Perception is everything.  While facts reflect reality, the way you interpret them is completely up to you.  Panther Creek administrators consistently highlight the fact that Panther Creek is a superior high school, using strong test scores and high graduation rates as evidence. Even with the facts, students still need another viewpoint in order to fully believe what Panther Creek administrators preach.

As a high school student that has never attended any other high school, I have always assumed that Panther Creek academic and behavioral standards are similar to other public schools.  However, after talking with transfer students and teachers who have taught at different high schools, I’ve learned that the Catamounts, in terms of overall expectations of their students, are at the top of the food chain.

“The expectations are a lot higher here at Panther Creek, but they help you reach your goals,” senior transfer Justine James told me.  “Colleges look at Panther Creek as a very good school.”  James is coming from a public school in Connecticut, and noted that Panther Creek is much different than her previous school, besides the elevated expectations in the classroom.  “This school is a lot bigger and it is more of a community,” she commented.

In a separate interview, English teacher Mrs. Tuttle shared her thoughts on Panther Creek’s diversity, and how Panther Creek’s standards are effective when applied to all the different types of students. “If you look at our make-up of students, we have a very diverse population, not just in ethnicity but also in education level and in socioeconomic status,” she shared.  “And we are successful in all of those groups of students.”

Mrs.  Tuttle used to teach at another high school in Forsyth County, and supports the idea that Panther Creek’s high expectations, when compared to her old school, directly influences students’ success in the classroom.

“If you take a student who is highly motivated they are going to thrive in this sort of environment because we offer them so many resources,” she remarked, “but then we also do a lot of intervention for students who struggle for all kinds of reasons.  We offer all kinds of remediation opportunities and intervention strategies to help them be successful.”

While academics are important, they are just one branch of the high school experience.  High school is a time of significant maturation from a behavioral standpoint, and even from this perspective, Catamount administrators still hold its students to a higher standard.

“It’s a lot more strict,” junior transfer Michael Reid told me.  “You can’t really do anything [wrong] here.”

Reid spent his first two years of high school at Cary High School.  He commented that Cary administrators were not as consistent in their punishments as Panther Creek administrators, and shared that being tardy, skipping classes and even going off campus for lunch when you weren’t allowed to was tolerated more at Cary than at Panther Creek.

Even with the extended freedom Cary offered, Reid prefers Panther Creek’s “stricter” behavioral policies. “I think it is a lot better and I think that that’s a good thing,” he said.  “You can’t slack off and it helps you in the end.”

Just like Cary is a lot different than Panther Creek in respect to its policies, Fuquay-Varina High School’s standards do not quite match up with the Catamounts’ high behavioral expectations.

“I think the standards here are a little higher,” Mr. Smith shared with me,  “I think that comes from differences in administration.”

Mr. Smith is a social studies teacher at Panther Creek who used to teach at Fuquay-Varina High School, and described some of the issues Fuquay faces with its students.

“For example, tardies were a huge problem at Fuquay-Varina High School,” he commented.  “Here, you never see a kid in the hallway.”

Mr.  Smith continued on to explain why there was no such problem at Panther Creek.  “That comes from the expectations and the administration backing up what they say and what they are going to do, and the students learning the expectations and following them.”

After continuing on the topic, Mr. Smith shared some of his thoughts on the negatives and positives of a more controlled learning environment.

“If you don’t know as a student what is expected of you, you will try to get away with as little effort as possible, but that is human nature,” he explained.  “There are good things and bad things either way.  So much of growing up in this day and age is figuring out what you are capable of, and I think sometimes you don’t figure that out yourself, you are told what it is.  That to me is a little disappointing; I feel like it has to be more emphasis on you and less on ‘what I think you can do’.”

In contrast with all of the other people interviewed, Katie Sweeny, a transfer student from New York, focused on Panther Creek’s population of students as the main factor in determining their expectations.

“My old high school was a lot smaller in comparison to here,” she explained.  “It was good and bad; if you needed support, everyone was there, but if you did anything wrong, everyone knew about it.  It’s a big adjustment going from that to being able to fly under the radar here.”

Sweeny continued to share why she felt like the specific population at Panther Creek is beneficial to students.

“A lot of the parents here are accomplished because they come here to work in the triangle so they have high standards for their children and I feel that it is a good environment to be a part of.  When everybody is working hard, you want to work hard to keep up with them.”  She added, “I am a very competitive person, so when people are doing well, I try to do better to beat them out; it depends on the student.”

The overall higher standards and expectations put in place by both the Panther Creek administration and the student body contributes to the elevated classroom and behavioral performances exhibited by Panther Creek students.  And these standards keep the Catamounts on the top tier of the high school food chain.