Conclusion

Sierra Vista's collaborative partnership with the TMS and its network of schools, organizations, and community businesses helps expand available resources for meeting the needs of students and staff members. The partnership is built on trust and a common interest in helping youths become contributing members of their communities. The TMS, with its emphasis on contextualized learning and internships, provides an ideal environment to motivate and engage the most difficult to reach students. Sierra Vista provides students academic learning in an array of programs and structures designed to move students into postsecondary education.

Through their partnerships, the TMS and partnership schools can provide numerous opportunities for students to become members of a community that appeals to their interests and needs. Rosa, for example, is a member of the AVID community, the hospital community, and the TMS community, as well as the larger Sierra Vista High School community. In each of Rosa's communities, adults can help to personalize her learning. Structures are in place that put students at the center. For example, a Community of Caring program has become a school club at Sierra Vista that plans and participates in service learning and community service activities. Moreover, the five core values around which Community of Caring is built (caring, respect, responsibility, trust, family) were incorporated into the school's mission and its Expected Schoolwide Learning Results. Staff development, grant writing, curriculum development, and other activities are infused with these values.

A student prepares her entry for the school's annual chalk art competition.

The desire to help students identify and achieve their life and career goals is certainly not without challenges. Currently, the foremost challenge is finding ways to help the approximately 400 students who continue to struggle to raise their grades above Ds and Fs. Each student has been assigned a mentor who can focus on his or her individual needs, and SVHS offers more elective options to spur students' motivation and connection to school.

A major factor in SVHS's success with students is a belief in the primacy of focusing on the individual student. Staff members of SVHS and the TMS help students connect to personally and socially meaningful endeavors, whether college, a job, the military, or technical training. Through a variety of options, the aim is to find that special set of conditions that engages a student to become a productive citizen and lifelong learner. To determine what that set of conditions might be, school staff members develop meaningful relationships with students. Not only does this enable them to understand individual students' needs, it allows them to demonstrate to students that they are important and valued as people.