GATEWAYS TO THE FUTURE

Wow, this school year took off like a rocket for me. Metro is in its third year and not only do we now have three classes of about a hundred students each, we’ve opened Learning Centers and started student internships and college courses.

Since I’ve been in the thick of all the exciting things going on here, I’ve neglected to write about the goings-on and have left most of you in the dark. I can’t believe we’ve just finished the first trimester!! I hope it’s not too late to catch you up and keep you informed. I promise to try and write every week at least once (and hopefully more).

Where to start? How about the end of last school year? We had 27 out of 100 students from our original (guinea pig) Metro class successfully pass their Gateway exhibitions. To even qualify, they had to have earned 18 credits in the core high school coursework. This amounted to about 30% of the students keeping up with Metro’s accelerated pace and earning 90% or better in every assignment!

The exhibitions are formal presentations before a panel (some of you participated) to defend their readiness to attend college courses by providing evidence of their growth in their academics and the “Metro Habits.”

The Gateway is a Metro rite of passage, and an emotional award ceremony was held to honor each of them for their achievement. And then what do you think happened? Lo and behold, as they saw their classmates grabbing the brass ring, we had a surge of students coming in all summer to catch up in classes they were lagging in.

In the next two weeks, we have another group of students scheduled to do Gateway exhibitions. Contact me if you want to sit in!

Third year student, Micah Dillard proudly displays his Gateway certificate.