This school year, three staff members organized a pilot of the “Champion a Titan” program, an initiative that strives to support students’ individual needs and create a sense of belonging in the Gunn community. During third quarter, from January through March, various teachers paired up with students, assisting them academically and socially by shadowing their classes and conducting one-on-one check-ins.
Developed by Literacy Coordinator Nicole Menache, Assistant Principal Erik Olah and Intervention Teacher on Special Assignment Kristen Owen, the initiative’s primary focus is supporting students with the resources they need to stay on track with their learning and address challenges.
“One of our jobs is to help students (keep up with) their education and to make sure that we’re catching them before they fall too far,” Owen said. “It includes behavior, attendance and academics. We’re trying to keep an eye on all of those things.”
As “champions” help build stronger interpersonal support systems with students, the effort’s focus extends beyond grades to include students’ well-being and goals. To gauge who, in particular, could benefit from this support, the program guides its outreach using the Panorama Student Survey results from the beginning of the school year.
“One of the things (the survey asks) is about connections at school and connections at home with adults,” Olah said. “From that, we identified some students who reported not having a lot of connections with adults on campus, and we were like, ‘What can we do? How can we follow up?’”
The group then compiled this data into a list of potential students, which was divided among staff.
“We sent that list out to teachers and asked them if they’d be interested in ‘championing’ a student,” Owen said. “We didn’t want superficial relationships, so most of the teachers picked kids they already knew or had in their classes. That way, they would naturally develop that relationship and connection.”
The “Champion a Titan” program’s foundation uses Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, a three-tiered approach that assigns specific solutions to a student based on what they are struggling with and adapts, if necessary, to the varying severity of different issues. It begins at Tier One, which consists of baseline supports such as moving seats for proximity to teachers or calling home. Students who need literacy help specifically can use some of PAUSD’s Chrome extensions, like Read&Write for Google (Chrome) or Learning Ally, both of which fall under the Tier One umbrella as well.
“Then it goes to Tier Two, which is a more supportive (level),” Menache said. “That might be when we say, ‘Okay, you can’t choose your PRIME anymore. Now we’re going to choose it for you, and we’re going to say you need to be going to chemistry PRIME because you’re not doing well in chemistry, and I want to make sure that you’re really getting some targeted support.’”
If a student, after going through these first two tiers, still has not exhibited any form of improvement, then they move to Tier Three — in which the support includes more intensive intervention to ensure that the student succeeds academically.
“(It) could be a support class (or) something that goes for behavior or attendance,” Menache said. “It could be a visit home. It could be something where we meet as a team with counseling, your parents and maybe even an outside resource, if need be, too.”
Although the pilot officially ended in March, teachers have the option of continuing to support their student. According to Owen, the development team is now working to measure the program’s impact with statistical evidence, as its effectiveness is difficult to quantify and largely depends on qualitative observations of individual student growth.
“It’s hard to measure (or) to know if it’s working,” she said. “Other than the ‘champions’ recording, ‘Yes, I think I have developed a great connection with this kid. He’s starting to open up to me a little bit more,’ we don’t really have concrete evidence to show data.”
Despite this, Menache, Olah and Owen have noticed positive effects overall, and they are each “championing” a student themselves.
“The student that I’m working with has definitely made improvements in their academics,” Menache said. “(They also now) know that they can rely more heavily on me.”
Olah explains that this initiative is most likely set to continue next school year, as it has generally been a success. The program’s directing team will adapt its structure based on feedback and results from this first round.
“In the next couple of weeks with our MTSS leadership team, (we’ll) talk about how it went,” he said. “(We’ll discuss) building it up for however we want it to look next year.”
