The Republican from Springfield, Massachusetts (2024)

March 18, 1992

Publication:

The Republicani

Location:

Springfield, Massachusetts

Issue Date:

Wednesday, March 18, 1992

Page:

62

Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Students get second chance on high school careers By DON CONKEY Its name is relatively long and cumber some: Middle College High School at Springfield Technical Community College But its philosophy is beautifully unclut tered a school that simply offers people a second chance to get their high school careers in order The Middle College High School at STCC which formally opened in January provides an alternative educational program for Springfield public school students 40 students in program The 40 students enrolled there all have one thing in common or whatever rea sons they were well behind their scheduled graduating high school class being in eighth or ninth grade for instance when they should have been juniors or seniors As program director it was largely Charles job to recruit those candi dates from public school sys tem What did he offer? An opportunity to ac celerate the process toward graduation in a predominantly federally funded program officially recognized as a Springfield public school and as a bonus earn some money in jobs link lined up with area companies The students work at those jobs weekday mornings and attend classes on the STCC campus in the afternoons generally leaving school until around 6 pm Still photo bv Mark Murray A 'A '1 SWB i i' IK wt" 1 4 i Wa anus i 3 8 GETTING A HAND Teacher Susan Szczebak left helps student Gisela Davi la with a computer problem at Middle College High School at Springfield Tech nical Community College UNION NEWS WEDNESDAY MARCH 18 A ll fe I 'isssss i jr 7 i iMg Staff photo bv Mark Murray COMPUTER HELP Springfield teacher Deb Gay Pinucci center works with student Ilish Parrish at Middle College High School at Springfield Technical Community College GG Any ambitious program needs tools to make the ambi tions materialize What did link expect in return? The willingness to work Hard a very diffi cult he said certainly not for everybody a very long day And for kids who have had maybe 20 percent atten dance for a year or two prior to coming to us to expect them to do this kind of pro gram is very Not only is the program a second chance for these students terms of the tradi tional high school setting a four year high school diploma it may be the last link said Ambitions materialize Any ambitious program needs tools to make the ambitions materialize or thefiddle College High School at STCC one Tnvaluable tool has been the Union News been using the newspaper a great deal for our link said of our teachers have been working with with many projects by students aided by or ideas from the link pointed out how one math class uti lized the newspaper lot of the students have an interest in cars and one of the les sons that we did dealt with buying cars Students looked in the newspaper want ads found the model of the car that they were interested in looked at prices called banks to find out loan rates figured interest rates did the math to find out monthly costs a lot of math involved there say using the newspaper heavi ly is an he laughed sically right now our only Textbook example And hopefully the school itself will serve as a textbook example of how to help children help themselves first major objective is to get them to stay in link said second objective is to get them ready for life after high school our plans work out hoping to be able to have our kids take courses at STCC Those courses would count as double credit: credit toward their high school diploma and when they graduate courses that have accelerated the students into the STCC pro gram not only would we be getting a stu dent graduated close to the time he normal ly would be but if they want to attend STCC would have close to a semester of college credit we were recruiting students we were looking for people whose ambitions and dreams in their own minds exceeded what their reach was What we wanted to do was just try to extend their reach for Rosemarv David Brightwood School in Sorinofield "you'll do tJ ne 1 3.

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