State testing days are among the most stress-inducing in any school year. Students don’t receive letter grades, but their schools do.
State accountability ratings, which measure proficiency and growth in reading, math and, in upper grades, science and history, provide a picture of a school’s overall performance.
Every South Pike school, and the district overall, received “D” ratings at the end of the 2015-16 academic year, and district officials have taken steps to prepare students for this year’s tests.
Last week, district officials tried something new.
Dr. I.D. Thompson, a Clarksdale-based motivational speaker, gave rousing talks Tuesday — the day before the last assessment testing of the year — at Osyka and Eva Gordon elementary schools, and South Pike junior and senior high schools.
In addition to Thompson’s credentials as an education consultant, he is an actor and minister, and he brought an evangelical zeal to his presentation in the Eva Gordon gymnasium. His talk there was the last of the day.
Roxie Baker, the Eva Gordon principal, was Thompson’s warm-up act, and she shared her own inspirational message. “The only thing that keeps you from being great is you,” she told the crowd of kindergarten-through-sixth-graders gathered to be motivated.
Thompson blended down-home storytelling with a physical energy that would inspire a rock star.
He began with a story about an eagle that had grown up among chickens and thought he was a chicken. The eagle was content to be a chicken until another eagle saw him and flew down.
“You are an eagle and you fly high,” the eagle said in Thompson’s story. “And if you don’t fly high you’ll be no better than the chickens.”
The South Pike mascot, coincidentally, is the eagle, so the analogy wasn’t lost on the kids.
Thompson led the students through a series of self-affirmations that he asked them to repeat.
“If it is to be, it is up to me” was followed by “I am strong, I am special, I am somebody.”
South Pike superintendent Johnnie Vick said that early in his education career, when he was a social studies teacher in the Mound Bayou district in the Delta, Thompson was his principal. Vick said that under Thompson’s leadership, John F. Kennedy High School’s state ranking increased several levels through “a combination of high quality teaching and Dr. Thompson’s motivational strategies.”
Vick sought and received approval from the South Pike school board to engage Thompson for $2,500 to speak at the four schools.
Thompson said after his Eva Gordon talk, “South Pike has an opportunity to be one of the best districts in the state.”
He suggested that a district whose students come from a larger geographic area have a different dynamic than those from a smaller area “who are on top of each other all the time.”
Judging by the cheers with which Thompson’s audience responded, his core message — “Don’t let anyone else write your story” — sank in.
It will be a long summer while district officials await the results of Wednesday’s testing.
