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Best in the state
• Potts Camp sixth graders excel in math By SUE WATSON
Staff Writer  | Photo by Sue Watson
Talented class
This
group of Potts Camp students (last year’s sixth graders) is celebrating
outstanding academic achievement on state tests. The students are shown
with math teacher Vickie Teel (standing, second from left), principal
Leigh Anne Sanderson (standing, far right) and teacher Sherry Thomas
(standing, far left). |
Potts Camp is rocking this week as state curriculum scores arrived for the 2009-10 school year tests. Teacher
Vickie Teel is perhaps the most excited because her sixth graders last
year earned the highest scores for math in the state - 93.7 percent of
the class scored proficient or advanced. Proficient
shows mastery of the content and the skills required for success at the
next grade level (this year’s seventh grade), while advanced means
students are performing consistently beyond that required for the next
grade level. Last year’s sixth grade class also scored 77.1 percent proficient or advanced in language. Teel said it was not an unusual class, the students just worked hard. “You
work, you work and you work - just what you do every year,” she said
proudly. “I teach the way Chuck Poer coached us for testing – you
prepare for (your team to play) the best team.” Poer is a consultant who helps teachers get their students ready for the MCT 2 (Mississippi Curriculum Test). Hard
work and convincing students to believe they can do well on a
60-question math test is what it takes for them to succeed, she said. She
tells her students before they take the test, “As many math problems as
we’ve done this year, you can’t tell me these 60 questions are going to
get you this year.” Principal Leigh Anne
Sanderson is a huge support, as well as superintendent Don Randolph and
deputy superintendent Jerry Moore, Teel said. “Several
years ago, my scores were good and Mr. Randolph asked how I did it and
Jerry Moore said, ‘she doesn’t teach; she coaches,’” she said. Not
taking too much credit for herself, Teel said she is lucky she had good
teachers who helped the class before she got them in sixth grade. “We
had excellent teachers at Mary Reid and Potts Camp to prepare them
before I got them,” she said. “Mrs. Miriam Orman had this class in
reading and language last year. We worked together 11 years and helped
each other out.” So, Orman gets credit for the good scores in language as well, having worked with the top team in the state last year. Teel
is a seasoned teacher who has spent 18 years in the elementary
classroom. She taught one year at Galena in Chapter I reading, then six
years at Marshall Academy junior high, before joining the Potts Camp
school faculty where she has taught math the entire time. Her classes have met the 90 percent proficiency level before, but this is the first year her students were tops in the state. “I’ve been lucky,” she said. “We have always been good.” The
current math test is much more rigorous than the old test, which was
given four years ago before the test was changed, she said. Some junior
college students tell her the sixth grade is now studying problems in
algebra that they are having in college. “It is a
lot of higher-level thinking,” Teel said. “They told me, ‘it was easy,
it was easy.’ It is supposed to be easy. They were prepared. I didn’t
feel nervous. They get used to test taking.” Teel said her principal makes it easy to teach. Sanderson is there for the teacher to laugh and to cry with her. “She celebrates with you,” she said. “And Coach Stone and Mr. Martin, (assistant principals) help so much.” But good state test scores are not everything. It is important to see good report card scores, also, Teel said. Today’s
sixth grade and even the fourth and fifth grade levels in math are
tackling much more advanced subject content, she said, including
algebra, geometry and exponents. “It’s mind boggling what they expect fourth, fifth and sixth grades to do now,” she said. Teel
does not allow her students to leave a homework problem blank; they
have to attempt to solve every one or get a zero on the homework, she
said. “I demand they treat me with respect and
do what I ask them to do,” she said. “We have a lot of fun. We do lots
of fun things and they know this comes first. Usually they will say
sixth grade is their best year.” So, when it was
announced that last year’s sixth grade math class got top scores in the
state, Teel said she ran up the hill, burst into the seventh grade
class and promised them cupcakes. There will be lots of celebrating
this week with a newspaper article, the class’s photo in the paper and
other activities to top the week off near the weekend. Sanderson called Teel a “very hard worker and great motivator.” Potts
Camp has a reputation for being one of the best schools in the county
academically, she said. Students did well in Subject Area Testing this
year in biology and algebra. “We are proud of
their efforts and glad they (last year’s sixth grade) are getting the
recognition they deserve. They are a good group of kids,” she said. “We
are very proud of their scores - a testimony to their hard work and
their abilities.” |
