MADISON COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — A lot of work from two teachers at Madison Central High School has turned into solid strides for students at the school. They took a non-traditional approach to pep rallies and it's paying off in the classroom
The tribe rallies at Madison Central are jam packed, high energy.
"We try to recognize in front of the whole school," Principal Brandon Fritz said.
Fritz has been supportive through initiatives like Tribe Awards from teachers Sara Martin and Lindsey McKay.
Last May, we brought you the story of Roger Brown, a 10th grader with Down Syndrome, competing in the finals of musical chairs, a culture building activity.
These rallies recognize many teams and clubs who have achieved success.
"It doesn't just have to be maybe a sports team in the traditional sense, and so we worked hard on deciding how we can include everyone," McKay said.
The first Tribe Rally here at Madison Central took place last spring and it was a great way, according to McKay and Martin, to focus on the entire student body.
"We asked Mr. Fritz and he's awesome, he's super supportive admin, and he said okay, let's do a Tribe Rally, let's do something fun for the kids, and we did one, and the kids loved it," Martin said.
But that's only part of the story. Last fall, Martin and McKay started an Instagram page, regularly posting there and on Facebook to get the word out about the rallies.
Juniors Stella Hatfield and Reagan Morgan are two of the 23 students helping to run the socials, as well.
"I love it, it's probably what I look forward to the most throughout the day. I feel like it's had a very large impact and kids get excited when we come to their classroom and we're like hey, who wants to be on social media. It's not just the same people over and over," Hatfield said.
"We have the best teachers doing it, so we love them, and I think our community in our social media class, we all have become like family too, Morgan added.
Martin and McKay feel that positive culture led to major improvement in the classroom. Madison Central, up two spots this past year from yellow to blue in the color-coded rating through Kentucky Summative Assessment, improved from a score of 66.3 to 81.
The school's principal believes relationships drove those test scores.
"Our teachers work really, really hard. We made it a push last year...we'll make it a push again this year. We challenged the kids. I told our students when they got back from fall break, it's great to get to the top, it's harder to stay on the top, so we need to accept the next challenge and try to get there again next year," Fritz noted.
It's daily work highlighting students who embody teamwork, respect, integrity, belonging and excellence.
Through KSA Testing, Madison Central's reading and math scores jumped from 54.2 to 85.4 this past year.
