeting with each other and teachers. The point is to help foster a deeper connection among the student body to their school and to foster a connection between each student and an adult who will remain with the student throughout his or her time at CJH.

According to CJH principal Jeff Nelson, the nature of Columbia’s two-year program for grades eight and nine yields an environment that lacks in students feeling closely tied to their school due to the short time period the students are there as they transition into becoming high school students.

As Nelson put it frankly, “They just slide through here. We wanted to address that.”

During the advisory period, students and teachers are able to meet outside of the usual, strictly structured classroom setting and enjoy working together on all kinds of things, from the student handbook and Spirit Day activities to academic goal setting and students’ grades.

“It’s also a time for us to talk about and show [the students] what ‘good work’ actually is,” said CJH Science Department head Cindy Swenson, from whose class the advisory period originated.

The chosen curriculum for the period was developed by the Franklin-Pierce School District and adopted by the Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The whole idea for the advisory sprouted about two years ago from “teachers talking to teachers,” according to Swenson. “We started noticing kids struggling with connecting to Columbia and the teachers,” she said. They discussed how eighth-grade students have one set of teachers then have different teachers the next year, which seemed to be affecting the students’ feeling of being rooted in solid soil from which to grow, so to speak.  

The next step was for the teachers to talk to the students. A student survey concerning school safety and overall climate was conducted that showed the young learners certainly enjoy Columbia, but “we knew the stronger the bond kids have with their school the better likelihood

of their success,” Nelson said. “We looked at a variety of ways to strengthen that bond,” one of which was creating an advisory period.

Swenson said the focus of the advisory year would be student-led conferences in the spring, the first time such conferences will be held at the junior high level in the district.

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