Welcome to theTitusville Middle School and our web site! This is my eighth year as principal of Titusville Middle School and I am pleased to share information about our school with you. At Titusville Middle School, we provide a challenging educational program for every student, while building a sense of positive self-worth essential to academic and social success. We focus on providing a positive learning environment that encourages students to learn, grow, and succeed. We have set high expectations and know our faculty and staff will advocate that students always believe in themselves and make strides to improve themselves. Our hope is to help our students achieve their goals and continue to be outstanding students in school and ultimately outstanding citizens in theTitusville community. Our success has been shown in our most recent PSSA scores. Last school year Titusville Middle School made Adequate Yearly Progress(AYP). This means that all of our students and subgroups displayed the expected overall growth indicated by the state. This occurred due to the hard work and dedication of all of our students, faculty, and staff.

Our goal at Titusville Middle School is to have all students make at least a year's worth of growth each year of their attendance. Our efforts to make progress happen are not just in our remediation opportunities for the students, but in every activity during the school day. Our hope is to continue to improve our scores and our overall student achievement through sound educational opportunities and effective curriculum. This year we will take the plunge of attempting to provide individualized growth for every student. For this to occur we have implemented a new initiative that is part of our school wide student assistance. This new initiative focuses on identifying where each student is and identifying what is needed for each student to continue to grow and succeed. This will be in addition to our existing wide variety of initiatives that already assist the students in their efforts to display proficiency and to achieve in school.  For struggling students, we have implemented flexible grouping periods and pullout/push in intervention to address areas of concern based on their individual data. This approach links the individual student performance to the remediation that occurs for each child. Each student in the Titusville Middle School is also assigned to an academic coach. This "academic coach" monitors their progress, serves as a mentor, and assists the students in making good academic decisions. This academic coach will connect and provide guidance to their small group of students for the year in advisory.  This program, as well as our entire approach will enable all students to develop a sense of belonging and the necessary structure to experience academic and social success.

Our building has abandoned the traditional study hall structure and has replaced it with an Academic Support Period for sixth and seventh grades. Academic Support Periods will be graded this school year and are structured into daily periods of study. In all three grades each student will have a Skills for Success class. This class is a semester long in sixth and seventh grade, but will only be for selected students in eighth grade. This course will be an additional skill building course that will be individualized to the student’s needs. 

Socially, our Advisory Program has shown great success. Our Advisory Program will continue to be a dedicated daily period for all students that focus on the social development of our students. Various topics including how to get along with others, teambuilding, healthy decision making, and career education are discussed during this time. This period is directed by the student's academic coach and continues to build a bond with that caring adult that facilitates mentoring and a positive social development path.

Our faculty are divided into four teams. Each grade level has a team of core teachers (language arts,math, science, and social studies). The encore teachers also known as the Voyager Team is comprised of the Family Consumer Science, Art, Music, Physical Education, Technology Education, Library Science, and Business Education teachers. Each team of teachers meet daily to discuss student issues, cooperatively plan integrated units and to provide consistency throughout the building. This also allows easy access for our parents to contact our teachers. A parent can meet all of their child's teachers at this period. We invite all parents to use this time to their advantage to discuss their child's progress and become actively involved in their child's education.

Our Student Services Programs are exceptional. The school counseling center is comprised of two school counselors, a school psychologist and a highly functional Student Assistance Program. All of these individuals exist to serve our student population and their families with issues that are affecting student achievement. Our hope is that every child or family having difficulties will access our services and allow our expertise to guide them to improvements in their social, behavioral and/or academic endeavors.

I am very proud of our students, faculty, and staff. They work extremely hard to serve the Titusville Middle School, the students, and their families. Their hard work shows in our students continuing to perform extremely well overall. Recently, Titusville Middle School was recognized and is considered as a Pennsylvania Don EichhornSchools to Watch and a National Middle School Association School to Watch. These recognitions will last until 2014 and confirm our efforts and goal of helping every child experience success. At Titusville Middle School,determination and effective programming assisted our students to achieve success. Our success requires everyone to work collaboratively to bring ideas to a reality. We have an open door policy and welcome any communication that can help direct us in improving our programs and the education of our students.Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments at any time. Your input and feedback will allow us to continue in our daily efforts to make sure that every child learns, grows and succeeds.

Sincerely,

Michael T. McGaughey, Sr .

Principal

Titusville Middle School

814-827-0534

Fax 814-827-0552