Student Success Skills

Fulton County Schools introduces a program to teach students social and cognitive skills

Graphic Courtesy of Fulton County Schools

Krystal Wu, Social Media & Business Manager

Fulton County Schools (FCS) introduced Student Success Skills (SSS), a program meant to teach students skills applicable to all areas of life, during the last school year. By the spring semester, the district-mandated the program’s lessons for all schools, hoping to help students develop key skills during the transition back to face-to-face schooling.

“We looked at what we want students to be able to do as 12th graders when they graduate from Fulton and then break it down into the little ones,” Chelsea Montgomery, the FCS SSS coordinator, said. “We took what we want our graduates to be able to do and then unpacked them down in different grade plans.”

While FCS introduced this program with enthusiasm, some Northview students and teachers do not share the same sentiment due to the sensitivity behind the topics and the utility of the lessons. 

“I wonder if parents should be given these lessons, so parents can talk through it with their kids because to me its more of a parent issue than a teacher issue,” Megan Hart, British Literature teacher, said. “It’s something you work on with your parents or a trusted adult and not your teacher who’s teaching you about the Anglo-Saxons or calculus.”

She noted that since teachers do not receive specified training on how to teach these social and personal lessons, the range of potential instruction is limited. Since Hart only sees many of her students for an hour every day, it is hard for her to develop personal bonds with each student, so they might not feel comfortable enough to share about themselves. For students, questions of whether the program serves beneficial are being raised. 

“I guess I would use the lessons I learned in real-life situations, but to be honest, a lot of the lessons are more common sense or stuff we already know,” junior Alexis Ma said. “But to people who don’t really know those things, it would be good for them to use.”

Ma adds that since SSS is so new, she would prefer it to be optional. However, based on research conducted in the last decade, FCS recognized the need to implement a program like SSS to give students the best chance of success as they grow older. Montgomery shares that the company Rethink Ed designed the program and creates the lessons the students currently use.

“The research is pretty clear, kids that master these skills and adults that master these skills, their life outcomes are a lot better,” Montgomery said. “Everything from long-term staying out of public housing, staying out of prison, staying off of food stamps, to the whole other extreme when you look at the emotional intelligence side.” 

SSS is designed to be built upon every year, so students are taught the same six core concepts (sense of belonging, reflective learning strategies, self-management, social competence, collaborative problem solving, and self-awareness) in every grade. However, the lessons that correspond with the concepts differ; for each school and each grade, there exists a variety of lessons.

“They have given us a scope and sequence for each day of the year, so all the grade levels are doing the exact same topic, but every grade level has a different topic that fits with the lesson,” Christi Bounds, the Northview SSS coordinator, said. “The biggest thing that would be different about the different grade levels is that each lesson has a little different focus.” 

At Northview specifically, Bounds handpicks the lessons each grade receives. For classes with students from more than one grade, Bounds checks which grade makes up the majority of the class. While all of FCS uses SSS, schools choose specific lessons as they see fit for their student population. To complement the program, Northview created Titan Time, a 30-minute interval before third period, this year. Students can use the time to self-study on some days and participate in SSS lessons taught by third-period teachers on other days. 

Last year, sixth-period teachers taught the lessons at the end of the day. This, combined with the fact that most Northview students were remote, resulted in low participation levels.

“Last year was so hard because we were virtual, and we were trying to do it, and it was at the end of the day. We felt like that was very hard because everyone was tired, even teachers, so it was easier this year to move it earlier in the day,” Bounds said. 

With students back in the building this year, SSS has been more effective. Many of the lessons include videos and discussion activities that allow for more involvement. The program is still in its experimental phase, and FCS is considering making changes that could improve it.

“We were looking for someone who could then adapt [SSS] to big kids,” Montgomery said. “Some of the things, self-management and self-awareness, you might not need these skills right now, but you might need those skills later.”