By Clinton Middle School
With the current push in our school district, Anderson County Schools, and in the State of Tennessee to promote success for every student, every day, Clinton Middle School has drawn up plans to transition from a traditional middle school to a “College and Career Academy.â€
On Monday night, March 5, 2018, the Anderson County Board of Education unanimously approved the CMS administration’s plans for huge changes coming next school year. To start the 2018-19 school year, the hometown middle school will be Clinton Middle School: College and Career Academy.
This will serve first to create an environment of goal-attaining, resilient young people working with educators to close achievement gaps and to gain awareness of the world beyond secondary education. Plans have been set in motion to create the following: advisory programs, grade level college and career focuses, diverse related arts programs, financial literacy programs, and community service projects.
Each grade level will focus throughout the year on a different aspect of college and career readiness. Sixth grade will focus on career certifications and will take quarterly field trips to ACCTC, TCAT, and Junior Achievement. Seventh grade will focus on two-year college programs and will take quarterly field trips to Roane State, Pellissippi State, and Volunteer State community colleges. Finally, eighth grade will focus on four-year colleges and universities, and will take quarterly field trips to University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Tennessee Tech, and other colleges of choice.
Related arts programs, which currently include courses in the fine arts (band, jazz band, chorus, visual arts), work-based learning through our teacher assistant program, career and technical education (teen living, technology, engineering), as well as physical education, will be extended. There are plans to offer additional courses in digital arts and coding as well as culinary arts. CMS will continue to work with Junior Achievement to support a strong sense of financial literacy.
CMS students will now follow a course registration guide with plan of study, much like students will find in high school. This guide requires students be promoted to the next grade level, and eventually to Clinton High School, by meeting a specific credit system in not only academics but also related arts, CTE programs, and Junior Achievement trainings.
Also, CMS students will work to give back to the communities we all serve through community service projects attached to various school, club, and athletic programs.
To meet the goals of this transition, CMS, with Board of Education approval, will be forming an advisory board of CMS staff, Anderson County Schools staff, community stakeholders, parents, and students. The CMS College and Career Academy Advisory Board’s first goal will be to develop an implementation plan and timeline for the transition and also to begin plans for the advisory program, to take place once a week during our Hawk Time intervention and enrichment period, as well as the development of the Clinton Middle School Registration Guide.
On behalf of the staff of dedicated educators at CMS, we appreciate all support of this program. We believe this will be the way to make our school stand out academically and in terms of breaking ground in adapting the middle school experience to the rigorous demands of making our students college and career aware and ready.
We believe in, and are excited about, bringing more focus and student accountability to our great school, building relationships with our students, unifying a culture of learning and growth, and using our unique identity as a College and Career Academy as a means of garnering excitement about being a Hawk from Clinton Middle School.
Clinton Middle School is a public middle school serving grades 6-8 in Clinton, Tennessee, and is part of Anderson County Schools.
See the Clinton Middle School press release here.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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