The students had reduced the billions of miles in our solar system down to meters so they could better grasp its size, and Ash had already measured out 11.6 meters from the stop sign/sun to Mercury, 10 more meters to Venus and - after traveling the 8.4 meters to Earth - went another 15.6 to Mars.
At each stop Sitter filled them in on the planet in question - the temperature on Venus is 900 degrees, for instance, hot enough to melt lead.
Ash, meantime, left the road when it curved, climbed a hill, went through a fence, and almost disappeared over a crest as she headed into the PHS athletic fields in search of the spot where Saturn would sit in relation to the sun.
“How far would she have to go to get to Uranus?” Sitter asked the girls, who checked their charts.
It'd be more than 300 more meters.
“She'd be way out in a cow pasture somewhere,” Sitter said.
Finding Neptune might have taken her to the far-off Flathead River.
Back in the classroom, Sitter put up one slide showing all the planets, and for more than 20 minutes the girls asked questions about the four inner planets, and four outer planets.
Saturn could actually float on water?
Almost all of them seemed engaged by the subject, almost all remained focused even after the class entered its 100th and final minute. They're doing well - half of them are doing B work or better, and more than
91 percent are passing.
Here's the one thing you need to know about this class:
Based on their performance in middle school, 100 percent of these students were predicted to flunk earth science in their first year of high school.
Upstairs in an English 9 class, teachers Lori Dickson and Linda Goldeski were entering their second straight period with 16 boys who are getting ready to read “Jason's Gold” by Will Hobbs, a popular author among young teenage boys.
These students, too, were identified as ones who might have difficulty in a traditional classroom in their first year of high school.
Polson school administrators decided to try something different to help students, who struggle in middle school, succeed in their first-year core requirements in high school. Math classes at PHS have long done something called “leveling,” where students are grouped into algebra classes based on ability, and the curriculum is adjusted accordingly.
“But our stats for the last five years showed that if freshmen are going to fail, it will be in English 9 and earth science,” says assistant principal Dan Kimzey. “They may do OK in other areas, but they're going to struggle in those two.”
Kimzey proposed, and principal Rick Rafter agreed, to try something they'd done at Grand Forks Central High School in North Dakota, where Kimzey taught prior to moving to Polson.
The idea is simple. Double the time students spend studying a subject, but only do so for half the year.
Then, for the second semester, put them in another subject and again double the time.
It reduces the student's core coursework by one - the boys in English 9 haven't had to worry about also passing earth science this semester, while the girls in Sitter's class have been able to concentrate on earth science without having to tackle English 9 yet.
Meantime, those who earn passing grades will, at the semester break, already have earned a full year's credit in a core class needed for graduation. That's important, Kimzey says, because many students who drop out in their junior or senior years do so because they flunked a required class in their first year of high school, and would rather quit than retake a freshman-level class.
The best measuring stick for the program they call Cohort - mostly, Kimzey says, because they had to come up with a name for it - will be 3 1/2 years down the road, when school officials know if it has increased the graduation rate.
The first semester of the new program isn't even over yet. But to date, the numbers say it's succeeding. Eleven of the 12 girls in the earth science class are passing, as are 14 of the 16 boys in English 9.
“We just had to quit forcing square pegs into round holes,” Kimzey says. “I told the teachers, if you're in a yearlong English 9 class where you cover A to X, to look and identify the most important things you want the students to learn. If you cover 100 things and these kids learn 15 and fail, try picking 30 things you want them to know.
“Even if they learn 25, they've learned more than they would have in a regular classroom. I'd rather they were actually learning and retaining and knowing critical things.”
“To be honest, I was skeptical,” says Sitter, in his fifth year at Polson High School. “I was certain I was in for a rough year. On the flip side, when I got a real good sense of the support the administration was willing to give us, I felt better.”
That came early in the school year, when Sitter proposed a field trip to Glacier National Park for his Cohort students.
Half of them had never even been to the national park, whose West Entrance is 70 miles from Polson.
“That really turned out to be the springboard for the class,” Sitter says. “It sunk some hooks into them. They seemed to think, ‘We're really going to do this, and this is going to be different from the average class.' ”
“It's by far my favorite,” says Alonna Morris, who admits she's not looking forward to the end of the semester.
“I'd rather take earth science again,” she says.
One of the twists to Polson's program is that they divided the students based on gender, in large part so the English 9 curriculum could be tailored to the interests of boys and girls.
The girls, for example, will not be reading about the adventures of a 15-year-old boy when their turn comes around next semester.
But the girls say it's had other benefits.
“We're all different girls from different cliques,” says Mariah Armstrong, “but we all get along in here.”
“If it wasn't for this class, I wouldn't be friends with a lot of these girls,” Morris adds. “And with no boys in the class, I definitely pay more attention. Boys make a class rowdy.”
That doesn't surprise Kimzey.
“Girls tend to be shy as freshmen,” he says, “especially if they're in a mixed group. But in (the Cohort Program), you'll find them actively engaged without concern about what the boys will think of them.”
Without girls in the classroom, meantime, the boys find themselves in interesting situations, too. While the class can be customized to their interests, they can't, for instance, avoid Shakespeare.
“We studied ‘Romeo and Juliet,' and they all took turns reading the different parts,” says Goldeski - including Juliet's. “Then we showed the scenes they'd just read from the movie, and then they had to write newspaper articles about each act.”
Morris says the girls feel comfortable expressing themselves in a classroom with no males - save for Mr. Sitter, who the girls say they offer fashion advice to, such as “green is a fall color” - and feel free to offer observations and ask questions they might not if boys were present.
And, adds freshman Natasha Lafferty, “What happens in the classroom, stays in the classroom.”
Sitter says it works, and that one slide of the planets producing 20 minutes of classroom discussion - ended only by the bell - is proof.
“I could put up the same slide in a regular class and get four or five questions,” he says. “I get better thinking, and deeper thoughts, from this class than I get out of A students sometimes. These girls aren't trouble. They're just ones who in a regular class might fade into the background, not turn in all their work and quietly fail.”
There are some kinks to be worked out, mostly in identifying which students will benefit and which can succeed in a traditional classroom - but if things keep going as they have, Kimzey says Polson will consider extending the program to the sophomore-level English 10 and biology classes.
Sitter, the one-time skeptic, is sold on the idea now that he's seen it at work.
“If you can get them through two years of science this way,” he says, “their odds of graduating are so much greater than they would be without it.”
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at (406) 319-2117 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com
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