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Great Stories Club fuels great minds in Pasadena ISD
Open books are opening minds to new worlds for students at The Summit, an alternative school in Pasadena ISD.
“The Great Stories Club,” funded through a grant from the American Library Association and the Young Adult Library Services Association, strives to reach at-risk teens with books that are relevant to their lives.
Students in The Great Stories Club are part of The Summit’s Alternative Program of Excellence (APEx). They are of high school age and are referred to the alternative campus because of disciplinary problems or their lack of success in a regular classroom setting. The Summit’s APEx program is designed to bring its students up to speed with their high school peers.
The Great Stories Club ties into Pasadena ISD’s Expectation Graduation initiative. This initiative heavily tailors instruction around students’ interests, learning styles, and aptitudes through a variety of personalized and small learning community concepts.
Expectation Graduation is working in Pasadena ISD, as more than half of the district’s 62 campuses received either “exemplary” or “recognized” ratings from the Texas Education Agency. The district also has seen consistent gains in student achievement. Case in point: Several members of the Great Stories Club have caught up to their high school counterparts.
“Expectation Graduation sets students up to be successful by offering programs that capture their interest and allow their learning styles to flourish,” says Superintendent Kirk Lewis. “The Great Stories Club is a prime example of a successful program that is helping learning come to life for students.”
APEx Principal Robert “Bob” DeWolfe says the Great Stories program certainly opens the students’ minds to a different school of thought.
“This program has become very popular with our students,” DeWolfe says. “It gives them access to books that truly capture their attention, which in turn, encourages them to continue reading and learning. The program is showing them that they do have the tools to succeed and that they can be successful.”
DeWolfe cannot help but smile as he looks at a copy of “The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie, which the students in the Great Stories Club signed and presented to him this past spring.
“This book is very special to me,” DeWolfe says. “It is a sign of hope — a sign of what the power of learning can do in someone’s life.”
As part of the Great Stories Club, the campus received theme-related books for the club members, along with online resources. Books that students have read include “Silent to the Bone” by E.L. Konisburg, “Blizzard’s Wake” by Phyllis Reynolds Taylor, “Cheat” by Amy Goldman Ross and “Luna” by Julie Anne Peters.
All of the books address issues that teenagers typically face in their everyday lives, says APEx teacher Linda Risinger.
“It is something that [the book club members] look forward to every Thursday,” Risinger says. “Because these books relate to events that may be relevant to their lives, it sparks some intense discussion and interpretations. It also takes them into a deeper level of thinking.”
Risinger says the APEx students have served as true advocates for the Great Stories Club and they are largely responsible for its growth.
“What is encouraging is that they tell other classmates about how much fun they are having in the book club, and it fuels more interest in reading among the students,” she says.
Response to the program has been so great that students are asking for more books to be added to The Summit library. To that end, teachers have purchased books from the Scholastic Book Club to fulfill the students’ growing requests.
“The book club has truly opened up a new environment for learning on our campus,” Risinger says.
“This program not only captures students’ minds, but what is important to them and things they might be going through,” says APEx librarian Jeremy Gibson. “It is important to us to reach our students and if this program helps us achieve that, then it is certainly worthwhile.”
MARK KRAMER is the communications specialist for Pasadena ISD and a contributor to Texas School Business. |
