Graduate
Marietta – a Public Education Success Story
Published in Marietta Daily Journal April 30, 2017
No
man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a
part of the main. (John Donne, 1624)
These words from another century
ring truer today than ever. Playboy
turned minister John Donne must be smiling down out on Whitlock Avenue, there
where students are taught by example that we’re all in the boat of life
together.
Across
town at the Marietta Board of Education, community leaders and citizens
gathered on April 18 to celebrate success.
The event was a celebration of the first full year of the Graduate
Marietta Student Success Center of Marietta High School. Donne would call it “celebrating the family
of man.”
Remarks
from state Senators Lindsey Tippins and Michael Rhett as well as state
Representative Sam Teasley were affirming.
Senators Judson Hill and Hunter Hill, state school board member Scott
Johnson, and Georgia’s former First Lady Marie Barnes were also present. The
director of the center, former Marietta High School principal Leigh Colburn, gave
an overview of the center’s first year.
Graduate Marietta’s mission is to help
students stay on track in order to graduate.
The program was birthed by Leigh Colburn, a dynamo of energy and ideas
who is driven by a love for Marietta High School students. No wild-eyed visionary, Colburn was motivated
by facts and worked forward from those facts.
The
facts, according to a student survey, were that many students were failing to
graduate, not because they couldn’t measure up to academic requirements but
because home conditions and family dynamics were literally preventing their
success at school. While serving as
principal at MHS, Colburn was charged by the school board and superintendent to
create a program that would address the low graduation rate and the social
conditions that were contributing to it.
Colburn’s
survey further revealed that a large number of students were coming to school
from poverty, single-parent homes, and situations of drug abuse, transiency,
and mental health issues. Seeing the
magnitude of student needs, Colburn took the bull by the horns. Resigning from her principal’s position, she
molded an idea into a physical reality and became the center’s director.
Graduate
Marietta has its own “wing” at the high school.
A walk through it will reveal the good results that can come when school
and community work together. Because of over
50 partners and donors (corporations, churches, service clubs, small businesses,
and various organizations of all stripes), the center houses a counseling area,
computer labs, a food pantry, ESOL classes for parents, a school supply closet,
a tutoring area, and a café. Because of
after school programs, the center provides for a second, later bus route for
students who need transportation.
Student
testimonies indicate that the center is not taken for granted. The school’s creative efforts to produce a
helpful academic setting are appreciated.
One student wrote, “If I need help, I know someone in the center will
help me. Out of all the schools I went to, this one has helped me the most. I
don’t feel alone or lost.”
Attending
to social needs has neither altered nor diminished the center’s academic
purpose. During its first year Graduate
Marietta has held more than 7,000 tutoring sessions. Test preparation classes are held three
afternoons a week. The center has hosted
262 students for college recruitment visits and aided 35 students in meeting
military recruiters. The center’s amount of student assistance would be impossible
at the typical school. Donors, partners,
community leaders, volunteers, and a staff of 15 members make it possible.
It
was said of the turbulent French Revolution that what was lacking for France
was a Washington and a Jefferson, because passion without intelligence produces
chaos. Leigh Colburn’s passion is
matched with intelligence and practical wisdom.
“Our vision must always be for the next generation,” she stated.
The
splintering of the American family has placed untold burdens and unfair blame
on the nation’s educators. Charged with
teaching subject matter, they must do so amidst conditions which sociologist
Charles Murray described best in his book, “Coming Apart.”
Colburn
and company, however, are refusing to curse the darkness. Their task and their joy is to light candles
of action and push back the darkness.
For
the four decades I’ve lived in Cobb County, its “county seat,” (Marietta) has
remained a vibrant city. I say it’s
largely because of good leadership, particularly that of people like Leigh Colburn
who believe that no man is an island and that a sense of community is what all
of us, especially youth, need so badly.
Check
out Graduate Marietta soon.
Roger
Hines
4/26/17
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