An Excellent Conference Room

By Frances Haman-Prewitt

It changes education from something that’s being done TO students to something that they seek for themselves.”

An Excellent Conference Room

Something big is happening at East Lake Academy.  And it has to do with EXPLORE.

EXPLORE is an 8^th grade exam created by ACT – the folks who bring us national exams that help colleges decide whether a high school student is ready for college-level work.  Every Tennessee student now takes EXPLORE, as well as PLAN (in 10^th grade) and the ACT itself (in 11^th grade).  This series of exams can serve as a powerful tool to help students examine their interests, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and adjust their coursework – and their level of effort -  to focus on career goals.

Photo caption: Marilyn Chapman (l) and Sharon Eaves enjoy their roles counseling students at East Lake Academy. Photo credit: Photo courtesy the Public Education Foundation.

At East Lake Academy, school counselor Sharon Eaves teams up with PEF college advisor Marilyn Chapman to use results from EXPLORE to counsel every 8^th grade student – all 160 of them.  ““We’re not doing it the easy way, but it’s the right way,” says Eaves.  “It’s not enough to just hand them their scores.  We spend at least an hour with every single 8^th grader and go over what the scores mean.  What are your strongest subjects and how do you rank relative to the national average?  What areas do you still need to work on?  What are your goals in life – college or career – and what do you need to do to reach them?”

“This is about making students aware of their options,” says Chapman.  “Going over the scores like this gives students ownership over their education, and makes them better prepared to choose college, technical training, or the workforce.  It changes education from something that’s being done TO students to something that they seek for themselves.”

This is a process that takes a lot of time.  Eaves and Chapman believe that it is important to include parents in these conversations, so they work hard to schedule parents to come in for the consultation with their children.

Clearly it is a role that both counselors relish.  It lets them make an important contribution to a collaborative faculty that is focused on student achievement, and their work is strongly supported by East Lake Academy principal Le Andrea Ware.

“Many counselors have traditionally been the chief schedulers at their schools,” say Eaves, “but Ms. Ware deeply believes that the counseling we are doing around test scores encourages student success, and she has asked another administrator to handle scheduling so that we have the time to make this happen.”

It’s a powerful process.  Visit www.pefchattanooga.org/excellentteachers for a glimpse into this excellent conference room.  You’ll be impressed!