“Be respectful, be responsible, be involved,” this motto has been drilled into the students minds at Huntley High School. Do something good and you get a slight hope of a reward by the end of the month.
The kids in the making connections program are kids who have trouble following the normal HHS mantra and get rewarded by just going to class and acting like normal kids without the extra pressure of having to be respectful, responsible, or involved.
“It is a way to get trouble makers to participate in school,” said senior Danielle Gibson a member of the making connections program.
The program was made by PBIS which is the same organization that created the Raider Way which is the goal for all schools to implement in District 158. The first level Making Connections is the base level that goes up to acting normal (a student with nothing special about them) and then goes up again to the raider way attitude.
“Students have an adult connection in the building to support them with any problems they might be having such as not going to class or grades,” said Lana Johnson.
Many students feel flustered and feel as if they are only receiving negative feedback from peers and teachers, so they are paired up with a teacher that will only give them positive reinforcement and slight criticism. This program is six weeks long to receive reinforcement from a teacher that they paired up with to do a check up on the students at least four of five times a week to get a blue ticket.
The students check up with their designated mentor before or after school, or during lunch to talk to the teacher how they are doing. A student will talk to the teacher about grades and attendance issues that may be happening. The teacher then gives positive reinforcement to boost morale.
“I think a few of the students do not want to be in the program, but most of them have a positive attitude about it and want to succeed,” said Johnson.
Teachers go into the program with a positive mentality so that they can help the students be respectful, responsible, and get involved. The blue tickets make them feel as if it is extra support, because it is different from the red tickets. This ticket is the reward for the student making an effort to do better in school and make a connection with someone who can help them
“It is a way to get trouble makers to participate in school,” said senior Danielle Gibson.
In this program students enter voluntarily if they are recommended for it by a teacher or other supervisor in the school. To be recommended the student must have behavioral disruptance issues or students that are constantly failing classes. They must have serious behavioral problems such as constant ADD or ADHD to be allowed into the program, they are recommended by their counselors.
These students are given their own set of standards that they must abide to in order to get a raider way ticket in a raffle that is smaller than the raider way raffle that is in the entire school. This raider way ticket is a reward for the students being at par with regular students that stay in the median (between the underachievers and the over achievers).
This program helps kids pass their classes before it becomes too late and they get to the point of no return. To do this the student meets with a teacher everyday to help them and see if they accomplished what they had set out to do.
This program is slowly helping the students at HHS get better grades and better attendance. “It will be implemented more widely soon. Many more teachers will want to be involved,” said English teacher Tara Wills.
The results of this program have shown positive results in every student that has participated and met the quota of 80 percent attendance rate to their checkups. With these blue tickets students enter them into a raffle only with blue tickets, with the same prizes offered such as gift cards but better odds of winning the raffle because only blue tickets are placed in the raffle.
Emeer Paz-Mody
Staff Writer