If you are a GlenOak High School student in Stark County, Ohio, you have a daily opportunity to plan a college future beyond high school. That opportunity is called the SBE period. It is a new twist to the school day, featuring career and college counseling for high school students, offered by Principal Mark Black and his staff. SBE stands for Soaring Beyond Excellent — excellent being the distinction that Plain Local School District in Canton and Plain Township has earned on the state of Ohio’s school report cards. In particular, GlenOak High School has received a state rating of excellent for eight consecutive years. Part of that excellence that Plain Local strives for is excellence in preparing high school students for college and careers, and ensuring that students are “college ready” by the time they graduate.
At Minerva High School in Ohio, students have a choice. It’s education or poverty, in the view of school leaders. And they’re not shy about saying so. Minerva High School will not permit a student to drop out of high school. It will do everything it can to prevent failure. Educational leaders take a hard, matter-of-fact approach to this work of keeping kids in school and pushing them to graduate high school.
Early in her senior year at GlenOak high school, Mercedes Marshall met counseling intern Kristen Zurbuch. And the direction of her life after high school changed. Before she met Mrs. Zurbuch, Mercedes had no college plan, only an interest in culinary arts and the hospitality industry, and a vague notion about college. Mrs. Zurbach, like other high school counselors at GlenOak, made a presentation to an English class at GlenOak on college opportunities. Counselors visit English classes because English is the one course that all students take. After the class, Mercedes and Mrs. Zurbach met, spurring a plan for attending college.
Just ask Braedon Suminski of the Early College program at Timken High School. He has one. Specifically, he has a four-year full tuition scholarship to Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. thanks to the QuestBridge scholarship. Braedon expects to graduate in the spring with an associate’s degree in electromechanical engineering technology from Stark State College, and a diploma from Timken High. His interest in engineering, fueled by his favorite television show, “Myth Busters” on the Discovery Channel, plans to study engineering physics at Washington and Lee.
SAMM — Science and Math on the Move — is a program run for Stark County’s math students and science students that, among many features, loans sophisticated scientific equipment to schools for math and science classes that otherwise might not be able to afford it. During a lesson this year in Ms. Gothard’s class, the science students used gel electrophoresis techniques to analyze two DNA samples and match them against the DNA of a fictitious criminal suspect, just as a police crime lab would do.
