The School Archive Project
Quintanilla Middle School was the founding school for the School Archive Project, an effort to help focus students onto their own history and plans for the future. Morale has been improved through a realistic focus on the future. Teacher Bill Betzen worked with a local Lowe's store to install a vault in the lobby in 2005 to create a student time capsule. Students are encouraged to write a letter to themselves. Their parents are also encourage to write a letter to their child about their dreams for that child. Both letters are placed together into the same envelope to be placed into the School Archive the last few weeks of 8th grade. A photo is taken of each Language Arts class holding their self-addressed envelopes in front of the School Arhive. Each child then places the envelope into the vault. In the following week each child receives two copies of that photo with details on the back for the 10-year class reunion, where to call to help plan it, etc... One copy is for the parents to keep in safe keeping and the other is for the child to keep. The school plans to host the first reunion in 2014.
The Archive Project started in 2005 with the 8th grade class that went on to become the Graduation Class of 2009. At both of the schools served by Quintanilla, Sunset and Pinkston, this was the largest graduation class in over 10 years! Enrollment spreadsheets taken from the Texas Education Web site data clearly show this pattern. The Pinkston High School 10-year enrollment spreadsheet is available at http://www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd/#pinkston to document this. The Sunset High School 10 year spreadsheet is available at http://www.studentmotivation.org/dallasisd/#sunset for the additional documentation of the results from this $2 per student project.
In the 2009/2010 school year the 11th and 12th grade classes at both Pinkston and Sunset, the high schools receiving almost all the Archive Project students, were the largest upper grade classes in history at both schools.
There are, as of 5-15-10, a total of 5 schools in DISD with active Archive Projects: three middle schools, one high school, and one elementary school. The idea is spreading.
The most recent article on the School Archive Project was written by Mercedes Olivera of the Dallas Morning News and published 5-15-10. It is online at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/localnews/columnists/molivera/stories/DN-olivera_15met.ART.State.Edition1.4fa3887.html
Read more about this topic: Quintanilla Middle School
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