Right this way: New Hope Middle students guide Red Carpet Tour through school

Oct. 18—"Welcome to New Hope Middle School. We will be your tour guides today," said Jocie Pallares as she and Miya Smith walked down the school's hallway, directing visitors through the building. "Follow us."

Pallares and Smith, eighth-grade student council members at New Hope, served as guides for visitors during a Red Carpet Tour of the school Tuesday morning.

Red Carpet Tours are a joint effort between area school systems and Believe Greater Dalton and the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce that allow members of the community to receive an in-depth look inside the inner workings of a typical school day.

On Tuesday, the entrance to the school's lobby was adorned with red carpet as student council members from the sixth, seventh and eighth grades welcomed visitors from the Boys & Girls Club of Dalton, Whitfield County Schools and WorkSpace Interiors of Chattanooga. The visitors received "VIP" (very important person) treatment with a photo shoot with the school's Kodiak bear mascot.

Student involvement

The beginning of the tour saw the students lead the group down each grade's hallway, making the first stop at the gym. There, members of the school's buddy program were playing life-sized versions of board games such as Connect Four and checkers.

"New Hope Middle School has always had a spirit of inclusion and acceptance, however, our school took this one step further last year with our buddy program," said Keighton Langham, one of the student council members helping with the tours. "The buddy program allows general education students to partner with both our autism resource and self-contained (special education) classrooms in fun and exciting activities several times a month. The goal of this program is to build lasting friendships and benefit both groups of students."

The giant-sized games were a product of a grant written by New Hope Middle instructional coach Mandy Crossen and connections and careers teacher Paige Buckner.

"They get to come in here and play," said Crossen. "Our goal is to get the kids engaged and talking to each other instead of just on screens. I have some epic battles in my classroom with life-size Uno cards. They love it, but they can get pretty heated with their games."

Eighth-grade student Courtney Sheets greeted visitors during the next stop, where she talked about the school's recycling efforts.

"Our recycling program allows students, parents and community members to drop off their paper and plastic recycling at New Hope Middle School," said Sheets, toting a wagon full of recycled cardboard boxes and plastics.

"The recycling is collected weekly and taken to a recycling center where it begins its journey towards its new life," she said. "Our school competes against other schools in the area. This past year we won the competition and were awarded a lovely, large picnic table that sits at the end of our hallway. Students are able to use the table for outside lunches and learning."

The tour also included information about New Hope Middle's Energy Team, which focuses on using energy more efficiently within the school. The school recently partnered with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and North Georgia EMC to learn more about conserving energy to save money and educate students on energy-saving strategies in order to reduce kilowatt usage by 8% by the end of the school year. The Energy Team includes students from each grade level as well as teachers.

Unique features

The tour also included a look at the New Hope Calming Cave, a flexible and multifunctional classroom environment that students with sensory, emotional or physical needs can access. The room is dimly lit and features sensory play features such as a ball pit and wheelchair-accessible swing.

Other stops included the band and music rooms as well as a piano lab designated for keyboard learning. Tour members also took part in an activity as part of a classroom's genetics project in which they participated in a survey detailing various genetic traits.

The tour group made its final stop in the media center, which houses more than 10,000 books and 68 audiobooks, where students were participating in an "escape game" in which they had to work together to complete puzzles and solve problems as part of a group exercise.

Stephani Womack, the director of education and workforce development for Believe Greater Dalton and the chamber, said the Red Carpet Tours were developed in February.

"Our goal was to try to find a way to connect our community better with our schools, so one of our objectives for Believe Greater Dalton is to improve school perceptions, both internally and externally," Womack said. "So we decided that getting people into our schools was the number one way to do that because they can see what actually takes place in the classroom rather than just assuming it's exactly like it was when they went to school."

Womack said the New Hope Middle tour was the 11th collaboration between the school systems and Believe Greater Dalton thus far.

"It's been a great partnership," she said. "On the same token, we wanted to give our school systems a better understanding of what's going on in the community, so, at the same time as our Red Carpet Tours, we launched our Educator Industry Tours, where we're taking principals, teachers, counselors and administrators on bus tours around the community to show them all the industry and career opportunities for students."

Importance of connecting

Before the tour began, New Hope Middle School Principal Belinda Sloan addressed the group in the lobby and detailed the work that is being done within the school.

"Middle school is an important time in kids' lives because they come into their own and we take that very seriously," Sloan said.

New Hope, which opened in 2006 and was the last middle school added to Whitfield County Schools, currently enrolls 442 students between the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

"About 20% of our student population are special education students, which is a pretty significant chunk," Sloan said. "We have two specialized programs such as a self-contained special education program and an autism program."

Sloan also detailed the large Hispanic presence within the school.

"About 50% of our students are hispanic, so, like a lot of the schools in our county, we face the challenges that come with language barriers," she said. "Communication is very important to us and we don't want to leave those families out. So we communicate, we have translators, and we send everything home in English and in Spanish. We want to make sure that we can communicate with all of our people.

"We also have almost 70% (students with) free and reduced lunch, so we do have a socioeconomic issue. Some of our kids have challenges outside of school and we realize that and try to address that. All of our teachers are on two- or three-man teaching teams, and that is by design. We think the relationship between our kids and adults is very important in this stage of the game, so we want adults that can really connect to them because that is important to us."

Sloan ended by mentioning the school's monthly student data meetings.

"We have a data room where we have every student across the board represented. Our teachers meet in there once a month and we review student data, not just academic, but also attendance, behavior, all kinds of things. We want our kids to be successful in high school, so our teachers look at this as a three-year project, not just grade level by grade level. We look at the kids we have coming into sixth grade and how far we are going to take them before they exit eighth grade."

Womack said there are five more tours scheduled for the remainder of the school year. The next tour will be at Roan School on Monday.