Officials take stock of school turnaround program

CLOVIS — The ongoing school turnaround program at Clovis Municipal Schools has shown that a quick handshake can go a long way.

The Clovis Middle School Initiative (CMSI), a school turnaround program in partnership with the University of Virginia, is wrapping up its second of three years and this week CMS officials took stock of how the program has helped teachers and staff connect with students at the district’s three middle schools.

“I think everything we have done so far is really geared towards helping principals create that culture in their building so that students are always first,” Mitzi Estes, the CMS executive director of instruction and district shepherd for CMSI, said.

One of the tenants of CMSI is “Capturing Kids’ Hearts,” a program designed to develop positive relationships between teachers and their students through, among other measures, greeting them each day with a physical component like a hug, high five or handshake.

“It’s really a process of developing leaders in our students, starting with the process of greeting them at the door so that we can kind of get the temperature check of the day for each student, but we’re meeting them and we’re greeting them eye to eye and they recommend at least one day a week shaking their hand so it’s a professional skill they’re learning,” Estes said.

Capturing Kids’ Hearts also includes a social contract component where teachers work with students to develop a set of expectations for the class, with students holding one another accountable.

“Capturing Kids’ Hearts has made a marked improvement in my school for sure,” Marshall Middle School Principal Todd Morris said. “There’s a lot of good things that have come out about building relationships and that always goes back to that school culture, if you’re not building relationships with kids, it’s really hard for them to learn from you if they don’t think you like them,”

Another component of CMSI is the addition of a safe and healthy school coordinator at each middle school who assist teachers with classroom management and implementing Capturing Kids’ Hearts.

“The incorporation of the safe and healthy school coordinator has been incredible and allowed me as a principal to get into more classrooms than I ever have,” Morris said, adding that he, his assistant principal and Marshall’s safe and healthy school coordinator visited 470 classrooms prior to the December break.

Morris said the biggest benefits for students has been developing relationships with their teachers, while for the teachers it has been an increase in feedback from administration stemming from the rise in classroom visits.

Estes said next up for CMSI will be a summer training session in Virginia where the goals for the upcoming school year will be fine tuned, with a focus on developing supplemental documents to help teachers.

“Last year about this time they chose the schools for which were going to be a part of this and the more I investigated and did my research about what it was all about, I was scared to death,” Morris said. “And now it has been the most challenging and the most rewarding thing I’ve ever been a part of. I just really think they push principals to become better principals for their teachers and I look forward to the third year and what we can do.”