Greetings from Johnston-Edgefield-Trenton (J-E-T) Middle School! Our faculty and staff encourage all students to develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate and the Profile of the Edgefield County Graduate by providing a student-centered community that prepares learners for the challenges of the future with an emphasis on skills necessary for success at the high school level and beyond. J-E-T Middle School promotes PRIDE (Personal Responsibility in Developing Excellence) and the students and staff begin each day by reciting our school creed to remind each other to exhibit PRIDE and to practice the 3 R’s: Respect, Responsibility, and Readiness to Learn. J-E-T also offers a plethora of opportunities for students to excel academically, athletically, socially, and emotionally through an emphasis on educating the whole child.
Accordingly, the administrators and teachers have worked to raise the academic rigor and authenticity of classroom instruction. To promote literacy, we encourage students to independently explore a variety of self-selected reading materials throughout their academic day and to share what they read with others. Our librarian encouraged students and teachers to read through participation in Battle of the Books. Furthermore, our young writers are recognized at the district, state, and national levels for excellence in writing. In 2022-2023, three students were recognized as Junior Scholars. Students also demonstrated academic excellence by participating in Math Counts, Mock Trial, and in our Beta Club. Our Mock Trial team earned a top spot in state competition and WON THE STATE Award. Ms. Rawls (Mock Trial teacher-coach) received Attorney Teacher Coach of the Year for the state. Our Beta Club not only stresses excellence in academics but also in community involvement as all members complete service hours in order to better our community.
To further assist students with their academic performance and emotional growth, we have scheduled single-gender and mixed gender classes. Thus far, our high-stakes achievement scores have shown improvement therefore supporting the national research findings of David Chadwell and illustrate that the single-gender strategy is effective for many of our middle-school students. We have also discovered that there are some students who perform better academically in a mixed-gender classroom. Therefore, we provide both options for students. J-E-T Middle School also reinforces the implementation of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. The 7 Habits continue to proactively establish behavioral expectations and a social culture that meets the needs of all students.
At J-E-T Middle School we offer other avenues of achievement in addition to academics. Our fine arts department, including band, chorus, and visual arts achieve at the regional and state levels. Our band is extremely successful; consequently, we had several students earn All-Region distinction and other students achieved All-State status. Our art department has been recognized on the local news on several occasions. J-E-T Middle School students have also excelled in basketball, football and volleyball as well, and our teams have won many regional championships since the school’s inception in 1993.
During the 2022-2023 school year we continued our Flippin’ Friday program for all students. This program included four periods per Friday that included a first period class where all students had the opportunity to reflect on and create weekly, quarterly, and yearly academic and personal goals, action steps to meet these goals, time with their teachers to work on meeting these goals, and enrichment opportunities if their academic goals were achieved. The first period also included a weekly focus on Olweus, an anti-bullying program. This process allowed students to begin to take ownership of their learning, analyze their own academic performance, and work in small groups with teachers to make improvements. With guidance from their teachers, students were responsible for documenting their progress in their digital PRIDE binders. We plan to build on this process by introducing student led conferences in the 2023-2024 school year. The remaining three classes on Flippin’ Friday included a math class, an inquiry class, and an ELA class. The focus of each class was to meet students where they were in their progress and design lessons around a station rotation model to include small group teacher-led instruction, a content based technology station, and a small group independent or collaborative group station.
This past year we highlighted many programs that will continue during the 2023-2024 school year. These programs included Gateway, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens/Advisory (morning meetings daily(Re-Think), grade-level student leadership committees, personalized learning, and academic pep rallies. The seventh graders learned about probability and made connections between it and genetics. The grade-level student leadership committee, piloted with seventh graders, allowed students to practice interpersonal skills and to collaborate with administration to help lead their peers into growing as more proactive students. In the upcoming year we will have students apply for a position on the student leadership team. We have focused on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens and continued to implement Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. A focus on the whole child includes growing our students socially and emotionally as well as academically.
Eagle Learning Communities (ELC's) provide weekly professional development for all teachers. These collaborative opportunities for professional growth allow teachers to explore research based teaching practices, implement writing across the curriculum, analyze data (MTSS) to inform instruction and work toward meeting expectations in the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate. Math and Science teachers participated in additional professional development on the iReady curriculum and science and engineering standards. Finally, students’ and teachers’ successes were celebrated during academic pep rallies. These events celebrated students who exhibited PRIDE, followed the three R’s, and made significant growth on MAP benchmark, i-Ready benchmarks and Lexia assignments. Teachers and students were also celebrated based on displaying one of the seven habits and being nominated for ‘Cookies for Kindness’ for displaying kindness throughout the day.
Building community and stakeholder relations is another important factor in the success of J-E-T Middle School, and through our Each One, Reach One program, local businesses are invited to spend a day experiencing middle-school life and discovering ways to become involved with our students. J-E-T’s PTO is rebuilding after Covid, but is active in bringing our school family together through fundraisers. Our previously-established School Improvement Council has been instrumental in creating a vision and a plan for bringing our school and our community together.
The faculty at J-E-T Middle School came together to provide meaningful instructional opportunities for our students. Under the direction of our district and school based instructional coaches, our teachers collaborated to meet the needs of all students. J-E-T Middle was successful in establishing station rotations, incorporating screencastify, and improving on the use of Google Classroom.
We invite you to visit our award-winning school any time.
