Slow and steady wins the race. Earlier this month Iola High was recognized as Kansas’ best character building high school. The Kansas State Department of Education honor, which grades schools on 11 principles ranging from community involvement and staff buy-in to a comprehensive curriculum and family engagement, came this year, but the work started a half decade ago, said IHS Principal David Grover.
“It’s been a long, thought-out process. We spent a lot of the first year planning and identifying what we had to do, and it was pretty clear that character and behavior are what we needed to attack because that would have an impact in the classroom and spill over into the content area.”
Grover said what started with offering one leadership seminar to students has turned into a culture of involvement among USD 257 students.
Since 2008, Iola High students have raised money and donated time for the benefit of dozens of local organizations and peers in the community.
Sue Kidd, character development specialist for KSDE, said the successes of Iola High’s leadership program and Link Crew, groups dedicated to helping younger students transition to life in the high school and volunteerism, speak to the efforts made district wide.
“They have a tremendous amount of buy-in from everyone within the school,” she said.
Grover said his colleagues have made it a priority not only to convey a message of involvement to the students but also to the parents.
Last spring, IHS had 95 percent of students’ parents attend spring conferences, a remarkable figure when compared to the national high school average of 30 percent conference attendance, Grover said.
“Whatever we’ve tried to do we’ve tried not to be a flash in the pan,” he said.
The national character education achievement will be awarded at a ceremony in San Francisco, Calif. in May.
