Classroom Corner

Success Highways works with teachers across the country and we want to share how teachers are using the tools from the program to improve student achievement. Each month, we feature one teacher who is delivering Success Highways to show how students are benefiting from the program.

March Teacher Spotlight:

April Teacher Spotlight: Jose Palma, Teacher St. Paul Public Schools

Jose has been a teacher in the St. Paul Public Schools since September 2008. Check out how he uses Success Highways in his classroom.

How has Success Highways affected you as an educator?
I always knew the concepts that Success Highways teaches were extremely important, but I wasn’t sure how to implement the concepts in my classroom. The program gave me an outline to follow so I can easily incorporate the concepts into my classroom.

What do you like best about the Success Highways program?
It gives you everything you need. From the text for the students, to how they can get support, and how they can evaluate themselves.

What is the best thing that the Success Highways program does for your students?
I think it’s especially great for seniors. They seem to show the most interest because they are about to graduate and they need to start thinking about how to approach their next journey in life. Many of the students who are younger may not see the immediate need, but next year instead of just discovering how these concepts apply to them, they will start to think about how the concepts in Success Highways will help them achieve their goals.

How have you seen Success Highways change one of your students?
I work with teenage moms and pregnant teenage girls. One of my students, before she got pregnant, used to say that she wanted to be a professional basketball player, or an actress. But now, with the program, she’s started to focus more on what she can do with a new child coming into her life. She’s looking into a career that will be more suitable for her, and looking at the support she needs to get there. Now she wants to be a lawyer, and the program has helped her re-focus her ambition.

What part of the lessons do your students seem to like the most?
The students like when we talk about careers. At first it was, “Oh, I want to be an actress,” or, “I want to be a famous basketball star,” but when they looked at what they valued, and what really interested them, their focus shifted. It’s now, “I want to be a teacher,” or, “I want to be an attorney.” Then they became very engaged in what they needed to do to make it really happen.

What was something unexpected that came out of the Success Highways program?
I was expecting the program to be an individual effort, but it turns out it’s more of a classroom effort. The students get to interact with each other and give advice to each other. It’s very powerful. When I went to high school, I didn’t have anything like Success Highways. I’m glad my students are seeing the benefits of planning for their future.

Resiliency in Action: Motivation

When your students ask about the importance of setting goals, talk to them about Tiger Woods, one of the most successful golfers of all time. In 2008, he was the highest paid professional athlete in the world, and has won fourteen professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player. But Tiger couldn’t have done all this without setting goals for himself and creating a clear path to get there.

Woods has been quoted as saying, “I know what I want to accomplish and I know how to get there. The ultimate goal is to be the best ...”

Woods is a great example of how setting goals and creating a plan to achieve them can help you be a success. By using Success Highways, you can encourage your students to set goals for themselves and determine a plan to achieve those goals.

Teacher Tips

Questioning Techniques for Meaningful Discussions
Moving beyond easy initial responses and into a deeper, more meaningful conversation can be difficult. Taking what students share and challenging them to further explore their responses makes students able to understand and process areas of their lives that may need attention.

Click here to view questioning techniques that you can use to guide students into more meaningful Success Highways conversations.

Click here for question stems correlated to Bloom’s Taxonomy that will help you encourage students to build on the responses they share and assist you in taking the discussion to the next level.

Do you have a tip?

We’d love to hear it! If you have teaching tips or ideas you would like to share to benefit our Success Highways teaching community, please share them at customersupport@scholarcentric.com, or 800-995-8779.

ScholarCentric News

Reaching Students Through Technology
One of our Saint Paul Public Schools sites, Como Park Senior High, has decided to integrate their Success Highways and technology programs.  Each week, Como Park seniors create and broadcast a presentation of the resiliency skill of focus for the week, which all ninth grade Success Highways students watch in their advisory classes.  Once students have been introduced to the resiliency skill in the video, advisory teachers then move right into the lesson, building on the ideas discussed in the video.  Our hats off to this creative, innovative approach at Como Park Senior High!

Announcing our newest school partners
We're pleased to welcome our new Success Highways schools this month: AdvancePath Academy at Leadership Prep (CA), AdvancePath Academy at San Andreas (CA), Glendale-AdvancePath Academy (CA), and Owen County Schools (KY).

Have news you’d like to share? E-mail us at NewsEditor@ScholarCentric.com
(mailto:newseditor@scholarcentric.com)

About this Newsletter

Success Highways News is brought to you by ScholarCentric, publisher of Success Highways, a dropout prevention program for students in grades 7-9. You can reach us at info@scholarcentric.com, visit our Web site at http://www.scholarcentric.com, or call us at our toll free number 800-995-8779.

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