'It Didn't Just Happen'

When a student graduates from high school, the goal of teachers, the Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD2) and the Board of Trustees are to make sure each student is ready for the workforce, military, career or college.

That is the purpose of the Postsecondary Readiness, which is used as an indicator to see if they are in fact ready. It measures the progress of juniors in high school and is dependent on students and what they have done to be ready for their next step after graduation.

College-bound students take online courses offered through the school district and other students take introductory courses to prepare them for their plans after high school. This year the juniors at Hanna Elk Mountain Medicine Bow Middle/High School (HEM) went from 46% readiness to 100% readiness.

Eli Hobbs, the HEM Principal, said he would love to say he is responsible for “XYZ” to accomplish this goal but, in fact, it is a whole group of people in the education system that made this possible. The students following up with their own goals made it successful, too.

“There is a broader picture and I am the one behind the scenes,” Hobbs said.

Hobbs has been in the district for 17 years. The first 15 were as a teacher and the last two as the principal.

“This is an example of what our district is doing, and this is working really well,” Hobbs said. “I had a group of students who responded really well to what the district is providing.”

The increase is not a ranking of what students are doing, but rather an idea of what the school district is offering and what the students are taking advantage of in terms of their education, Hobbs said.

“We have done a lot of PLC (Professional Learning Community) work and that is the secret to the success in the district and my building,” Hobbs said. “I see great things happening in the future because of PLC.”

Hobbs credits Ryan Searle, the curriculum director for CCSD2, for the work done in PLC.

“He is nationally recognized for his work,” Hobbs said.

Hobbs had just returned from a PLC Conference where the guiding coalition at HEM was also in attendance as well as people outside the school building. Core teachers, elective teachers, parents, interventionists in math represent his guiding coalition.

PLC is master teachers, new teachers and administrators working together, sharing ideas, setting goals, achieving goals and solving “our own problems,” Hobbs said. “Using that program is how we went from 46% to 100%.”

“It didn’t just happen. It was a lot of hard work, a lot of brainstorming, working with teachers and making sure our students were successful,” Hobbs said.

“We are lucky to have a small school district,” Hobbs said. It allows each school to focus on the students. “Students still have free agency and free will and they can choose to ignore us, but when we do it right - things click.

Our district is clicking right along and gaining speed,” Hobbs said. “A lot of that is due to PLC and focusing on individual students.”

The district has been using PLC light for about eight to 10 years. Now the district is doing PLC right, also known as PLC complete. Going from PLC light to PLC right is a process using new teachers and veteran teachers and tapping into everyone's strengths which is what has made the program so successful. It is not just used at HEM, but it is used district wide.

It was CCSD2 Superintendent Darrin Jennings who double-downed on using PLC when he became district superintendent two years ago, according to Hobbs.

Hobbs said the program takes a lot of talking, a lot of meetings and even sometimes disagreement as they discuss what they want the students to learn. The team talks about what they want to accomplish with the students and builds off of everyone’s strength and synergy to improve the education for the students.

PLC gives the district a very good grasp of what is going on with students because they get so much information from the parents, the teachers and the data, Hobbs said.

“If you go back and look at any school, you will see a huge jump in numbers when PLC starts to click,” Hobbs said. “It is not a magic formula, it is a lot of hard work.”

One of the goals for the HEM staff for many years has been to get more students to continue their education by going to college.

“What we have learned is that there are students who are going to take a different route, whether it is going directly into the workforce, going into the military or into a trade school,” Hobbs said.

With this mindset, the district can give every student an advantage by broadening the school’s horizon instead of thinking every student is college bound.

“Not every student knows what they want to do when they grow up, but we do know that one student may like welding,” said Hobbs. “If that is so, why are we trying to get him into an engineering degree in college?”

This information gathered through PLC helps the teachers know that they should direct him toward going to a trade school or entering the workforce as a machinist.

“Realizing that one size does not fit all and students having an option to broaden their horizons in studying something they have an interest in,” Hobbs said. “That is really why we have seen a jump in the postsecondary readiness, it is not that the students weren’t doing the work, but that we help the students to be where they want to be.”

Hobbs said it is not just HEM, but in all the schools in the district, in BOCES (Board of Cooperative Education in Schools) and the district itself. This type of learning doesn’t involve just the interaction between students and teachers, but between everyone in the building - from the janitor to the secretary, Hobbs said.

One example is the wingman program, where an adult takes a student under his or her wing, a student that they believe they can have an impact on. It takes a lot of work, because the adult learns a lot about the student from what they are interested in to what they plan to do in the future, Hobbs said. In response, the program has improved the attendance in school, has lowered the dropout rate and helped grades go up because there was someone to listen or guide the student without the student realizing it. Attendance is a main factor - “If we want students ready, we need them here,” Hobbs said. Parents, students and bus drivers can make an impact on whether the student wants to be in school.

Hobbs has witnessed this program making a difference, and it took just one person to step in and show interest in a student who was at risk.

Hobbs reiterated that even with parents' involvement, there may be some students who still struggle in school. Having that extra person take an interest reinforces their chance for success. Hobbs said it is not just parents and teachers or former students, but the whole community who can make a difference in whether a student can fail or succeed.

“It is not just one thing that has increased the score from 46% to 100%,” Hobbs said, it is a culmination of programs that have helped.

“We would be naive to think that this started last year or two years ago,” Hobbs said. “It has been in place before COVID. We are reaping the benefits from all those years of hard work.”

CCSD2 is a small district and because of that, Hobbs believes that the small schools and class sizes are beneficial for the students and the district can find the best solutions and focus on the students so that no one falls through the cracks.

“We have really fused together and it has been fun to see over the last few years,” Hobbs said.

His advice for other schools - do what is best for your building.

To learn more about each school's accountability reports list edu.wyoming.gov and click on “Data.” Then click on accountability reports, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on accountability reports again and choose a report. This will go to a page which lists years, districts and schools. Select the report of interest.

The numbers used for the purpose of this article are at the bottom of the page under the subheading - ESSA Subgroup Indicator Scores. The 2023-2024 scores was compared to 2022-2023 scores.