Riley Requires Reading
The new school year started a little over 3 months ago and with it brought a few new district-wide goals for the South Bend Community School Corporation. As a result, COVID-19 had many consequences, and graduation rates along with literacy rates declined. To combat this, SBCSC has made the initiative to increase literacy rates district-wide, which will help with graduation rates.
We spoke with two Riley High School English teachers, Daniel Schulte and Katelyn Boocher, for insight on what exactly the goals are and what is being done to achieve them. They were both a large part of the process of making the literacy aspects of homeroom. “So what we’re gonna do at Riley though is in the next three years, each year, we want to improve by two percent, which seems small, but over two years it’s really more of a six percent thing,” says Ms. Boocher.
Homeroom has been added to the schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and with it came a mixed bag of reactions. “I've heard some students really enjoy that sort of quiet environment. Just for reading, certain teachers say that their students react to it very well.” says Mr. Schulte. Though, on the other hand, “Other kids are kind of, as you would expect, like they don’t want to spend that time reading, they would rather play on their phones or whatever.” says Ms. Boocher.
Reading hasn’t been the only goal of Homeroom, however. The addition of homeroom also brought social-emotional learning (SEL) and circles on Tuesdays. Ms. Haubold, a Riley High School computer science teacher, was one person in charge of implementing circles. She told us, “A circle is basically a way of having a conversation, which makes space for everyone to share if they want to share and make space for everyone to listen.
The way it works is everyone sits in a circle and a talking piece gets passed around.” With circles, there are also a small number of guidelines to follow; listen and share with respect, only talk when you have the talking piece, and respect confidentiality. Circles can be used for a variety of things such as building community, talking about different topics, solving conflict, and more.
In the end, it’s clear that the past 18 months have negatively affected everyone, in one way or another. The addition of Homeroom is just one way to clean up one the damages caused by COVID. As we move forward, we must adapt to changes to solve these problems.