Turning Points students study at Fresno State

McLane high school teacher Richard Meland assists high school student Khoeun Chhan. Chhan is enrolled in Turning Points Academy, a program that gives high school sophomores a chance to attend university classes.

by April Schulthies

Fresno State and McLane High School are forging new paths to higher education with Turning Points Academy.

The brain child of Fresno State professor Jody Daughtry and McLane High School assistant principal Frank Sylvester, Turning Points is a program designed to encourage average students to seek a college education.

The program was started to address the needs of the average student, according to Sylvester. Sylvester said the program targets those students who are neither exceptionally high achievers nor low achievers, but who have good school attendance and exhibit the behavior and effort necessary to qualify them for Turning Points Academy.

Daughtry (Educational Research, Administration, and Foundations) started Turning Points six years ago with Sylvester. The purpose of the program is to take a cross-section of 140 students and give them a taste of college life.

While at the university, the McLane 10th-graders, who are predominantly minority students, participate in one spring semester

of study at Fresno State. "One of our overall purposes is to get more of these students to follow a college curriculum and eventually come to college," Daughtry noted.

Program participants take four core courses in science, English, social science and math taught by teachers from McLane High School. Students also take electives for which they earn college credit, such as physical education, theatre arts and college skills courses.

Directed by Dr. Phyllis Kuehn (ERAF), the college skills course emphasizes academic language. It was developed as part of a project made possible by a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education. A handful of students actually take regular college courses.

Khoeun Chhan is such a student. She is enrolled in a criminology course and enjoys all the time and space she has to study on campus. Another student, Steve Yang, said, "I like the freedom."

Students in Turning Points Academy gain an understanding of what is expected from a college student, according to Donna Metzler, a lead teacher from McLane. Now in her fourth semester of teaching for the program, she describes Turning Points effective.

"One of the things that I find most successful about the program is that the students rise to the occasion," Metzler said. "On the Fresno State campus, within a week, they are in class, on time. Within a month their maturity level increases. In this program, the four team teachers expect high academic performance - and they get it."

Having the high school students on campus is also a benefit for Fresno State's teacher preparation program. "We want Fresno State students in teacher education to prepare to work with the kind of students they'll actually be teaching," Daughtry said. "Turning Points Academy provides that kind of student."

She added that one of the most rewarding things about the program is that many of the students later choose to pursue their college education at Fresno State.

Sylvester agrees. "McLane High School has steadily increased the number of students who attend Fresno State since we started the program. The last statistic I saw showed that McLane is tied for sixth place in terms of the number of students sent to Fresno State by high schools in the region," he said.

Sylvester added that as far as he is aware Turning Points Academy is the only program of its kind in the U.S.