Brett Pellarin is a Grade 9 student at St. Charles College in Sudbury. But he also has another life. He heads out of town every weekend to play goalie for the Sudbury AAA Bantam Wolves.
Life was great at St. Charles when Brett started classes last September. Then his marks started to slip. "Things would come up," Brett said. "I wouldn't be able to do the work."
Brett was placed in a student success initiative program. He met regularly with guidance counsellor Lydia Sapia, who in turn talked to his teachers and met with his parents.
"I got more help," Brett said. "It makes me feel better." As a result, he got four credits last semester.
The program is the brainchild of St. Charles vice-principal James Michaud. While driving to Wisconsin two years ago, Michaud started thinking about his school and its mascot, the cardinal.
"The cards were dealt," he remembers thinking. "Rather than wait until the students fail, work to ensure they're succeeding."
He shared a way of tracking Grade 9 students with principal Patty Mardero. "I thought it was a good idea," Mardero said. "We ran with it."
Now, any Grade 9 student who scores 60 percent or less in any course is placed in the program "before they fall off the map," Mardero said.
The student's name, photograph and grades are placed on a card. The card is pinned to a wall in a classroom at one end of the school. The goal is to get the student off the board, Michaud said.
They land on the board for a kaleidoscope of reasons, Sapia said. It could be work hours, home life, hunger, psychological issues or drugs.
"We want these kids to feel a sense of hope," she said. "The most important thing I tell the kids is, 'You are important.'"
Meanwhile, teachers meet regularly to talk about the students' progress and get support.
"It's a whole school effort," Mardero said.
Every two weeks, the students have a longer homeroom where they learn success strategies and do career planning.
As well, the school has de-semestered the Grade 9 applied math class so students have more time to master the concepts.
And Michaud makes a point of saying hi to the kids in the hallways. "It's got to be personalized," he said. "It's got to be caring."
The program has been a success. In the 2008 Report Card on Ontario's Secondary Schools published by The Fraser Institute, St. Charles College scored 8 out of 10, up from 6.1 in 2003 and 6.6 in 2006.
"You don't own the idea," Michaud said, adding the school has shared practices with other schools in the Sudbury Catholic District School Board and other boards.
"There's been a paradigm shift for high school teachers," Sapia said. "They're not teachers of subjects. They're teachers of learners."
