The weekly Carbon School District update brought to the KOAL 103.9 News Room Mont Harmon Middle School Principal Seth Allred and Vice Principal Karen Bedont. They both shared what the year has been like, changes made and what remains for the school year.

Although Allred has taught at several schools in the district this is his first year as administrator at Mont Harmon. He came in making a lot of positive changes for students and teachers. “The community has been fabulous it’s my first year there at Mont Harmon and the feedback and the rewards program and what the community has done for us has been great. It’s directly affecting our students in what’s happening there, we talk about our positive rewards system and what we brought in with our Pirate Pride cards and the change in the behavior at the school. It’s a fun place to be, the kids are enjoying it, the teachers are enjoying it,” said Allred. The new pride program is an incentive for students to academically and socially do their best while in school.

Allred came to the school at a time where they have had unfavorable test scores in the past so it was important for him to work with his faculty to come up with a plan to motivate the students. Allred added, “So what we’re doing for our kids it’s called Pirate Pride cards. The Pirate Pride cards each teacher gives away three a day. They give those out for students that have great behavior or growth in academics and then at the end of every day with our sponsorships we’re able to give away some rewards to the kids every day. Then on Fridays we give away a little bit bigger one, then the end of the month, like we gave away a couple of 27 inch TVs.” The success of the program wouldn’t be possible without the donations from area merchants and of course support from the parents.

With just two months left in the school year preparation for the most important testing has begun. Bedont continued, “We know our scores need improvement so we’ve worked really hard this year; a lot of it with that Pride program to recognize the academic improvement of the kids and now the teachers are there reviewing, we use a program called Mastery Connect, it will show the teachers immediately, give them immediate feedback on what students have mastered the concept and what students still need some intervention or remediation.” This allows teachers to look at students individual to see who needs a little push and/or extra help prior to the actually SAGE testing.

It is very important that all students attend school on the scheduled testing days because their individual test scores reflect the entire school. Bedont explained further, “The SAGE testing its accountability for all of us, it’s a way to gauge how the school is doing as a whole. The students get individual scores for themselves, the teachers get scores for their classes so they can go through and look at the data to determine whether or not they are academically responsible for the teaching of the students, and it’s a total reflection upon the schools. When are scores are low we know as a school we need to improve and when our scores go up we know we’ve done that.”

Although this is the first year for the new established Pirate Pride program the administration says it has been the best thing to happen for their students and agree it has made a huge difference academically and socially.

To learn more about Mont Harmon Middle School visit their website at http://www.carbonschools.org/MontHarmon.cfm