Class act: New habits: Calabasas is getting to the heart of poor student performance
Published: September 1, 2011
Nestled in an affluent suburb in the mountains north of Malibu beach lies Calabasas High School, where students enjoy a variety of clubs, performance groups and even an equestrian team. Most of the students’ parents are professionals with college degrees, and very few students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
So Las Virgenes Unified School District administrators were somewhat surprised when the Western Association of Schools and Colleges found that a significant number of Calabasas students had several Ds and even Fs—an early warning sign of failure.
Certainly intervention was called for—but what type? Assistant principal Linda Pierce knew that more study time wasn’t the entire answer. These students had stressors in their lives that made it hard to concentrate on academics, such as divorced or separated parents, eating disorders, or drugs or alcohol problems in the home.
In such an environment, Pierce said, students can develop bad habits that become deeply ingrained, and they need to learn to see themselves differently so they can turn their lives around.
“After learning what some of these students go through, it is amazing that they come to school at all,” Pierce says. “We can’t fix the academic challenges until we find out the underlying cause.”
Pierce convened a group of interested staff members who decided to try using Sean Covey’s book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens,” as the basis for a support program that would first concentrate on the students’ social and emotional needs.
The Effective Student Support program—a 2010 CSBA Golden Bell winner—is now being adopted in other nearby schools and was among the reasons Calabasas High was named a California Distinguished School by the state Department of Education in 2009.
The “7 Habits”—based loosely on similar principles for adults by Covey’s father, Stephen—is a guide to help teens examine themselves and take responsibility for their own success, after which they concentrate on working effectively with others.
Each Wednesday, the at-risk students attend small classes where they discuss what is troubling them and where they can support one another. For many of the students, Pierce said, Wednesday has become their favorite day of the week.
“They come to class to learn about themselves. For a teenager, there’s nothing more relevant,” she said.
By learning to control their own destiny, prioritize what’s important, and cooperate with others toward the greater good, students begin to shed their own bad habits.
“[The program] made my life and relationships at home a lot better,” said Cody Petit, a former participant who went on to mentor others in the program. “Because I was doing well at school, I was given more freedom at home, more responsibility, and [there were] no fights about grades,” he told his local newspaper, The Acorn.
Pierce said she knows of one student who had never done homework in his life. But once he began high school, it became obvious that he could not keep up that bad habit. The support program helped him change his routine, and his grades went from Ds to Bs, Pierce said.
By the end of the support program’s first year, more than half of the students no longer had multiple D or F grades, and grade point averages were up 37 percent. But the most exciting development, Pierce said, was seeing how the students’ lives had changed.
“I can argue without fighting,” said one girl who had previously spent a lot of time in the principal’s office for skirmishing with other students.
Some of the “graduates” of the program found the experience so rewarding that they have returned to become mentors, and they often do a better job of selling the program to new students than she can, Pierce said: “They’re my sales tool.”
— Kristi Garrett
Who: High school students with multiple Ds and Fs
What: The “Effective Student Support: 7 Habits” program
When: Since March 2008
Where: Calabasas High School, Las Virgenes Unified School District
Why: To respond to academically struggling students’ social and emotional needs
More: www.calabasashigh.net; www.7habits4teens.com