“It’s a very big place,” said Smallwood, “so we thought about how we could make kids feel welcome from every background by creating schools within a school.”
Hamilton calls their house system Big Blue Ignite, and it’s been popular with students and faculty. In the coming years, more opportunities will be added to benefit students.
Robert Burke, an intervention specialist in special education who also runs the high school’s pre-apprenticeship program, said they plan “to really explode and expand” the pre-apprenticeship program.
“So far, we used it as a way to help kids get to graduation,“ he said. ”Kids that needed a pathway to graduation, the pre-apprenticeship offers an alternative pathway, and that’s what we used it for. In the future, we plan to have different business partners tied to each house that has a pre-apprenticeship they offer.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
The pre-apprenticeship program helps students get job training and learn skills, and Smallwood said for the foreseeable future, a student won’t be restricted to businesses associated with their school house.
While students will be able to participate in a pre-apprenticeship program at a business assigned to another house, Smallwood said the ultimate goal is to “get kids early on to think about what pathways they want to pursue.”
Eighth graders heading into their freshman year will eventually fill out a survey asking: Where do they see themselves in five years? And then, Smallwood said, “that will be a factor that gets them into the houses.”
There are six houses named for famous or well-known Hamiltonians:
- McCloskey House, named after writer and illustrator Robert McCloskey;
- Nuxhall House, named after Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame pitcher and announcer Joe Nuxhall;
- Wilks House, named after philanthropist Harry T. Wilks.
- Bailey House, named after Miami University football standout Jim “Boxcar” Bailey;
- Beckett House, named after former Beckett Paper president William Beckett; and
- Hurst House, named after American novelist and short story writer Fannie Hurst.
Junior Kennedy Walker entered her freshman year “not in any type of mood to start high school” three years ago. And then her attitude changed.
“The second I walked through the freshman campus doors, and there was a big smile waiting for me and a huge opportunity that wouldn’t knock me down, I was all in,” she said of the house system. “I never had seen myself being able to accomplish the things I have. It’s definitely different.”
The first day of school for students was about the students, where they find out which of the six houses they’ll be in and meet their housemates. Each house has around 125 to 130 students, and they are equipped with gear and choochkies.
After the first day, they meet as a house weekly, though next school year it’s expected to be daily. Meetings, known as advisories, help students with everything from struggles in certain subjects to preparing for tests, like the PSAT. Math teacher Marina Caldwell said they plan to do more activities, “narrowing in a lot of student interests for advisory next year.”
“For this year, it’s been nice that so many students are grouped together based on either classes or interests,” she said.
While they check on grades, they also talk about how to improve grades and student behavior. Caldwell said a lot of her students in her advisory are in the same courses, so they also have a lot of co-work and peer tutoring.
But then there are benefits to those students who work hard and keep up their grades, like being able to challenge a cohort from another house. English teacher Raj Sundram said House Hurst challenged House Bailey to a game of Mario Kart as a reward.
“You have to be on track with their grades if you want to come throw down with some Mario Kart,” he said.
Senior Jett Phillips said the friendly competition among students and between houses, “makes everybody better.”
“It encourages teachers to recognize when kids are doing good, and it incentivizes kids to actually do good, to show up for school,” he said. “It “Encourages kids to do well in school because you want to win, so if you want to win, you got to do well in school, you got to show up.”
Senior Madeline Wagonfield said she believes this system “is going to help kids feel a little more prepared leaving high school and going to wherever they’re going to go in life.” She said there are a lot of classes about preparing for college, from student aid the application process, “but there are so many kids in my grade who for whom college is not the goal.”
Programs like the pre-apprenticeship programs and teachers more involved in successful outcomes will elevate Hamilton and help her classmates and future high school students feel a lot more prepared, she said.
“They feel like after they graduate, if they’re not already in a Butler Tech program or something similar, they’re being thrown out in the world with no sense of direction because college wasn’t what they wanted to do,” said Wagonfield.
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