ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Hazelwood School District is seeing success with it's 'Thematic School Model' at Hazelwood Southeast Middle School in its first year of the testing.
In August 2023, KMOX brought to you the story that Hazelwood Southeast Middle School was transitioning to a 'Thematic School Model' where teachers at Southeast Middle School would work Tuesday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and only be required to work 11 of 31 Mondays during the school year, which began this year.
"When you add all the time up, even though those teachers will have 20 Mondays off, they will be actually be working a bit more than other teachers at other schools and we're paying them an extra $6,500 on top of their regular teachers salaries." said Eric Arbetter, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and middle school education in Hazelwood District on The Chris and Amy Show Thursday.
Students would still go to classes all five days, with Mondays the school offering classes with help of local community partners like the St. Louis Zoo. Some of the classes offered include STEM literacy, African drumming, coding classes, farming and designing zoo habitats.
"We have a ton of career partners coming into the school to teach career-focus activites as well as social, emotional and learning activities," said Arbetter.
Arbetter explains that the program is mostly due to the district's difficulties dealing with a teachers shortages.
"Teacher's shortages are affecting us, as well as everyone in the nation, just due to the stresses of everyday teaching," said Arbetter.
But so far, Arbetter says the benefits have paid off for the district, with more teachers putting more interest at potentially working at Southeast Middle School, a school that has been historically tough for the district to staff.
"This school year, we're having very fewer vacancies than we have had to cover through other methods compared to last school year, where we had several," said Arbetter.
Arbetter also adds that the program letting teachers at Southeast Middle to have an extra planning period as well as let teach a "passion-based unit" on Fridays for 90 minutes has also been appealing for teachers.
"They all passionate in the curriculum in the area they certified in to teach, but being told 'I can design my own lesson in any area I want' has been enticing," said Arbertter. "We had one teacher teach students about mask making, learning about Japanese Masks, Mardi Gras masks. We have one teach about famous landmarks, one that teaches how to make music videos, design costumes. It's a variety of different things and we're tying them into standards and teachers are liking that so they can use some of their creativity to teach a lesson each week."