TCN principals report on school updates and trainings

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LEWISBURG — Tri-County North High School is introducing an intervention period for Juniors and Seniors, to help with required testing and graduation requirements.

During the Board of Education meeting on Monday, Oct. 21, 9-12 Principal Kristen Mills reported on the new efforts, sharing her reasoning behind the decision.

Students will be attending two different periods for each subject, so they can learn from two different teachers regarding the same subject.

“They will hear the same [information], but it will be presented a little different,” she explained.

“The goal is, to hit them with as much information as possible. Some of our students are sitting at 16 or 17 points and they only need one or two points. Some cases, we need to get a kid to go from a two to a three — or, they have a one and just need to get them two.”

TCN High School will also be hosting a Sophomore Academy, to help those students with learning their required information and guidelines.

K-4 Principal Joe Finkbine reported on student intervention efforts and a new process to get students caught up in school.

“I’m really proud of the teachers and us, because this was a tremendous amount of work figuring out what the students need [and] what are the resources we’re utilizing. This document really took a lot of time and effort for us to put in to,” he said. “This is a beginning document for us, if things aren’t working really well, through what we thought it would be, we tweak.”

5-8 Principal Joe Hoelzle shared information on recent updates and events in the middle school:

•Recently Hoelzle and Principal Finkbine received Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) Training. There they learned what actions should be taken if a student wants to do harm to themselves and how to deescalate a situation so it does not get to that point.

“It was a very good, worthwhile training. All of our special education teachers have been trained in it, and I believe Principal Mills will be trained in it in the spring,” he said.

•State test results were recently released and Hoelzle reported the middle school information to the Board of Education. In efforts to improve those results, middle school representatives recently visited comparative schools who scored higher, in order to sit in and learn about things they are doing in their schools to help improve test results.

“What are we doing right and what are they doing that we’re not. All of our teachers came back energized and fresh. They said, it was actually confidence boosting for them, because we’re doing a lot of things they are doing,” he said.

However, the teachers also found several things they can take from those schools to emulate.

Tri-County North Board of Education will hold their next meeting on Monday, Nov. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the TCN Lecture Room.

By Kelsey Kimbler

[email protected]

Reach Kelsey Kimbler at 937-683-4061 or on Twitter @KKimbler_RH

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