NAPLES — The smell of garlic wafted through the home economics room at Lake Region High School on Thursday.
Senior Nick Kauffman had been stuffing minced pieces of garlic into patties of 93 percent lean ground bison beef.
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Students in a four-day cooking class were showing what they’d learned about making more healthful choices by revamping typically unhealthful meals. One group used a whole wheat bun and sweet potatoes in its version of a hamburger and french fries.
Healthy cooking was one of 15 classes offered this week — the last week of the trimester — to Lake Region students who had passed all of their classes.
Those who were failing got time to make up work and improve their grades. Failing students who finished their work at the beginning of the week could join one of the classes, called “extended learning opportunities.”
Besides healthy cooking, classes included robotics, the art of film, break dancing, and coastal navigation. Students who spent the week studying “Les Miserables” took a trip to Boston to see the musical.
The program is part of a plan to improve the school’s low graduation rate — one reason Lake Region was named one of Maine’s 10 “persistently under-achieving” schools two years ago.
All of the schools showed low reading and math proficiency over a three-year period and little progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Lake Region was given three years and a $1.6 million federal grant to plan and implement changes to raise achievement.
Principal Ted Finn, who was hired to lead the school through the turnaround, said the graduation rate hasn’t been above 76 percent in several years. Not meeting the state’s standard of 86 percent is “a strike against the school,” he said.
As of last week, 227 of the high school’s 546 students had failing grades in at least one class this trimester. As of Thursday, 101 of them had made up the work and joined the extended learning program, said Sandy Arris, one of six teacher leaders chosen to support the principal through the changes.
Arris said she expects that number to go up by Monday, after teachers get a chance to grade work over the weekend.
For senior Jacob Anderson, the opportunity to play basketball during the school day was an incentive to finish two outstanding projects to pass social studies.
“I’d come in in the morning, and go straight (to my desk). All I did was work,” said Anderson, who completed the projects in two days.
On Thursday, he was in gym shorts, playing in a basketball tournament. “It’s better than sitting at a desk,” he said.
The classes aren’t all fun and games. They have to have an academic component, as well.
Students in the basketball class had to write a three- to five-page paper on a player’s impact on the sport, and make instructional videos to teach basketball skills to younger kids.
Teachers said the benefits of the extended learning program go beyond giving students an incentive to pass their classes. Dance teacher Carmel Collins said spending four full days with a group of students enabled her to bond with them in a way that’s not possible in an hour-long class.
“You have a chance to form these relationships … It’s like a family,” she said.
Arris said it’s also a chance for students in different grades to interact. “I’m seeing seniors high-five freshmen,” she said.
And they gain skills that aren’t taught in regular classes.
Junior Kristina Morton, who learned to make baked egg rolls in the cooking class, said she plans to re-create the recipe at home with her mother.
The real success of the program won’t be known until June. Arris said she has no doubt that it will make a difference in the graduation rate.
“I definitely see the light,” she said.
Staff Writer Leslie Bridgers can be contacted at 791-6364 or at:
lbridgers@pressherald.com
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