How to Succeed in High School (Hint: Really Try!)

For every eighth grader wondering what’s next, especially after visiting CHS in Action Night, senior Akira Davis has ten pieces of advice, ten tips for high school success. Davis and classmates in the Montrose Alternative High School program developed a pamphlet for distribution to rising ninth graders as a months-long project that combined writing, art, graphics, and numerous conversations about what high students need to know.

Since November, Davis and classmates had help with the project from members of the Community Coalition on Race (CCR). The project grew out of the CCR’s “Aim High Project,” which attempts to create integration and combat the achievement gap, according to Meredith Sue Willis, co-chair of the CCR Schools Committee.  The CCR has already done a "Top Ten Tips for Elementary Schools" and a "Top Ten Tips for Middle Schools."

In introducing the pamphlet and the project to a group of Davis’s schoolmates and guests, Willis noted that the goal was “to make schools welcoming to everybody, to make schools a success for everybody.”

Davis noted that her project grew out of a creative writing assignment, when she and her class wrote letters to their younger selves under the guidance of English teacher Elisa Pianka. The students considered the advice and counsel they would give to their younger selves, prioritized it, and boiled it down to ten top tips for high school success. Classmates crafted the graphics, and gave feedback and direction on the final project.

“It’s a great activity to connect students with the other school buildings,” said Denise Gionello-Moczulski, program supervisor at Montrose. “This is a very talented group of students.”

 As the pamphlet is finished, with student ideas and suggestions incorporated into the final version, it will be distributed at both South Orange and Maplewood Middle Schools, and posted on the CCR website.

“This tells kids what they need to know to start right,” said Davis.