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Schools

Brand new school year, but familiar teachers

Monroe Middle School is looping, pairing students with the same teachers through seventh and eighth grades.

By ELISABETH DYER
Published August 12, 2005

For eighth-graders at Monroe Middle School, classes started last week much the same as they did last year.

Just after 9 a.m., their homeroom teachers passed out schedules of their seven daily classes.

"Yes!" cheered Christiana Evans, 13. Two periods with teacher Randy Scott.

"I like science, and Mr. Scott teaches it really good," she said.

Christiana already knows Scott and her other teachers because last year's seventh-grade teachers are this year's eighth-grade teachers.

Monroe is experimenting with a concept known as looping, which pairs teachers with the same students for seventh and eighth grades. The looping doesn't involve sixth grade because the teachers need a different certification. Looping is common practice for guidance counselors at middle and high schools in Hillsborough. It's also used in 15 to 20 percent of the district's elementary schools, said Joyce Haines, elementary education director.

Occasionally it takes place in middle schools with small groups of students. But never like this.

"Monroe is the first Hillsborough middle school to try teacher looping on a full-scale basis," said Wynne Tye, the district's director of middle school education.

Tye expects Monroe's success will become a model for other middle schools.

"I'm thrilled," she said. "You cannot deny the research. It's a sound practice. As a teacher, the fact that you have personal connections with the kids, you know where you left off and you're confident in what you taught. You start the year with a refresher: This is where we were, this is where we're going."

The idea of looping came up in January during a teacher leadership team meeting as a way to boost lower-scoring students at Monroe, which serves a high poverty population. At the time, Monroe was a B school. Based on the 2005 FCATs, it's since risen to an A.

Monroe principal Joe Brown, an administrator at the school for 12 years, suggested they look at research that showed students in loops gain eight to 12 weeks of instructional time.

The group was impressed.

"It takes students a while to know teachers' expectations and styles," Brown said. "The second year of the loop, the expectations are there, the procedures are there. It really allows for a seamless flow of curriculum."

The leadership team brought the idea to the entire faculty.

"We told the teachers, "We really want to try this,"' said Pat Fisher, the school's language arts leader. "There were some that weren't happy, but not many."

To observe looping, Brown and several teachers visited middle schools that loop in Pasco and Polk counties.

"The main concern we asked about was curriculum change," said teacher Nicole Bauer. "Most of the teachers there said they appreciated the change because they had gotten a little stale doing the same thing year after year."

Social studies teachers who loop teach geography for seventh-graders, then history for the eighth-graders.

But what happens when students and teachers don't click?

"We did have a couple parents who called to say, "No, I don't want my child in the loop,"' Brown said. "We honored that. Other parents were very enthused."

Students had mixed reactions too.

"It would be nice to have someone new," eighth-grader Shakayla Wooten said.

At the same time, she couldn't wait to see her favorite teacher from last year, Andrea Giancola.

Elisabeth Dyer can be reached at 226-3321 or edyer@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 11, 2005, 09:00:07]