A Letter to Your Child

Imagine if your parents had written you a letter at the start of each school year. Imagine if they had written about their dreams for you, and included stories from their own childhood, different stories each school year. Imagine if they had even occasionally included stories passed on to them by their grandparents, stories they wanted you to remember. Would those be priceless letters?

Such letters document family tradition. If you received such letters, you would probably share them with your own children and grandchildren.

The start of a new school year is a perfect time to write such a letter to your own child and begin such a tradition. The reading of your finished letter with your child could quickly become one of those priceless parent/child conversations about goals and life. This letter could then go into your child’s photo album, or their scrap book, so as to document evolving dreams and goals at the beginning of each school year.

A parent could also encourage their child to write a letter in response. Knowing a parent's dreams helps a child to form their own goals. It helps in the evolution, and the changing of goals. Few lessons in life are more valuable.

Knowing more about their own family history and stories helps a child become more resilient. Children will know the challenges of those who went before them, and how they conquered those challenges. Consequently they will be better able to face their own problems in life. Research and experience has repeatedly proven the connections between knowing the dreams and histories of those who cared for you and your own success in life.

Sadly, only a minority of parents write such letters. We need to encourage the writing of such letters by all parents at the start of every school year. As the years pass, more and more parents would follow the practice.



School counselors could use this same parental letter writing practice, focusing on goals and family stories, in their work with families and students during the school year. It is the perfect way to refocus a family, and their student, onto the important things in life, especially when that student has discipline or academic problems. Parents of unmotivated students will probably not have written such a letter.

As the value from such a letter writing tradition is seen it may become a normal annual event centered in our schools and our families.  A refocusing on family dreams and history is the perfect way to kick off the school year!

Can you think of a better way to create a school atmosphere wherein parents will become more involved in the education of their children?

Time-Capsules installed, or moved, to date in 2013

The year 2013 has already been the most active year for vault installations, and it's not over yet! For the first time a vault had to be moved due to building re-modeling.  This was at Browne Middle School.  Since vaults are bolted to the floor that involved opening the vault, removing all the letters and shelving, loosening the bolts so the vault could be removed from the location, and sheering off the bolts in floor level.

T. W. Browne Middle School Time-Capsule

The Browne Middle School Time-Capsule was then moved to a new location, just outside the front office and in a good location passed by all students several times a day. It was then bolted once again into the concrete foundation. If a toronado ever destroyed one of these schools, the 500-pound vault would remain fastened to the foundation.



To date in 2013 there have been three Time-Capsule installations of new vaults.  The first was at Rosemont K-8 school:

Rosemont K-8 Time-Capsule
The first 8th grade class will be in 2015.

The Time-Capsule project started in 2005.  It is rather symbolic to now have a time-capsule with the first year being 2015. Rosemont is transitioning into a K-8 school with this years 6th grade going forward to be that first 8th grade class, in 2015.  

The next installation was at Atwell Middle School. Atwell teachers had already had students planning for the future and writing their letters for the vault.  Therefore there are letters already on the 2013 shelf.  (Note: due to the national demand for vaults there is a normal month or more delay for installation.)

W. H. Atwell Middle School Time-Capsule

South Oak Cliff High School was the next installation:



South Oak Cliff High School Time Capsule

Lobby at South Oak Cliff High School with Time-Capsule

Dallas ISD Discipline Reports by Middle School 2012-13

From 2005/06 to 2012/13 the percentage of all discipline referrals within DISD that were made against middle school students grew from about 40% of the total to almost 60%.  The bulk of this increase happened due to the movement of 6th grade into middle school.  Sixth grade referrals increased from 5.6% to 19.4% of all referrals.

The following report covers discipline reports for each middle school and covers only the first semester of the 2012/13 school year.  It gives a very solid idea as to the distribution of discipline problems for each middle school.

Disciplinary actions per student in DISD Middle Schools 2012/13
Right click on image to enlarge or print.

This is ONLY a report on the official reports made. There are variations from school to school as to how the principal allows reports to enter the DISD system, but generally this gives some idea of differences between schools.   Some schools have ended their in-school suspension alternatives due to staffing cuts. In some cases this appears to have resulted in more out of school suspensions, but more study is needed.   If anyone wants to join with me in exploring this data I would gladly freely share the Excel data files that were released to me by DISD following upon an open records request.  Just email me at bbetzen@aol.com and state what you are requesting.

Dallas must bring these numbers down.  Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) must be used so that our classrooms, especially in middle schools, become more quiet and peaceful places of learning.

Cutting student pregnancy rates in half & a Dallas ISD time-capsule project

Student pregnancy rates are related to the most common problem in secondary school: unmotivated students! They have no focus on their own futures, and no plans.

In 2005 Quintanilla Middle School started a time-capsule project to focus students on their own plans for the future by having 8th graders, just before they leave for high school, write letters to themselves about future plans.

In 2009 letters by parents to their child about their dreams for their child were added to the project. A golden connection with families was created. More conversations at home about goals and the future are certainly happening. Quintanilla, with 1,200 students, and Sunset, with 2,300 students, have certainly improved.  Benefits to date include:

1. Even with a 95.7% poverty rate, student pregnancies at Quintanilla have been more than cut in half, from a “norm” of 4 to 5 student pregnancies a year, to only 2 pregnancies in 2011/12, and only one this year, 2012/13!  Such is the power of active planning for the future.
2. Quintanilla is the highest rated of all 19 DISD south side non-magnet middle schools! See 2013 Children at Risk school rating report: http://childrenatrisk.org/research/school-rankings/northtexas/
3. Quintanilla Middle School now has the lowest frequency of discipline problems in District 1!  In 2007/08 Quintanilla had 1,299 disciplinary actions recorded, over one per student. It appears they will finish the 2012/13 school year with less than 400 actions, or less than one for each three students.
4. The graduation rate at Sunset High School, starting their own time-capsule project in 2009, has doubled since 2006.  It has gone from 33% in 2006 to near 70% for the Class of 2013! Current Sunset enrollment is 579 freshmen and 522 seniors!
5. With the increased family interactions from these parental letters, and the focus on planning for the future, gangs are less attractive.
6. As students leave school for the last time, staff can begin to say “See you in 10 Years!” - The message is different. School culture is changing.

It's certain teachers do not have extra time for additional work. This letter writing project should replace other Language Arts lesson plans. It should not require extra teacher time. Volunteers help teachers with the few mechanics involved to make the Archive Project work. Would you be interested in helping this project thrive in your school?

======= Recommendations for Time-Capsule Project ========

The School Time-Capsule Project is an “open source”project.
Change it to best meet needs at your school.

It is recommended letters be written twice in middle school and twice in high school: when a student enters in 6^th or 9^th grade, and just before they leave at the end of 8^th or 12^th grade. Parents should be invited to write the first letter each time, a letter to their child about their dreams for them. They are encouraged to also write stories from family history, stories they want their children to remember. Yes, it is hard to get letters from every parent. That does not always happen, but when a child may begin to fail during the school year, such letters become a much higher priority. The letter writing process can be used as needed to engage parents and their child when failures are indicated.

1. Place the vault in a central location of the school to maximize the number of students who see it each day. They know their mother's letter is in the vault and what she wrote! That quiet presence seen daily may help students study harder.
2. The first letters students and parents write upon a student entering your school should be returned as they prepare to write their final letters. The final letter looking 10 years into the future is written the final month in school. That letter should remain in the vault for 10 years.
3. The placement of the final 10-year letters into the vault should involve photos given to students.Each Language Arts Class should pose in front of the vault holding their letters for the photo. Then they each place their letter on the shelf inside the vault for their class to remain there for a decade. They receive two copies of this photo, one for them and one for their parents. On the back of the photos are details about the 10-year class reunion, including phone numbers to call, 90 days before the reunion date, to volunteer to help plan the reunion.
4. Students are told the final letters will be returned to them at the 10-year class reunion when they also will be asked to speak with the then current students. They know they will be giving their recommendations for success. They are warned to be prepared for questions like: “What would you do differently if you were 13 again?”
5. Constantly learn from and modify your project. (Please also share what you learn with us.) The first reunions will start at Quintanilla in November of 2014. We will learn many things from these former students. We will continue to learn every year as students return every November for the annual reunions. What better way to constantly improve our schools than to listen, along with current students, to these former students who've lived a decade in the real world with the education we provided?

Donors, including Lowe’s Home Improvement and A-1 Locksmith, have provided the first 10 vaults installed as of 5/25/13 in 10 DISD schools, as well as the funding for the next 3 vaults to be installed in 3 more DISD schools yet to show an interest in this time-capsule project.

For more details please study the web pages and blog at www.StudentMotivation.org, or contact Bill Betzen at bbetzen@aol.com or 214-957-9739. This is an “open source” volunteer project supported by the LULAC National Education Service Centers Inc., 345 S. Edgefield, Dallas, 75208, 214-943-2528.

Progress with a school time-capsule project in Dallas ISD

On 5/16/13 two additional vaults were installed in Dallas ISD secondary schools. We now have 9 vaults in Dallas ISD schools, with the 10th vault to be installed next week.  Here are the results of this project since 2005:

At Sunset High School, the Class of 2013 graduation rate will be near 70%, MORE than a doubling of the 33% graduation rate from the Class of 2006!  Remember, this calculation is the percentage of the full original 2009/10 ninth grade enrollment represented in the number of diplomas to be granted to that Class of 2013.  It is not the TEA rate which is usually much higher.

At Sunset the current enrollment is 579 ninth grade students with 522 seniors!  That is the largest senior class on record! When was the last time you heard of an inner city high school that is over 2,000 students, with a poverty rate leaving 90% of students on free or reduced lunch programs, with their enrollment so well balanced between the 9th grade and 12th grade?  This is wonderful progress!  Sunset staff are to be congratulated!

Quintanilla Middle School, where the School Time-Capsule Project started in 2005, now has the lowest reporting rate of discipline problems for any middle school in District One in DISD.  Quintanilla is a 1,200+ student middle school with a poverty rate reflected in 95.7% of students receiving free or reduced lunches. Students rated as LEP due to Spanish being their primary language represent 50% of the student body.

Quintanilla had only had one student pregnancy this past year!  A "normal" pregnancy rate was 4 or 5 pregnancies.  Last year was 2.  We are making real progress!  Planning for the future, and it appears letters from parents about their dreams for their child which started in 2009 at Quintanilla, are the best birth control!

Finally, Quintanilla is the highest rated DISD south side non-magnet middle school in the 2013 Children at Risk school rating report: http://childrenatrisk.org/research/school-rankings/northtexas/. Only 5 of the 33 other DISD middle schools had higher ratings. They were all in North Dallas with much lower poverty rates in their schools.

Letter to DISD Teachers

Dear Teacher,

Unmotivated students with no focus on their own futures, and no plans, are a major agony for all teachers, especially in middle schools and high schools. Many methods have been used over the years to attack this common secondary school problem. The School Archive Project is a modification of one of those methods, students writing letter to themselves about their goals and dreams for reading again sometime in the future.

The difference is that instead of a shoe box or similar storage for letters, we use a centrally located 530-pound vault, similar to the one on the right. This photo is of the Quintanilla Middle School vault, now almost filled with letters.

With the addition of letters from parents, a golden connection with families is created. More conversations at home about goals and the future are certainly happening. While it has not been verified by formal research as to what has caused what, Quintanilla and Sunset have certainly improved.

The benefits seen to date, and anticipated, include the following:

1. Quintanilla now has among the lowest frequency of documented discipline problems in District 1.
2. The graduation rate at Sunset High School has doubled since 2006, and it is now ready to go up another 20% over the next 3 years!
3. The student pregnancy rate at Quintanilla has been cut in half.  Plus a new record has been set at Quintanilla, a 1,200 student, 95.7% poverty rate inner-city middle school.  This year there was only one student pregnancy!  Last year there had been only 2. 
4. With the increased family interactions from these letters, and the focus on the future, gangs are less attractive.
5. Quintanilla is the highest rated DISD south side non-magnet middle school in the 2013 Children at Risk school rating report: http://childrenatrisk.org/research/school-rankings/northtexas/ .
   
6. As students leave school for the last time, staff begin to say “See you in 10 Years!” - The message is different. School culture is changing.

It's certain teachers do not have extra time for additional work. This letter writing project should replace other Language Arts lesson plans. It should not require extra teacher time. Volunteers help teachers with the few mechanics involved to help the Archive Project work best. Would you be interested in helping this project thrive in your school?
The School Archive Project is an “open source” project.  Change it as you want to best meet the needs at your school.

Recommendations:

1. Each one of the two times letters are written at either a middle school or in a high school (beginning of 6^th or 9^th grade and the end of 8^th or 12^th grade) parents should be invited to write the first letters. They write a letter to their child about their dreams for them. They are encouraged to also document stories from family history that they would like their children to remember. Yes, it is hard to get letters from every parent. That does not always happen.  But when a child may begin to fail these letters become a much higher priority. The letter writing process can be used, as needed, to help engage parents, and their child to avoid failures.
2. Place the vault in a central location of the school to maximize the number of students who pass by it each day. They know their mother's letter is in the vault and what she wrote! That quiet presence may help many students study harder.
3. The first letters students and parents wrote upon a student entering your school should be returned as they prepare to write their final letter. That final letter is looking 10 years into the future and is written the final month a student is in your school. When the final letters are written before a child leaves your school, that letter should remains in the vault for 10 years.
4. The placement of the final letters into the vault should involve photos. Each Language Arts Class can pose in front of the vault holding their letters. Then they place the letters on the shelf for their class where they remain for a decade. They receive two copies of that photo, one for them and one for their parents. On the back of both photos are the dates for the 10-year class reunion with phone numbers to call for volunteer to help plan the reunion, or to update addresses.
5. Students are told the final letters will be returned to them at the 10-year class reunion when they also will be asked to speak with the then current students. They are told that at their reunion they will be requested to speak with current students about their recommendations for success. They are warned to be prepared for questions like:
   “What would you do differently if you were 13 again?”
6. Constantly learn from and modify this project. (Please also share what you learn with us.) The first reunions will start for Quintanilla Middle School in November of 2014. We will learn many things from these former students. We will continue to learn every year as students continue to return every November for the annual reunions. What better way to constantly improve our schools than to listen, along with our current students, to these former students who have lived a decade in the real world with the education we provided them?

Donors, including Lowe’s Home Improvement and A-1 Locksmith, have provided the first 7 vaults now installed in 7 DISD schools, as well as the funding for the next 6 vaults which will be installed in 6 more DISD schools, including South Oak Cliff High School and Atwell Middle School.

For more details please study the web pages at www.StudentMotivation.org or contact Bill Betzen at bbetzen@StudentMotivation.org or 214-957-9739. This is a volunteer project supported by the LULAC National Education Service Centers Inc., 345 S. Edgefield, Dallas, 75208, 214-943-2528.

Saving Public Schools in 3 steps

Our nation's public schools have never been more directly assaulted in history! Yes, there are problems.  We must attack the problems, not the neighborhood school! We must return to the neighborhood K-8 school.

Three steps must happen in all public school districts. 

1) Transparency

The old cowboy insult of “all hat and no cattle” is an all too accurate description of educational history in the US over the past quarter century, especially here in Texas. Twelve years ago such misleading reporting became so bold that Houston actually claimed "zero dropout rates." The reality was that far less than 50% of any 9th grade enrollment were receiving diplomas within 4 years. The dropout rate was very far from zero, thus "no cattle!"

Fortunately many school districts are slowly moving away from such “all hat and no cattle” claims, but TEA recently made some of the boldest "all hat and no cattle" claims in the history of school accountability in Texas. TEA claimed graduation rates that amounted to placing Texas among the group of states having the 4th highest graduation rates in the nation! Fortunately business leaders in Texas, as well as academic leaders, were both vigilant and publically challenged these unrealistic graduation rates.

In spite of what TEA is trying to do, absolute transparency, especially when it is painful, is slowly being understood as the best alternative. Texas has led the way with the raw data about our schools and our students being placed online and annually updated at http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/adhocrpt/Standard_Reports.html. Almost all the reports posted in this blog come from that web site. Due to data available through such transparency it can be clearly documented that Dallas ISD is making more real progress than at any time in the past 20 years!

Admitting and sharing the painful truths in our public schools is the only way to have a strong foundation for progress.  That must be repeated: Admitting and sharing the painful truths in our public schools is the only way to have a strong foundation for progress.

The most accurate, easy to audit measurements for a credible transparency are the number of students who enroll each year in each grade, combined with the number who graduate annually, and how many of those annual graduates are ready for college. Simple spreadsheets for each school and school  district should include enrollment by grade and year, covering 10 years or more of such annual enrollments. Each years numbers should include graduation numbers and percentages of those graduates who are college ready. It would quickly show if progress is happening.

Finally, such a TEA spreadsheet for all of Texas would be a powerful summary of what is REALLY happening in Texas education over time.

The Internet allows the accumulation and availablity of such data to explode. Dallas ISD is constantly taking advantage of that availability with results that are improving, and constantly need to improve. DISD does not yet have such a multi-year spreadsheet online and in a prominent place on the DISD web site. Such a spreadsheet could look like the chart at the end of the post at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2012/01/dallas-isd-one-of-most-improved.html.

Such a prominent spreadsheet on the DISD web site would make Dallas a national leader in educational transparency. No other major US City has such longitudinal, multi-year, transparency. DallasISD can lead the way!

Such a lack of more complete transparency also hides good news.

Significantly positive changes within DISD started 6 years ago, but received no publicity. Those positive changes happened when the 9th grade bubble began to disappear. The 9th grade bubble is caused when the 9th grade is larger than the 8th grade the year before. That is caused by large numbers of 9th grade students failing and repeating the 9th grade. Too many middle school students were not prepared for the 9th grade. As they fail the 9th grade enrollment grows due to students taking the 9th grade two or more times.

From 1996 through 2006 the average 9th grade enrollment in Dallas ISD was 33% larger than the 8th grade enrollment due to such failures. For the decade between 1996/1997 to 2005/2006 the average 8th grade enrollment was just over 11,025, and the average 9th grade enrollment was 14,727. That 33% 9th grade bubble began to disappear in 2006. It is now only a 9.3% bubble for the current 2011/2012 9th grade class!

The 9th grade shrinking means more students are passing on to the 10th grade. DISD now has the smallest 9th grade enrollment in over 15 years, and the largest 10th, 11th and 12th grade enrollments in over 15 years!! Fewer students are dropping out in the 9th grade! (See enrollment by grade numbers going back to 1996/97 at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2012/01/dallas-isd-one-of-most-improved.html)

Good things are happening in DISD. These DISD cultural changes must continue! They must be known! More complete transparency will expose all sides of DISD, the good and the bad.  Then we can celebrate the good and work with the bad.

2) Developmentally Appropriate Grade Configuration: change to K-8 schools
(Yes, that means closing middle schools!)    

Debates over grade configurations surrounding middle school have gone on for as long as middle schools have existed. But can DISD continue to ignore the fact that 6th grade discipline issues have gone up over 400 percentage points since moving 6th graders from elementary schools to middle schools? Yes, discipline issues normaly go up with each year, but usually less than 30%.  The first semester of the 2012/13 school year DISD had a total of 596 disciplinary actions against 5th graders, but that number jumped 440% to 3,230 for 6th graders!  Research has now pushed that issue well beyond the debate stage.

A July 2011 Harvard University study has emphasized the urgency of an improvement for our public schools that parents need to study. This detailed and extensive research concluded (page 23): "Taken as a whole, these results suggest that structural school transitions lower student achievement but that middle schools in particular have adverse consequences for American students." If parents agree, they must demand changes in grade configuration, especially here in Dallas due to the publicly acknowledged issues with our DISD middle schools.

The Harvard study showed that in virtually all subjects the scores on standardized test were lower in middle schools than in K-8 elementary schools. Parents and teachers familiar with both settings will rarely be surprised by these findings.

This past November a powerful editorial was published by CNN giving a simple message: "By all accounts, middle schools are a weak link in the chain of public education."

The K-8 response to this "weak link" is gaining momentum. The number of K-8 schools has almost doubled in the US since 2000 as over 1,000 middle schools have disappeared, or been re-purposed as K-8. Google news for K-8 and middle school. You will find reports of school districts closing middle schools and changing them to K-8 elementary schools with very few exceptions. The reason is as simple as the statement a decade ago by William Moloney, then the Education Commissioner of Colorado: "K-8s are the place where everybody knows your name."

What better place to endure the uncertainties of puberty? Instead DISD is now forcing students entering the changes of puberty to move to a strange school with hundreds of other students from other schools also struggling to regain their self image as they change. It is no wonder that we have behavioral issues! Student performance falls in DISD middle schools!

In April of 2012 the National Middle School Association changed it's name to the Association for Middle Level Education. They saw middle schools being closed in the US, and realized such separate institutions do not exist in the highest achieving school systems in the world, such as Finland. In such countries the elimination of the middle school transfer trauma appears to help in far exceeding US academic achievement while at the same time investing significantly fewer classroom hours. The name change reflected a more authentic focus on educating students ages 10 to 15. Will Texas public schools see what is happening? (See more links to articles on this issue here.)

Parents can study these factors and be the driving force behind helping DISD to slowly move to k-8 schools systemwide. That process has already happened in one school, Rosemont Elementary in DISD, which is leading the way. Parents studied the issues and demanded the change. More schools will follow as quickly as parents can study the issues and continue to demand the change.

Such change will also strengthen PTA memberships as parents will be with the same PTA for three more years. There will be more of an investment in each k-8 school. They must be the best schools for the sake of the neighborhood!

As to costs for these three changes, only the last one for a movement to k-8 configurations would involve any signficant costs due to potential building modifications. This process could go slowly, as quickly as parental groups form and request such changes. It could be worked into the normal building budget for DISD. Also, since Dallas County has seen a constant drop in birth numbers since 2007 there may not be the normal pressure for building new schools. Such k-8 transitions could happen more easily.

 3) Parental Involvement, sharing dreams for their child and family history, helps in
building a stronger sense of the "intergenerational self" in students.

Parental involvement is the foundation for any cultural change within any school. It happens more easily in a neighborhood school where as many as possible in the neighborhood attend the same school. This is one of the weaknesses of a system fragmented by private and charter Schools so that everyone in a neighborhood does not attend that same school. But it requires a strong neighborhood school.

A project that has evolved to center on parents, and to help develop a strong sense of the "intergenerational self" among their children, was started several years ago in one Dallas ISD middle school. This School Archive Project started as a focus by students on their own story and their own futures in letters they write to themselves for a time-capsule. Then in 2009 the most critical component was added: letters by parents to their child about their own history and dreams for their child. This priceless letter-writing process, four times from 6th to 12th grade, reinforces parental involvement as never before. The importance of parents is evolving as central. Such letter writing, and the storing of these letters in the School Archive due to their importance for the future, needs to become a normal part of school tradition.

Now entering middle school students start the year receiving a letter from their parents, and other adults in the child's life, about their dreams for the student. The letters can also include stories from their family history that the writers want the students to remember. These new students bring these letters to their Language Arts Class. They spend a week writing a letter to themselves about their history and goals for themselves in middle school. Then all letters are placed into a self-addressed envelope for each student and then into the 500-pound vault bolted to the floor in the school lobby.

This vault is in a prominent place and under spotlights. Students pass it several times a day. At times they may be reminded of what their parent's letter says that is inside the vault. Imagine the conversations that the writing of these letters may have provoked between parent and child. This helps to make such priceless, private conversations more common. It documents them and saves them for history. A strengthening sense of "intergenerational self" will evolve among our students due to these critical messages from parents.

The last month of middle school this then almost three year old letter is returned to students and to their parents. Everyone sees how things have changed since these letters were written. Parents and students write new letters, this time looking 10-years into the future. This time the letters are placed into the vault for the next decade. Photos are made on the day the letters are placed into the vault. Students and parents receive copies of those photos with details on the back for the 10-year class reunion. Everyone is reminded that at that 10-year reunion the returning students will be asked to speak with decade younger students in the school about their recommendations for success. They are warned to prepare for questions such as "What would you do differently if you were 13 again?"

This School Archive Project started in 2005. The graduation rate for Sunset High School, Class of 2006, was below 33%. Sunset received most of these students. Their graduation rate slowly started to rise both due to this project and due to the many other positive changes in the high school including a dynamic principal. In 2009 Sunset staff installed their own vault, and that same year the other middle school feeding into Sunset installed their own vault. The graduation rate (diplomas given out as an uncorrected percentage of the full 9th grade enrollment for that class) for the Class of 2011 was 62%. It was 65% for the Class of 2012, and near 70% for the Class of 2013. It should be 80% by the Class of 2016!  See this and other improvements at http://schoolarchiveproject.blogspot.com/2013/05/school-time-capsule-project-is-9-years.html

The many changes at Sunset made a very real difference. But Sunset is the only high school that has almost all incoming students already exposed to the School Archive Project before they arrive, and ready to do it again. That difference may be what has helped to make Sunset the most improved graduation rate high school in all of DISD for the past decade.



Sunset High School Progress in Dallas ISD
Right-click on above image to enlarge and/or print.

It is the power of personal letters focused on history and the future, placed in a secure location of respect usually reserved for diamonds, gold, and money. It's a message about the value of history, the passage of time, hard work, and planning for the future. See http://www.studentmotivation.org/ .

The value of the mentoring component is yet to be realized when the 10-year reunions start in November of 2014. The reunions will add to the cultural change. They may evolve into the largest single contributor to an ongoing, educationally focused, cultural change. The message former students bring back to decade younger students may become the most priceless factor in the improvement of our schools.

What would you do differently if you were 13 again?

This project starts with parents documenting their dreams for their children. This then helps their children, our students, to then focus on a more realistic future in a way that is easier to embrace, and change as needed. Such conversations need to be more common by parents and children.

The reason this project works so well is as simple as the following question that was in the Dallas Parade Magazine on 2-17-13:

When a team of psychologists measured children's resilience, they found that the kids who ________ were best able to handle stress.

1. Ate the same breakfast every day
2. Knew the most about their family's history
3. Played team sports
4. Attended regular religious services

The correct answer is "Knew the most about their family's history."

As explained in the article: "The more children know about their family's history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives and the higher their self-esteem. The reason: These children have a strong sense of "intergenerational self"—they understand that they belong to something bigger than themselves, and that families naturally experience both highs and lows."

The School Archive Project, also known as the School Time-Capsule Project, encourages such priceless sharing to happen.

-------------------------

These three ongoing changes within Dallas ISD, if accelerated and reinforced, will create an urban public school system that becomes the national model.  The third step is the only one that is truly unique to Dallas.  The other two steps are happening at different levels nationwide.  Many districts made the change to K-8 schools years ago, and the results have been researched and documented as solid.  We have work to do in Dallas ISD.  Things must change!