This year, administrators and teachers at Cooper Middle School are hoping that 27 will be the magic number for their students.
“Twenty-seven minutes are going to be embedded in the schedule daily,” said Arlene Randall, principal at Cooper Middle School. “The idea is ‘time plus support equals learning,’ and the perfect time to do it is during the day when you have a captive audience. A lot of kids need that extra support.”
The school is also setting aside the 27-minute segment each day to help students with organizational issues and time management.
Randall said instructors at Cooper will also be emphasizing critical thinking skills in the coming school year.
“Some of our teachers attended a workshop on critical thinking skills and they got all excited about it, so everybody is very enthusiastic about this now,” said Randall.
Great Falls resident Una Higgins, starting her second year as president of the Cooper Parent Teacher Association (PTA), helped to organize the Aug. 28 “walk-around” orientation at the school. The event featured food from Baja Fresh and gave families new to Cooper the opportunity to meet with Randall, teachers and various PTA members.
“We wanted to make the orientation more family friendly,” said Higgins. “You could come and buy your lunch card, drop off your medications at the school clinic, or do whatever you needed to do. For new seventh graders it’s scary — there are five feeder schools that go into that one grade, and it’s a new middle school and it’s a big step.”
Last year the PTA focused on raising funds for various landscaping projects around the school and successfully installed a new patio area in front of the building so the students have a place to hang out.
“It just enhances the outdoor environment and the kids really like it,” said Higgins.
This year, Higgins said the PTA will focus on raising funds for several different technology improvements at the school. She said the PTA members hope to raise enough funds to purchase computers for online test-taking purposes, and for computers to be used in the new lab dedicated solely for journalism classes at the school.
THERE WILL ALSO be several new events at Cooper in the coming school year. Having helped to organize the popular Spelling Bee at Forestville Elementary School last year, Higgins plans to bring the Spelling Bee to Cooper as well.
“It was fun — it was really, really fun,” said Higgins. “I got to see the county one as well because my daughter and I volunteered there because we wanted to see how the other kids did, and so now we are going to bring one to Cooper.”
Higgins said the PTA will also bring back the Cooper Middle School Talent Show, and event that was started last year and saw strong student participation.
“We tried something new and it turned out to be a big hit, and it brought in the chorus and some other elements of the school, and it was just a huge success,” said Higgins.
However, Higgins said she is most looking forward to “International Night,” an event that has been a tradition at Cooper for several years now.
“It just brought so many people into the school that I had never seen before,” said Higgins. “The kids from Cooper are from all over and the food was just incredible. There were displays lining every corridor and they brought in artifacts by the truckload … it brought so many families in, and students too, and it was just a great community night.”
The Cooper administration is still deciding on whether to hold the school’s annual International Night in the fall, or next spring. Higgins said she is excited about the coming year and is looking forward to her second run as PTA president.
“I really like the job because I think they have an outstanding administration that partners really well with the parents, and that really likes middle school students,” she said.