Starting this fall, Harford County ninth-graders will take a new class designed to ease their transition to high school and into adulthood.
The year-long course will include lessons on learning styles, stress management, research methods and career decisions, said Gerald Scarborough, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. A unit on managing money and credit was included with the support of the local business community, he said.
Three units at the conclusion of the course will discuss living in one?s community locally, nationally and globally, said Supervisor of Social Studies George Toepfer.
Until the creation of the class, a focus on leadership and citizenship “had been missing across the board,” he said.
Together with “ninth-grade academies” that will give students their own classroom space in the county?s high schools, the “living in a contemporary world” class will be part of Harford?s new focus on freshmen.
The transition between middle school and high school is often a difficult one for ninth-graders, said schools spokesman Don Morrison. In middle school, students see the same teachers and peers every day. But in high school, 14-year-old students are suddenly in a far more mixed environment.
“You?re pretty much thrown to the wolves,” Morrison said.
Students who successfully make it through their first year of high school are four times as likely to graduate, said David Volrath, executive director of secondary education.
Toepfer hopes the final three units will help bolster performance in American government, another required class and a subject for standardized testing in Maryland.
Megan Roach, a rising senior at C. Milton Wright High School, said freshmen would likely benefit from the new program, especially asschools switch to a schedule with longer classes.
“All schools would benefit from this. … It is a big difference from middle school to high school, but this separates freshmen so they?re not just thrown in with the rest,” she said.
