Metea Valley high school has shared their care and support for newcomers of the Metea Valley community with the student transfer program; however, there is lots of room for improvement.
The Metea Valley transfer student program is what seems to be helping our community get involved. Not only that, it also sets our new coming students on the pathway to success academically and socially in the school atmosphere.
In order to be placed in the right classes, transfer students need to take a survey. Department chair Brandy Bane explains this.
“It’s called a Home Language Survey. And if they say that there is a language other than English spoken in the home, then we automatically have to go through this process of testing them on their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills to see where they fall.” said Bane.
To be considered at the same language proficiency level as English-speaking peers, the transfer students have to get a 4.8 or higher. If they score lower than 4.8, the ELL department has to assort students into where they best fit.
Brandy Bane said, “There’s a lot of investigating involved to make sure that they’re getting the proper classes, the proper support, being sure that they can graduate at the regular time, based on their grade level in their age level.”
Amanda Pyzik, the Mental Health Coordinator, looks into making improvements on the current transfer students program.
“I think one of our goals is to work with Miss Bane to try it because we know a lot of our students coming in are English learners, to try to recruit some of the for the students that were formerly in that program to kind of be an ambassador and come back and help support new students coming in.” said Pyzik.
Although the transfer student program asks the volunteers to state what language they are able to speak, they still are limited to a smaller number of student advocates and struggle finding guides to speak the same language as the transfer student; this makes it harder to have them fit where they need to be.
Pyzik says, “We should be recruiting students from our language classes, like our Spanish fours or how do we get other students involved in that process of meeting with kids, inviting them to lunch, walking them around helping them get to their club or activity. I think that is something that we definitely want to do better with.”
The staff accept that there is immense room for improvement. Bane plans to set a procedure of conducting interviews with transfer students’ families; this procedure would replace filling out a survey. Bane hopes this will work in favor of the student and serve them better, as setting up interviews with the families will help them get a clearer picture of what assistance is needed for them to be most successful at Metea Valley.
Click on the social worker to learn more about our transfer student program, or the student to find out what transfer students think of the experience.
Graphic by: Luisa Bernardino
