Merger exercise helps O-E, St.J. high school students bond

By LINDA KELLETT

C-S-E News Staff

ST. JOHNSVILLE — We are friendly, helpful, open-minded, respectful, thoughtful, understanding, nice, awesome, beautiful, creative, kind, successful, friends.

Those were some of the characteristics that Oppenheim-Ephratah and St. Johnsville students in grades 8 through 11 said they wanted to develop as members of the newly merged Oppenheim Ephratah-St. Johnsville School District in the coming year.

Their responses, written on a large white banner at the front of the St. Johnsville Junior-Senior High School auditorium, were a mere sampling of their diverse goals and expectations.

There were, in fact, as many goals and expectations as there were students.

The activity, which concluded a well received school merger workshop tailored expressly for the students of the merged district, was designed by Juleah Tolosky, the executive secretary for the New York Future Farmers of America and a youth program specialist at Cornell University, along with four junior and senior students there.

She said, “Chris Smith, the first year ag teacher here, is on the merger committee. He and Mrs. Shafer, the tech teacher at Oppenheim-Ephratah, said, ‘We have to do something for the students.’”

She continued, “We designed [the program] specifically for this district. We looked at the students’ common concerns. Chris indicated what the kids’ fears were. High school is such a time of change. How do we introduce the idea of change that’s not scary and get students to buy into the idea of merging?”

Even adults are afraid of change, Tolosky said.

“I think if you can teach students to think about change in a new way, you set them up for lifelong success because life is about change,” she added.

She continued, “This could be the best thing that ever happened to them.”

In order to facilitate their objectives, Tolosky and her students develop a number of fun, game-based activities.

Students were divided up by grade level, with each class going to a separate area of the school. In their respective groups, a “bride” from one district and a “groom” from the other was identified, and the students had an opportunities to express their fears and concerns during “pre-marital counseling.” That was followed by “wedding” preparations, as teams dressed the happy “couple” in tape and toilet paper and drew up “wedding vows.”

Classes with the best proposal, ceremony, vows, and costumes won the contest.

You may now shake hands, err, high five, the bride.

More images in the Seen section.