Bayfield Middle School has adopted a new program to identify and assist students who have fallen behind on submitting work in their classes and could benefit from additional support to complete that work and turn it in.
At the end of January, BMS Principal Marcia Hoerl announced the launch of the ZAP program in her school as an effort to target missing assignments that are holding students back.
ZAP stands for Zeroes Aren’t Permitted, and if a student has started to accumulate missing assignments, they will be referred to ZAP by their team of teachers. Students who are ZAPPED will be required to spend Tuesday and Thursday of that week working on missing assignments during Advisory (3:10 to 3:45 p.m.). Interventionists are on hand to make sure students get the support they need to successfully complete the missing assignments and turn them in.
The program represents this year’s emphasis on “Continuous Improvement” across Bayfield School District, and Hoerl said its implementation was driven by the staff’s desire to tangibly demonstrate the ideal of continuous improvement in a way that instantly benefits students.
“We were asking why we were seeing so many zeroes, even for kids who were in class,” Hoerl said, noting that students can get overwhelmed quickly if they fall behind.
“That hole can get deep if you’ve got three classes where you’re missing three assignments” she reasoned.
To help students avoid those predicaments, the school hopes to use ZAP to not just identify students who have fallen behind, but also discover why they find themselves in that situation and give them the time and support they need to overcome the challenge.
“It’s not always going to be the kid who is at grade level. We may be asking students to write a lengthy paper, and their skill level might not be there yet,” Hoerl explained, noting that the program also gives a student a chance to interact with a different educator and bring a fresh perspective into the equation.
“It is another teacher who does not believe they’ve exhausted everything with a student. Sometimes it just takes one other person to say things differently for something to click,” Hoerl said. She indicated that the opportunity to create new teacher-student relationships is one of the program’s strengths and part of the reason why ZAP is a weeklong commitment for students and teachers.
During Monday team meetings, each grade level identifies five students who would benefit from the additional support of the ZAP program that week, and students are committed to both the Tuesday and Thursday session — even if they get the work done they were originally ZAPPED for.
“The reason we bring them in is because we care about them doing well,” Hoerl stated. “They’re being pulled in for ZAP specifically to work on their make-up work, so they sit with their makeup work and an interventionist, and get their work done.”
In the end, Hoerl and the rest of her staff hope ZAP can be a temporary boost to help a student get back on track before they get swamped by missing work.
At the same time, the school continues to put a positive emphasis on hard work, good behavior and continuous improvement with periodic “Celebration Assemblies” hosted by BMS Dean of Students Kelly Erickson.
Prior to handing out certificates to students at last week’s 7th grade Celebration Assembly, the longtime school administrator said that the idea for the assemblies was conceived at a former school after staff perceived the need to change the school’s communication and culture to focus on positives instead of negatives.
“There was a negative culture at the school, and we wanted to do something every kid could strive for,” Erickson lamented. “We knew we had to change the talk around school, and wanted it to be about positive things so the teachers created Celebration Assemblies.”
The results were almost instantaneous, and they have proven long-lasting.
“The talk around school was about who was working hard, who was a good citizen and who was improving,” Erickson beamed. “That kind of talk even appeared from the parents on Facebook, and the certificates ended up on the fridge at home. The school culture changed!”
Bayfield Middle School will also be holding a series of Honor Roll Assemblies (complete with ice cream sundaes!) on Valentine’s Day, and parents can come and celebrate their students making the honor roll that afternoon. The 8th grade celebration is from 1:30 to 2 p.m., followed by the 7th grade from 2:15 to 2:45 and the 6th grade from 3:00 to 3:30.