The Nine of the AIM Program

Ask any one of The Nine and they’ll describe AIM as a family. Carol, the counselor, says it’s a “caring and nurturing place.” Ann, one the English teachers, describes it as a “safe haven where kids can feel at home.” And although AIM is a school, in many ways it just happens to be. What it is first to most of the kids who walk through its doors is “a lifeline.”

Heavy words, yet they flowed easily from Larry Smith, a Galveston, Texas resident and “Character Counts” trainer and lecturer from the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles, California. He said that he’s heard about AIM from students and parents who had “an encounter” with its program and its people, and he says they tell him “it was positive and life-changing.”

What is this program and who are its people?

The program is the Accelerated Instruction Model (AIM) and the response to a community problem. The drop-out rate in the Galveston Independent School District (GISD) was (and still is) too high. Nearly half of the students who begin high school in the 9th grade will not graduate with their classmates. The reasons are many and varied. Students may be teen parents, homeless, recovering drug addicts, or simply lost. There may be language barriers causing some students to tire of the fight to understand and be understood. In some cases the traditional classroom experience simply does not work for them and they find themselves falling through the proverbial crack.

AIM’s people are its recently-retired director, Jan; its new director, Manny; Carol, the counselor; Theresa, the administrative assistant; and six teachers: Karen, Dee, Dale, Bud, Ann and Tarah. Nine people. Ordinary in every way. But listen to them describe their work as a “mission” or a “calling,” and their students using the possessive personal pronoun “my,” and it’s clear that they are united in their idea of what they do every day and unique in their opinions about how they do it.

“It’s about building a relationship with every student,” says Dale, the math teacher, as well as making every encounter with every student and colleague empathetic and personal. The class sizes are small allowing for more personalized, one-on-one instruction. The school atmosphere is that of a “caring, and nurturing” family. Everyone is invested in the lives and the success of each other. Karen, AIM’s science teacher, says that “working in an environment where students know that they are a part of your family is rare,” and it’s the reason why she and all of the other AIMers stay, year after year, after five years.

Many believe that the measure of a high school’s success is the number of students it graduates, and certainly that is the primary goal of AIM. Since its inception in 2003, AIM has graduated over 350 students – kids who had dropped out of school or were close to doing so. Yet Bud, the social studies teacher takes the measure of AIM’s success a step further. He says “true success is measured by how well we mold students into people of strong character and into good citizens.”

“It’s about the kids.” It’s about relationships.” “It’s about family.” Words to live by from The Nine.