DMS Principal Rodney Strutton runs his daily lunch study hall to help students catch up on missing and low-scoring work.
With the start of the semester, some students might notice their grades dropping quickly, as their missing work starts to mount.
The grades restarted Jan. 3, and missing work is having a sizable impact on student grades. However, Principal Rodney Strutton has developed a lunch study hall, which returned Tuesday for the semester.
Students who have missing or incomplete work are assigned to the lunch study hall by their teachers. As work is turned in teachers can remove them from the list.
Strutton said he has enjoyed being involved in the study hall program because it gives him an opportunity to work with the students.
“If we want to help kids gets good grades, we need to enforce rules about completing work,” he said.
Throughout the first semester, Strutton ran the study hall. He said the daily program has shown to be beneficial to student grades.
“For the kids who actually try, it helps,” he said. “If you don’t try at all, it does not.”
The theme of Duncan Public School’s this year is “Learning Is Not an Option.” At Duncan Middle School, the theme is “Dreams Don’t Work Unless You Do.” Strutton said that the study hall helps with meeting both of these themes.
He said the study hall was set during lunch because all class time is valuable. While many core classes, such as English and math, are tested subjects, he said pulling from any class period would negatively impact the learning process. He said it would be unwise to pull students from their elective classes, whether it’s art, health, humanities or something else.
As with core classes, elective classes are also graded an reflected on student transcripts.
“You do not want to pull kids out of elective classes,” Strutton said. “Elective classes are important, too.”
