Three classes at Northwood have participated in the Freshman Experience, or FX, program so far. The program was ended at the beginning of this year, and upon its departure, criticisms are mixed among students. The program was created when current seniors entered Northwood, and two other classes (2017 and 2018) have participated in it. In FX, World History and Health/P.E. are combined to create a year-long course.
One party believes that the program was not useful and that its demise was beneficial, while another is upset about its absence and thinks that current freshmen are put at a disadvantage.
“They’re going to miss out on a lot,” senior Amber Leviner said. “[Like] all the smaller activities to get involved [in].”
Activities within FX included days to get students together and compete in games, bonding activities and enrichment designed to unite the graduating class together.
Senior Kelsi Roland agreed with Leviner.
“I don’t know why they would get rid of it,” Roland said. “It helps a lot.”
Some students feel that FX was confusing. FX students operated on a schedule of “A” and “B” days. “A” days would correspond to one class and “B” to another, but since gym and health would also rotate within the class, it made for confusion as to where classes were held and on what day. Sophomore Kaelyn Oakes spoke on the day-to-day issue.
“It’s just always constantly changing and there wasn’t anything stable,” Oakes said. “Some days, especially on breaks, when even the teachers weren’t sure, it would be really annoying.”
Oakes referred to when the rotation would get thrown off with a day off of school. There was also the changing schedule with those students that had FX during third period, as their lunch would fluctuate with the subject change.
Sophomore Nathan Jones had FX third period last year.
“I didn’t like it that much,” Jones said. “It would disrupt our lunch because we had second and third lunch every other day.”
Assistant principal Phillip Little taught social studies at the time of the program’s formation and spoke on its origins.
“We looked at freshman failures, and out of the 13 pages of failures from the first semester of that year, seven of them were freshmen,” Little said. “So obviously, students were having difficulty transitioning socially, intellectually and work-ethic wise to high school.”
Little, along with other social studies teachers Skip Thibault and Mary Cox and the P.E. department, worked to create the program; it had four main goals.
“Students were to be writing every day, using their computers every day, learning how to think and learning skills that were going to help them be successful in high school,” Little said. “And ultimately, we just didn’t want students to be alone at lunch. We wanted them to get to know a group and to feel good about it.”
The program also aimed to raise the graduation rate by keeping freshman in a year-long class and engaging them enough to stay connected to their class. When the class of 2016 graduates, the data will contribute more information to the overall effectiveness of the program.
Little attested to increased growth rates for the first class in the program as measured by the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS), run by SAS in Raleigh. The system evaluates students and the amount of growth they are expected to achieve in a class in one school year. Students are expected by the system to achieve one year’s worth of growth at the most.
“We had kids in our World History classes that measured as four years’ worth of growth, and as an average for the entire freshman class, we had over one year’s worth of growth,” Little said.
With its positive goals and perceived success, some wonder why exactly FX got the axe. Apart from its obvious nuances like fluctuating lunches and class confusion, principal Justin Bartholomew shed some light on the end of FX.
“Data-wise, we have had these years of data [collection], and we have not seen any difference with or without FX,” Bartholomew said. “So when you see the no difference and then see the obstacles it causes…”
Some of the obstacles include problems with scheduling.
“FX, one of the things about it, is when you do a year long course, it makes the flexibility of scheduling very rigid,” Bartholomew said. “It makes it very challenging.”
When freshmen are locked into a year-long course, it limits their choices for electives that are only offered a certain semester or block. It also limits the number of courses they can take because of scheduling priorities and the graduation requirements needed by seniors.
Although the first class of FX freshman showed growth, data compiled from all three years as a whole does not exhibit the same results.
“If we were showing bigger growth, which is what EVAAS would show, it would definitely be something to sit there and look at, and those things didn’t happen,” Bartholomew said.
It would seem that the FX program does not leave a trace. This year’s freshman are the only class at Northwood to not have participated in the program, and most are unaware that it even existed.
When asked what it was, freshman Jenny Teague had a guess.
“Something with World History and P.E. at the same time,” Teague said. “A lot of people hated it, that’s all I know.”
– By Hunter Koch
