Woodbridge High School
Freshman Transition Program
August 17, 2006

Narrator
Woodbridge High School is a laboratory where educators are identifying strategies to increase the likelihood of academic success for incoming freshmen. These students were asked to give up two weeks of vacation to attend a summer academy that the principal hopes will reduce ninth-grade retention.

Alan Ross, Principal, Woodbridge High School
Eight o’clock in the morning we start. We have five classes each day that they attend: the four core classes, science, math, social studies, and English; and we have a character-education piece. And even though we talk about those four core classes, in a lot of those classes they are not necessarily doing science, math, social studies, or English; they frequently are doing different things, talking about goal setting or respect.

Katherine Fielding, Earth Science Teacher
And things like organization, behavior in the classroom; those underlying things are the really important things we are trying to teach them. So, we have set them up with notebooks, and we are showing them how to keep organized, because those are a lot of most freshmen’s issues, keeping organized. A lot of middle schools coddle them along and show them step-by-step how to do things and then they get to high school and most teachers just set them free. So, we are trying to remind them how to do these things so they do them on their own throughout the year.

Governor Timothy M. Kaine
Can I say “Hi” Ms. Parker?

Narrator
Governor Tim Kaine is the co-chairman of a National Governors Association effort to redesign the American high school to meet the needs of the 21 st century. The freshman transition program at Woodbridge, and 29 similar pilot programs across the state are funded through an NGA grant and matching funds from the commonwealth.

Governor Kaine
The idea behind this Honor States Grant is the governors association nationally, partnering heavily with the principal benefactor, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said, “let’s look at ways to reinvent high school.” The way it has been described is pretty much like a prairie fire. You want to throw hundreds of sparks out there and see what catches.

Narrator
An essential component of the Woodbridge program is establishing relationships between incoming freshmen and teachers. During the regular school year, each of these students will have at least one class taught by a teacher he or she met during the summer academy.

Ms. Fielding
The program is geared for those students who usually don’t make those connections themselves. A lot of motivated students will make those connections with teachers but these are a lot of the kids that often get overlooked or are behavior problems so they don’t make a positive connection with a teacher initially, it is usually a negative one, so we are making a positive connection with them now that will carry forward.

Governor Kaine
The Woodbridge proposal we thought made a lot of sense, which is, if you can make the transition easier and give kids a sense of comfort and familiarity with high school then you’re going to do things to make them learn better and possibly reduce the ninth-grade and tenth-grade retention rates which we see as problematic.

Narrator
Sharon Dravvorn and Ben King team teach a class designed to prepare students for success in Algebra I, which all students must pass to earn a Standard Diploma. But King and Dravvorn say sharpening math skills is only part of the equation for freshman success.

Ben King, Mathematics Teacher
The idea is that if they are successful here, both socially and academically, they will be successful the whole high school experience.

Sharon Dravvorn, Mathematics Teacher
We are just trying to empower them with some basic skills. We’re the math teachers so we are trying to give them a little bit of the pre-algebra skills that will empower them so that when they walk into the classroom….

Narrator
The lessons learned here at Woodbridge, and at the other participating schools, will shape future polices to reduce ninth-grade retention and increase graduation rates in the commonwealth’s high schools.

Ms. Dravvorn
Governor Kaine…what do you think?

(Governor Kaine)
I’m not going to challenge….laughter.