Powdersville Middle School - Greenville, SC

Powdersville Middle School is helping all students develop World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by believing all students matter, providing rigorous academic courses, maintaining high expectations, and continually working together to provide each student with the knowledge and skills to be prepared for high school. Our goal is to keep all students on the path to graduation by assuring they are successful in their classwork and have the knowledge and skills necessary to be successful in rigorous high school courses. Our school has strategies in place that identify and service any students who might be in danger of going off the graduation path.

Our intervention process is a combination of several programs, instructional classes, advisory, and best practices. One program such as the "Power of ICU," created by Danny Hill and Jayson Naive, is being used to defeat student apathy and help not only identify struggling students but to give them opportunities for extra time and help. Another program used is EarlyAct FirstKnight, a revolutionary character and ethics education program for students that teaches business ethics based on the historic theme of noble knights and the Rotary motto of "service above self."

The COVID epidemic has changed the way instruction is delivered daily. PVMS teachers were tasked with teaching face-to-face and virtually simultaneously. Using the WebEx media platform, teachers taught live to the virtual students assigned to their class while teaching all the face-to-face students. Even though this has been very difficult, we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to be in school the entire year.