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Demographic: 75% minority students, 79% Socioeconomically Disadvantaged, and nearly three quarters of student body participate in the Free Lunch program.
Background: Mount Clemens High School for a number of years has suffered from declining enrollment. The school is serving some of the region north of Detroit's most at risk students. Compared to the state average, the school has nearly double the number of students receiving Free or Reduced Lunch. The school has struggled to meet state proficiency on standardized exams.
Two years ago in an effort to help students be more successful, a cohort of teachers committed to implementing Organized Binder with fidelity. The gains reported from students and teachers have given the school a much needed boost!
Five of those gains reported by Mount Clemens:
In addition, Mount Clemens has reached out to their feeder middle school to help them adopt Organized Binder. As a result, the system is helping ease the transition to 9th grade and therefore helping freshmen be more successful when it comes time for them to transition to Mount Clemens High School. As one teacher at the school said, "As a high school teacher it is great having the students come up to us with the knowledge about and familiarity with Organized Binder. It helps students know the purpose of the class and how the system shows students how to organize themselves."
The following excerpts are from teachers at Mount Clemens reflecting on what Organized Binder has helped them accomplish at their school:
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Class time is used more effectively: "I have noticed a positive change in the beginning minutes of my classroom after using this system. The students immediately come grab their binder and open to their agenda page. We spend 2-3 minutes updating calendar, talking about upcoming events, and updating our table of contents. We move directly into our kickoff and then the lesson for the day. Transitions have become almost seamless."
Students are more organized and easily adopt the system: "The kids tell me they like the system because everything they need is in one place, they don't have to go searching through folders to find homework/assignments/notes."
"The students find the binder extremely easy to use, and are comfortable with the different sections. For the first time I see some unorganized students taking pride in their binder and organization of it. They are extremely excited to have a way to keep track of all of their work and grades. My unorganized students love showing off their organized binder."
More productive classroom discussions: "I have seen the number of students who actively participate in "Kick-Off Prompt" discussions double."
Organized Binder helps reduce classroom management issues: "OrgB helps the teacher not only with organization, but classroom management and procedures. Keeping an up-to-date in class binder helps absent students know exactly where to go to see what they missed when they were gone. This helps free up the teacher and allows the classroom to run more smoothly and efficiently."
Teachers Love Organized Binder: "I absolutely love the Organized Binder system, this is my 2nd year using the program and I am hooked."
