The Snyder ISD school board and administration hosted an online meeting Monday afternoon to continue work on a cohesive vision of the skills and knowledge a Snyder High School graduate should possess.
The meeting was conducted as part of the district’s work with Lone Star Governance (LSG), a division of the Texas Education Administration designed to improve the performance of local school boards.
“You have a vision statement, but the understanding with Lone Star Governance is that these goals that you set as a board become the vision,” said the district’s LSG coach Laurie Elliott. “They are the vision for your students in those particular areas, and this board has worked very, very hard to determine the areas that will definitely push this district forward.”
During the meeting, those in attendance responded by phone or internet poll to submit descriptive words for Snyder ISD graduates.
Participants submitted a variety of words to the poll. The most popular terms were driven, motivated and resilient.
Next, participants were asked to share their image of what a Snyder High School graduate should be.
Ramon spoke about his own sons’ experiences.
“I wanted my sons to leave here, you know, one did go to college and graduated, the other one decided he wanted to go to work. He tried college and it wasn’t for him,” Ramon said. “The other one, I wanted him to be skilled and I wanted him to be self-motivated, because I didn’t want to have to take care of my two sons once they left the house.”
Snyder teacher Alonzo Chavana said he wasn’t prepared for life when he graduated from high school.
“I could play a heck of a football game and all that, but coming out of high school, I was dense. I just wasn’t there. I was not prepared,” he said. “I think we need to have these students — and I’m talking coming out of eighth grade — when we leave junior high (school), they need to be prepared for high school, and when they leave high school they need to be prepared for going out into life.”
2020 Snyder High School graduate Kate McWilliams suggested that teachers should model reading and writing.
“I think what we could do better as Snyder ISD is, I think we should read in the classroom more,” she said. “Even if it’s just the teacher reading to the students. Instead of summer reading projects, I think teachers need to read in the classrooms, because kids, you can assign a book during the summer and kids just aren’t going to read it. That’s just how kids are nowadays. And then transition over into writing. Once you become an effective writer, you’ll become an effective communicator. And that transitions over into ACTs, STAAR tests, anything like that. It will not only help reading scores, but science scores and math scores, because your comprehension is way better.”
Doug Hughes suggested teaching basic skills.
“We used to call it humanities,” he said. “I think you’d be surprised how many students cannot even fill out an envelope. How to do certain skills that you’d take for granted that you’d be surprised they don’t know how to do. How to fill out a tax form. How to make change without a calculator.”
Kaylee Neff suggested having students take a career interest survey each year to track how their interests change from year to year and get them to think about goals for their education. Snyder’s Chief Academic Officer Dr. Rachael McClain said participation in the meeting offered some valuable insights into developing a template for a Snyder High School graduate.
“We can work up some different models,” she said. “We’re very focused, it sounds like, on college, career and military readiness. We’re very focused on students functioning independently in society after they graduate.”