By Carol Britton Meyer

Hull High School was in the spotlight at this week’s school committee meeting, with Principal Robert Shaw painting a picture of a successful beginning to the new school year, with students arriving energized and engaged.

“We’ve had a strong and successful opening,” he reported. “The energy in the building has been positive and purposeful, and our students and staff are off to a strong start.”

The high school welcomed three new members to the professional staff, “each of whom brings fresh ideas and expertise to our school,” Shaw said.

These include two new guidance counselors, Kaitlyn McGee and Thomas Egan, who have quickly become indispensable members of the team, Shaw said.

Their orientation sessions were followed by professional learning days for all staff in late August, “which helped set a collaborative tone and align us around our goals for the year,” the principal told the committee.

Shaw highlighted a couple of points of focus from among many, including strengthening student engagement across classrooms and building deeper professional learning communities among teachers.

“Student engagement already was a focus; this year we are having highly focused conversations about designing lessons that require students to do the cognitive lift, give them more opportunities to choose topics, formats, or approaches within assignments, and to connect content to real-world issues and applications,” he said.

A Professional Learning Communities program has also been revived as a vehicle through which administrators and staff can think about and discuss these, and address other ongoing, initiatives.

“Overall, the school year has started with momentum and a sense of optimism,” Shaw said. “I am grateful to our faculty, staff, families, and of course our students for making the beginning of this year so promising.”

Several students shared their thoughts on a variety of classes and activities, including a new introduction to business class and the upcoming December 12-14 theater arts program’s production of “Once Upon a Mattress” – the retelling of “The Princess and the Pea” fairy tale – with students in rehearsal the night of the school committee meeting.

One of the students called the business class “creative,” noting that by the end of the term, participants will have created their own “hypothetical business,” patterned after how an entrepreneur would set up his or her own.

This grades 9-12 business program is supported by a Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Innovation Career Pathways grant. There is also a second part to the program to come.

This and other courses are being offered in order to diversify HHS’s elective offerings and to develop “an integrated pathway of business courses that will culminate in [at some time in the future] a capstone experience in grade 12,” Shaw explained.

“I am thrilled about this,” School Committee Chair Kyle Conley said. “This is what makes the Hull Public Schools so special.”

Superintendent of Schools Michael Jette explained that this is one of the topic areas “identified as missing last year. This is very exciting,” he said.

Shaw noted that the business program “seemed to make sense from what we were hearing from students and parents.”

“Soccer, football, and cheerleading are also off to a good start,” he said.

Other programs at HHS this year include robotics and a new creative writing course, among others, with more information to be shared at future school committee meetings.

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