In a recent robotics shop class the teacher was hard to spot among a sea of students working in small teams designing, coding and tinkering with their mechanical creations. Every student had a role, from shop foreman to time manager to cleanup crew. Allyson Ordonez, an 11th-grader, was a class ambassador, welcoming guests and showing them around the classroom.

“Your normal classes — English, math, science — you learn fundamentals, but this class takes those subjects and combines them,” Ordonez said. “Math and science make up robotics and we use everything we learn from these normal academic classes and apply them to what we learn here.” 

Ordonez sounded more like a seasoned engineer than a high school student as she showed off a small drone she was building and described the equipment. 

Edison attracts teens from all over the city thanks to its 13 career tracks — the most of any New York City public school. Students can earn college credits through a partnership with the City University of New York, take part in internships and work-based learning with companies like Apple and Google, and receive industry certifications. If students pass those industry-recognized exams, they can start working in technical jobs right out of high school — while also pursuing associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.  

In some ways, Edison’s offerings are similar to other innovative CTE models across the country that are applying the excitement and engagement of career classes to rigorous academics. But Edison is taking that a step further by giving students tremendous power in its redesign. 

Shifting to Career- and College-Readiness

Edison opened in the 1950s as an all-boys trade school. Today, it serves a diverse population of nearly 2,335 students. Principal Moses Ojeda is about as close to an Edison lifer as it gets: he graduated in 1993, later returning as a teacher before becoming an assistant principal and then principal in 2012. He transformed the school from the days of typewriter and copier repair programs to state-of-the-art offerings including robotics, automotive technology, graphic arts and cybersecurity. 

All of this stemmed from Ojeda’s early days as principal when a student asked him a question that would change the trajectory of Edison’s teaching.  

“We know we’re here for CTE,” Ojeda remembered the student saying. “But why do we need the academics?”

Ojeda asked the student, who was in the automotive track, if he had learned about Pascal’s law in his physics class. “And the kid was like, ‘Yeah, I remember that.’ I said, ‘OK, well, that’s your brake system.’ And I went across the room and made a connection to each academic area.”  

Ojeda then turned to social studies teachers Phil Baker and Danielle Ragavanis to help students see the relevance of academic classes to their careers. 

“For them, CTE felt useful while academics too often left them wondering, ‘Why are we learning this?’” Baker said.

Ojeda supported Baker and Ragavannis in creating a Research and Development department to engage students in design thinking, including articulating what makes learning meaningful for them. The R&D department has grown to include teachers from every department working with students to figure out how to integrate essential skills into core academic classes. In this way, they’re applying one of the ’s crucial for innovative high schools: .

“In order to take on a project, teachers have to partner with one of the kids,” Ragavanis said. “Students are fully at the table, and they have to be our equals, and in some cases, our bosses.”

Edison was later selected for Imagine NYC — a dynamic partnership between New York City Public Schools and XQto design innovative, high-quality schools with equity and excellence at their core. Faculty members said brought additional support and resources to scale their ideas for making the academic courses feel as relevant to students as the CTE classes.

Mastering Essential Skills 

Driven by employer demand for “soft skills,” Baker and Ragavanis worked with student designers and teachers in the R&D department to establish “five essential skills”: communication, collaboration, giving and receiving feedback, design thinking and professionalism. These skills reflect XQ’s and now guide the learning objectives in many of Edison’s academic classes. Research shows these outcomes, or goals, can help students succeed in college, career and life. 

English Language Arts teacher Jason Fischedick, for example, created a student-run community theater, which he called “the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried to do in the classroom.” Apart from selecting the four student directors, Fischedick ceded almost complete control of the process. Students were responsible for hiring a crew, casting actors and organizing and running rehearsals.  

“We’re on a time crunch and we need to figure out how to manage that time effectively to ultimately get a good product to show off,” said 12th grader Colin Zaug, one of the student directors.“It’s all about teaching independence and preparing students for the real world. I don’t know how many of these kids will ultimately be actors, but it teaches time management and how to stay on task.” 

Baker said this is how the R&D department is modernizing Edison. 

“We’re trying to make a link between academic classes and CTE classes, and bridge the gap that existed between the two, and make sure that academic classes have a career-centered application to them,” he said.

Baker said ninth graders in the R&D department designed the essential skills rubric for their grade so that regardless of what content classes students take, they all get the same immersion into critical career skills. Student voice is now so integrated into Edison’s core that teachers work with student designers to plan their units. And he said teachers are becoming comfortable with the language of career-centered learning and essential skills while students appreciate the engagement and develop a new level of confidence. 

Yordani Rodriguez, a 12th-grader, employed the essential skills in a number of leadership positions, from his work on Model UN to serving as editor-in-chief of the school’s literary magazine. And those are abilities that will serve him long after he leaves Edison. 

“When you lead somebody and they look to you, you have to be sharp,” Rodriguez said, noting these skills are always in the back of his mind now. “I have to communicate, I have to take feedback and most importantly, I have to be professional.”  

Rodriguez will be a first-generation college student when he enters Columbia University in the fall. Baker emphasized, however, that the essential skills will serve students wherever they go next. 

“This is the kind of thing that all of our students should be able to use no matter what they do in college or in a career,” he said. 

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Making Time for Innovation

The R&D Department’s work touches students in every grade. Nearly 40% of 9th graders are involved in classes taught by R&D members, with plans to expand. In addition to essential skills, students also participated in using a . Thanks to word of mouth, as well as student showcases to exhibit their work, Baker and Ragavanis have grown their R&D department to include 18 faculty in ELA, math, and science, including new recruit  Fischedick.

“They’ve been letting me innovate every year and that’s why I joined this team because I’m someone who likes to try new things,” he said. If something doesn’t work, he added, “That’s OK. I’ve become more open with my classroom and what I can do in the classroom because I feel supported to do so.” 

Edison’s lessons are now influencing broader change in New York City high schools. It is an anchor school among the 100-plus city high schools participating in , a bold new vision for career-connected learning. 

Edison students are also applying their essential skills off campus. Once a week, a group of them visit PS 175 in Queens. They lead 10-week cycles for students in kindergarten through 5th grade in more than 25 different courses, from cooking to robotics and Model UN. 

As with the other opportunities at Edison, Baker said students are getting a much deeper understanding of learning and careers by applying the essential skills outside of the classroom.  

“It’s been an incredible experience for our students,” Baker said of the teaching opportunity. “They gain so much in terms of professionalism, confidence, and the ability to explain complicated processes to people, which is a really difficult skill.”

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That kind of itinerary would be nearly impossible for Gestel at any traditional high school, which is why she chose to attend A School Without Walls, a first-of-its-kind hybrid program in New York City that blends in-person and remote learning. 

“I do a lot of other stuff, so I thought it was easier than going to another school and being extremely exhausted and late with work,” Gestel said. 

While hybrid learning might still hold negative connotations for many students and families after years of COVID-19-disrupted schooling, leaders at SWoW say their model reimagines the hybrid structure for a truly student-centered program — allowing students like Gestel to follow their passions while still mastering rigorous academics. It’s the first public school to win approval from New York State for a hybrid learning model.

“The hybrid schedule is really not meant for students who just don’t want to be in a building every day,” SWoW principal Veronica Coleman said. “The goal of the hybrid schedule is for students to have flexibility so that they do real-world learning.” 

Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom 

SWoW launched in 2022 in partnership with , a nonprofit that supports a network of public schools that incorporate an expeditionary learning model through project-based curricula. It’s also part of Imagine NYC Schools, a dynamic partnership between New York City Public Schools and the to design innovative, high-quality schools with equity and excellence at their core.   

Through support and funding from New York City Public Schools, XQ and the , SWoW designed its program to emphasize — one of six research-based XQ . 

Students were deeply involved in shaping the school from the start. SWoW recruited 50 students from other schools across the city during its pilot year to serve as interns and test program ideas, provide feedback on what worked and what didn’t and help think through the school’s grading policy (an approach that’s been gaining momentum nationally, and which is also ). 

In place of traditional letter grades, teachers use narrative reports to guide students in developing seven competencies: collaboration, investigation, interdisciplinary connection, analysis, design, communication and reflection. Students receive quarterly progress reports and reflect on their learning through student-led conferences that occur twice yearly.   

“We’ve really tried to amplify student voice and choice,” Coleman said. “That’s the piece for us that feels like the focus and all of the other pieces fit into that being the center of what we’re really trying to do.” 

Students learn in person at the Lower Manhattan campus two to three days a week. The rest of the time is a mix of synchronous and asynchronous online learning and real-world learning, including internships, fieldwork and early college coursework through the City University of New York. 

Every Friday, students and staff also meet in an auditorium to discuss what’s going well and share their wants and needs, from designing new clubs to giving input on school-wide policies and procedures. 

“What I like about this school is that you can really communicate with them,” Gestel said. “If I’m feeling really stressed or overworked, they help me balance it out and help me organize.” 

SWoW borrowed many of its principles from NYC Outward Bound Schools and expanded them within its model. These include “Crew,” an advisory and community-building time with teams made up of a dozen or so students and an adult. At SWoW, however, Crew is more than an advisory period. It’s also where students earn their humanities credits by working on their passion projects — student-led and student-designed research projects that are the core of the SWoW curriculum.  

Passion-Driven Projects 

Students select a passion project based on a topic that is meaningful to them and their communities. is another . Working with their advisor, each pupil creates an individualized learning plan, setting project goals that align with New York State curriculum standards.  

In 9th grade, students research a service learning project that can address a broad range of issues, from youth homelessness to the environmental impact of illegal fireworks in New York City. In 10th grade, each student starts a passion project in earnest, formulating a research question through reading materials and interviews with experts in the field, culminating with an internship in the spring to put their learning to the test in the real world. All students will take on full-fledged independent projects by 12th grade and find an internship. 

“The goal is to build that agency and independence while the students are exploring something they are passionate about,” Coleman explained.

For her passion project, 10th grader Gestel is exploring the lack of representation of different body types and skin tones in ballet and how to create a more inclusive dance community. Another 10th grader, Lily Paraponiaris, is researching film restoration and preservation. 

SWoW uses a case study framework to model for students what good research looks like. For example, in January they explored a unit on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the country’s history of cobalt mining. In addition to earning their humanities credits, students also figure out the ingredients of high-quality research to apply to their own passion projects. 

Some students will devote much of their time at SWoW to their passion projects, diving deeply into a topic while exploring it from different angles and applying that knowledge through real-world learning in an internship. But some teens may take longer to land on a subject that is truly meaningful for them, and Coleman said SWoW makes sure that flexibility is built into the curriculum. 

 “The idea is that you go through that cycle of making and doing and reflecting, and that reflection can lead you to say, ‘I’m done with this topic,’ which is totally normal for a teenager,” she explained. “Or you can continue, but you continue in a way that requires a new avenue of research.” 

Throughout their projects, students get regular opportunities to present their work to an audience, including an end-of-year presentation of learning, a resource fair where students have the chance to network with potential internship mentors and summer employers, and a mid-year presentation called roundtables where students share their passion projects with outside guests, sharpening not only their research questions but also their public speaking skills. At a roundtable in early 2024, one student gave a presentation exploring the rising cost of public transit fares while another investigated the fashion industry’s environmental impact. 

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Hybrid Learning Post-Pandemic

SWoW’s launch hasn’t been without bumps along the way — in part because another completely virtual program opened at the same time, causing confusion for students and parents. That program has since been renamed, but figuring out whether hybrid or fully virtual is best for individual students is still a question for families.   

Ava Smith, who is in her first year at SWoW, said she likes learning online, but ultimately, the school is not for her. 

“I just think I like traditional school more,” she said. “I like the schedule. I feel like here it’s very mishmashed, and here every day is different.” 

The school has its own saying: SWoW is for anyone but not for everyone. 

“I think it’s been a struggle for us to find the right matches,” Coleman said. “And I think it’s going to take a few more years for that to really settle, for people to really know what they are getting when they come to A School Without Walls and a sense that this is right for me and for my child.” 

While some students like Smith might end up missing the traditional school environment, overall, SW0W students seem happy with the experience. Out of the 60 original 9th graders who started in 2022, 50 returned for year two, with 35 new students joining in 10th grade. 

Coleman said those numbers, and what she hears from the students, prove this new kind of high school is needed — not only because of its small community, flexibility and the safe space it offers. 

“Their families are saying their student was at a big high school and experiencing anxiety,” she noted. “And they like this model because of the individualization.” 

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

Yet, 41 years after “” caused widespread panic about our public schools, fewer than half of American students are graduating high school ready for college or career. U.S. teens than students in many other countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea and Estonia. 

When young people are discouraged from pursuing a STEM-related career, they get locked out of , all of which come with salaries. And that means we all lose out — because the jobs needed to keep our country running go unfilled, and the inventions, treatments and technologies for our rapidly changing society go undiscovered. 

Our two organizations, and , are deeply committed to ensuring all students have access to joyful and rigorous schools where they know they belong and can succeed. Research shows those three qualities — joy, rigor, and a sense of belonging — will prepare them for the future, whether that’s STEM or any other pursuit. 

XQ partners with schools and districts to rethink the high school experience by making learning more meaningful and engaging through tools such as our Design Principles and Learner Outcomes. Beyond100K unites leading STEM organizations to co-develop and implement solutions to end the STEM teacher shortage by 2043, especially for those most excluded from STEM opportunities.

Sparking Joy in STEM

Guided by and insight from young people across the country, Beyond100K heard that to help spark the brilliance of millions more young minds, schools need to prioritize a focus on equity, representation, and especially belonging in STEM education. But that’s an increasingly difficult job.

Based on a recent conducted by Beyond100K, it’s clear that schools and educators are facing dueling pressures. They’re tasked with reshaping classrooms to foster inclusivity and joy while developing career- and culturally-relevant curricula. Simultaneously, they’re under heightened scrutiny due to residual pandemic learning loss, ongoing declines , and and teen mental health. 

Beyond100K interviewed educators who expressed concerns about the fear of repercussions for teaching about bias and inequity and the difficulty of creating classrooms of belonging amid pressure to focus solely on raising test scores. Identities of teachers were kept anonymous. 

One teacher noted that they are“scared to talk about the right thing, doing their own self-work to be able to talk about culture relative to their work….Regulations in states prevent teachers from having these conversations.”

Yet a positive correlation between a sense of belonging in STEM classrooms and academic performance, retention, and persistence — particularly for Black, Latino, and Native American students. Similarly, students engaged in SEL programs improve and social well-being. 

Given that nearly 60% of girls and young women who were interested in STEM careers when they entered high school by the time they entered college, there is no question that developing a sense of belonging in the STEM fields is an essential element in nurturing learning environments that lead to STEM persistence. The rigidity of high school STEM education is preventing too many students from pursuing their dreams. 

We see an emerging trend: many teachers and other education leaders view joy, belonging and relevance not in conflict with academic rigor, but as the pathway by which academic success can be achieved. Evidence supports the idea that , particularly for students of color. 

The Beyond100K Foundational Math CoLaboratory, composed of partners from across the STEM learning ecosystem, has developed a of joyful mathematical resources and activities for educators and families to use in making math joyful for their students.

One Beyond100Kpartner, employs a student-belonging-centered science teaching approach in their Bay Area Scientists Inspiring Students program, where scientist and engineer role models bring real-world connections, diversity, and inquiry-based learning into school environments. Teachers observed that students who engaged with these career scientists demonstrated skills above their typical classroom level.

Eliminating Systemic Barriers in High School

Creating a greater sense of belonging is one way to encourage teens to enter STEM. But our young people — and our creativity — are also trapped by a structural problem. The American education system, as we know it today, was built around the Carnegie Unit, or “credit hour,” a concept developed in 1906 that defines the amount of time a student needs to devote to learning a subject and earning a degree. 

The Carnegie Unit made sense in its day, bringing order and even a degree of equity to a disconnected system. But that day has passed. There’s no need to limit math, science, English and other required subjects to 50-minute classes with no relationship to one another or to how learning relates to the world beyond the classroom. The Carnegie Unit as we know it today kills student curiosity, inhibits exploration and keeps educators from looking beyond the walls of their school to their communities and our world. Not to mention that clinging to a system that prioritizes time in the classroom over mastery of a subject is actually contributing to the inequity it was designed to prevent.

We are long overdue for It is time to redefine and re-credentialize what it means to be a high school graduate. It’s time to develop new ways to teach, learn, measure and recognize student achievement, knowledge and growth. We can and must offer young people more immersive, relevant, hands-on experiences that prepare them for a rapidly changing world. 

That’s our mission at XQ. When we launched in 2015 with an open call to design a transformational high school, 50,000 people signed up. Today, we’re working in about 60 schools. We have teamed up with school districts in , and the state of to transform high schools at the system level. Partnership is the common ingredient for these high schools and others like them. They’re forging ahead with new designs based on feedback from their local communities. They take the best ideas and visions — from educators, students, parents and other stakeholders — and turn them into life-changing progress for young people. 

Consider the , which is partnering with the computer engineering firm to offer students in the engineering and multimedia pathways an opportunity to take on industry-based projects and earn stipends for their work. Or the Purdue Polytechnic High Schools in Indiana, which resulted from a partnership between Purdue University, business leaders, the state and Indianapolis city leaders to increase the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds attending Purdue and going into STEM careers. PPHS students work on projects that combine math, science and other topics to solve local problems. PPHS has sent more than twice as many students to Purdue University as the entire Indianapolis Public Schools district, most of whom are students of color.  

These examples are only a small sampling of the national movement to transform high schools. XQ and Beyond100K are just two of many organizations engaged in this essential work. Let’s do everything in our power to give our high school students the tools, resources and inspiration to make that possible. Ensuring that STEM education in high school is inclusive, relevant, engaging and rigorous will help every learner achieve their dreams — and ours — in a changing world that will depend on their ideas.

Want to learn more about how to create innovative high school experiences in STEM and subjects? Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. Sign up .

Interested in how you can commit to ending the STEM teacher shortage? Learn more .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

But they can’t succeed if they aren’t treated like part of a greater community. This is why believes high schools deserve more attention and support to fully prepare every student for college, career or whatever comes next. Since 2017, we’ve been working with dozens of schools and systems around the country to help high schools and their communities design learning experiences more suited to the 21st century — for example, by encouraging partnerships with local organizations so young people can see how their academics show up in real life. 

That’s how classes work at , the subject of a new documentary. “,” directed by Lee Hirsch (of “Bully”), follows students from ninth grade to graduation at this innovative Memphis public high school as they figure out how to sustain life on Mars and interview refugees for an interdisciplinary project combining history and English. 

Community partnerships are among six research-backed XQ developed for high schools to create engaging and rigorous learning opportunities. Like the , which we also introduced, these design principles were originally created for educators and communities involved in building or redesigning a school. But they are also very useful for parents and students who want to better understand whether their local high school is serving students as well as it can. Below are some questions to ask when visiting a school.

Educators interested in a detailed approach to the Design Principles can download c, a tool designed to gather and assess evidence about where they are on their journey to becoming the best high school they can be.

1. Are there high expectations and equal opportunities for all students, regardless of income level, race, ethnic group and special needs? Do the AP and honors classes resemble a cross-section of the community? 

These are signs of a , a set of unifying values and principles that give a school a sense of common purpose and a fundamental belief in the potential of every student to achieve great things. in Tennessee, for example, is committed to making students feel invested in their community. That investment shone through when one sociology class solved a murder, now the subject of a podcast series. When visiting a high school, it’s also worth checking whether there are opportunities for dual enrollment in postsecondary courses, which can benefit all students.

2. Does the school use an interdisciplinary curriculum — do teachers combine subjects like math, science, English and electives? Can students and teachers dive deep into topics with project-based learning?

These are examples of Research tells us that young people learn through the combination of what they encounter as learners, through curriculum, relationships, challenges and supports; what they do as learners, through their active commitment in producing and persevering; and how they make meaning of those experiences. Our schools can offer much more powerful ways of learning. For example, students built a hydroponic system through a science project at Purdue Polytechnic High School in Indiana. They conducted extensive research as they designed and constructed a method for growing produce sustainably and cost-effectively. 

3. Does the school ensure all students have at least one adult who knows them well enough to provide academic and social support? Is there a system in place that helps students connect and check in with the adults so they feel safe, valued and seen?

Those are hallmarks of . The science of adolescent learning shows that learning is a social process, particularly during the high school years, and this aspect — when intentionally addressed — can result in a transformative high school experience. Schools that emphasize getting to know students, inside and beyond the school walls, set a foundation for trust that carries over into academic work. At in Oakland, California, co-founder Christian Martinez takes pride in building a place where the goal is to never let a teen slip through the cracks like he did at their age. During the college process, for example, staff guide and support students at every step, from having highly personal conversations about their choices to ensuring that they submit their applications on time. 

Want to learn how to create innovative high school experiences like those at Crosstown High? Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

4. Does the high school support students to build their sense of agency and autonomy, and explore postsecondary goals?

Schools need to provide A student-centered school gives students a say in their learning. They can choose projects and topics and decide whether to present their knowledge as a research paper, slide show or even a documentary or podcast. Staff members should foster this environment, not feel threatened. The D.C. Public Schools recently published a booklet . It argues that student engagement is crucial when communities come together to redesign local high schools, as in thepartnership, because students have higher attendance and learning outcomes when they’re treated as partners in their own education.

5. Is the school partnering with local entities such as cultural institutions, businesses, nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities and health and service providers? 

These can take many forms. But at their heart, these powerful relationships create opportunities for learners to explore and envision their future and set goals toward making it real. At Florida’s in Seminole County Public Schools, students have numerous opportunities to work with outside organizations and leave the campus. Some of that activity slowed down during the pandemic — especially for those who are now seniors. 

Members of the class of 2024 wanted more outside experiences before graduating. They devised a plan: a trip later this spring to New Smyrna Beach, more than an hour away. But it’s not just a day at the beach, said one of the organizers, Daniella Muñoz. The students researched local nonprofits and got excited about . They’re planning a visit that includes a talk with an expert because it’s important “to hear from someone who isn’t a teacher” about “a real-world problem,” Muñoz said. They also plan to clean the beach, using gloves and other supplies provided by the environmental group.

6. Does the school review, reflect on and make decisions based on data that ensure inclusion and access to advanced courses? Does it use data to eliminate disproportionate remediation, disciplinary practices and other inequities?

Data is just one aspect of a high school that makes . Another example is breaking away from the traditional schedule of six or seven single-subject periods, each about 50 minutes long. 

The has an agreement with its district so students and teachers can easily visit local nonprofit groups and businesses and take classes at other schools and colleges. Junior Kate Ruel says she’s getting science credit this year for taking culinary courses at Kent Career and Tech Center. She also enjoyed visiting Dwelling Place, which provides support services and affordable housing, during a ninth-grade project on English, history, social studies, and science. 

“I found it really interesting and cool,” she said. “I was able to go out and talk to people.” 

Surveys show students at GRPMS feel connected to their learning, and they’re doing better than their counterparts in the state and city on many measures.

This flexibility is why we argue high schools need a new “architecture” for learning without the Carnegie Unit, a century-old system that equates time with learning. When students and teachers are freed from earning credits based on seat time in single-subject classes, they can see how academic content is connected to the world around them and gain a fuller appreciation of what they’re learning. These experiences are important for teens in so many ways beyond school. Today’s high school students are the leaders, workers, doctors, inventors and teachers of tomorrow.

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

Rachel isn’t the only one challenged by this and other projects at Crosstown High. In the film, we see a teacher stumped by a student’s idea for making a hologram as well as candid conversations about the relevance of an interdisciplinary math and science project exploring how to sustain life on Mars.

This student-led, creative approach to teaching and learning is the goal at Crosstown High — a public high school built by parents, educators, teens and community members in Memphis as part of the Super School Challenge in 2015. This challenge spurred communities to create innovative high schools, by building new ones and redesigning existing models, that depart from the rigid, century-old model that’s no longer suited to today’s learners. 

As part of the challenge, dozens of community members came together and gathered input from more than 200 students to design and open Crosstown High. They wanted to create a school that would engage students in real-world, motivating projects that would make a difference and reflect the diversity of their historically-segregated city with equitable learning opportunities for all.

Years in the making, “The First Class” follows the founding cohort of students and educators from ninth grade to the triumph of their graduation — and all the challenges in between. Directed by award-winning documentary maker Lee Hirsch (of “Bully”), we see learning in a way that’s rarely captured on film. No single principal or teacher is the sole superhero who “saves” the students. Instead, we see learning as it really happens: through ideas, collaboration, committed educators who genuinely care about students and “aha” moments.

As we watch the students and teachers at Crosstown High work through the school’s growing pains in the film, we see them taking obvious delight in their progress and personal growth.  “The First Class” shows what’s possible when we put our heads together to create a new type of high school. Crosstown High’s journey will inspire educators and communities everywhere to look at the challenges facing students in their own high schools and start the conversation about how they, too, can rethink learning for teachers and students. 

XQ Institute is proud of Crosstown High’s story, and the incredible progress this community made since responding to our challenge almost a decade ago. We’re thrilled to provide this exciting documentary and related materials free of charge for educators, families, students, policymakers and other community members. Find everything you need to be among the first to , , and get inspired to rethink high school at .  

Want to learn how to create innovative high school experiences like those at Crosstown High? Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

High schools are essential to preparing young people for these challenges, regardless of whether their future includes college, career or a combination of postsecondary plans. But how can families and students understand how any individual high school approaches learning?

While districts and states provide a variety of data points, many agree these metrics don’t paint a complete picture and don’t necessarily mean students are well-prepared for postsecondary life. Helping all students reach their full potential requires passionate and inspired teaching and meaningful learning experiences that encourage them to think critically. Schools should also empower teachers as professionals. 

When those ingredients are combined, the sky’s the limit. As just one example, Alex Campbell’s sociology students at in Tennessee solved a cold case with (and became the subject of the true-crime podcast series “”). All high school teachers can tap into students’ natural curiosities in exciting ways that connect with the world around them — and prepare them for their lives beyond graduation. 

identified research-backed or goals, that recognize the full range of knowledge, skills, habits and mindsets students need to be successful in life. The framework guides educators to transform teaching and learning. They’re also helpful for families looking for ways to determine if a particular high school fully prepares all students for the future. 

Here are five things parents should look for in their kids’ classrooms to ensure they’re ready for the world.

1. Are students learning to be literate in the fullest sense? Do they know how to read information, understand it and apply meaning to it — with language, numbers, digital content and other subjects?

This is where the XQ goal, “” comes in. In addition to required subjects, such as English and math, students should learn how to interpret and use data, which is increasingly essential in many fields beyond the sciences. For example, at , one student ​​made a documentary about “food deserts” — neighborhoods where residents have limited access to nutritious foods.

2. Can students think in ways that apply art, literacy, science, history, economics, math and STEM — and connect these disciplines?

This relates to “.” The goal is to foster curious young people who are knowledgeable about the world: its history, culture, sciences and underlying mathematics, biology and cultural currency. They’re engaged participants vital to creating a more just and functional democracy.

3. Are students given opportunities to think creatively about subjects they’re passionate about? Can they also explore their interests in the “real world” through internships or partnerships with local businesses and community organizations, so they can think about future professions? 

Students must be taught to be “” In our information age, students must learn to become sense-makers who can deal with conflicting knowledge and abundant data points. How do they know if something was generated by artificial intelligence? They also need to adapt to changing situations. For example, with XQ’s help, are redesigning existing schools with new approaches, like having students build their own businesses and applying the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals. 

4. Does the school foster collaborators who value the expertise of others? Are there group projects where students learn to be co-creators in what they bring and how they show up?

Successful high schools cultivate “,” self-aware team members who bring their strengths to support others. At , students responded to a devastating storm that hit the Cedar Rapids region and destroyed up to 70% of the local tree canopy. Students contracted with local chainsaw artists to turn fallen wood into sculptures and used the funds to “re-leaf” the damaged tree canopy. 

5. Do students understand their own strengths and areas for growth? Is there an opportunity for them to reflect on their learning?

We want to ensure that schools are nurturing “.” Any high school’s role is to foster a love for learning and the ability to keep learning. Students must become self-driven, self-directed, curious learners — about themselves and the world. Many great high schools have capstone projects where students present what they’ve learned and then celebrate their growth and achievements. At student presentations showcase the projects and issues they’re passionate about, including climate change, immigration and gun violence.

Preparing students for the future is no easy feat when so many industries, from STEM to manufacturing and media, are in a constant state of flux. But with a nimble approach to learning and foundational knowledge, high schools can help their students feel equipped to succeed on whatever paths they choose. Next month, we’ll give more tips for looking at what a high school’s design says about how students learn.

Want to learn more about innovative ways of reaching high school students? Subscribe to the a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

English Classical and its imitators proudly proclaimed their ability to prepare students for new jobs in emerging, high-tech industries such as banking, manufacturing and railroads. 

It’s just over 200 years later, and high schools have opened their doors to all teens, not just boys. But with technological disruptions daily changing our conception of what a well-educated young person looks like, Americans are again clamoring for innovative secondary schools that help them make sense of these changes. They’re looking, above all, for institutions that leave behind many of the traditions of the past in favor of offerings that promise to help their kids get a strong start. 

Since last spring, journalists at The 74 have been crossing the U.S. as part of our 2023 High School Road Trip. It has embraced both emerging and established high school models, taking us to 13 schools from Rhode Island to California, Arizona to South Carolina, and in between. 

It has brought us face-to-face with innovation, with programs that promote everything from nursing to aerospace to maritime-themed careers.

At each school, educators seem to be asking one key question: What if we could start over and try something totally new?

What we’ve found represents just a small sample of the incredible diversity that U.S. high schools now offer, but we’re noticing a few striking similarities that educators in these schools, free to experiment with new models, now share. Here are the top eight:

1

They don’t worry about what came before.

In these places, high school looks almost nothing like it did for our parents or grandparents. 

While the seven-period, books-in-a-locker high school, with its comprehensive curriculum, vast extracurriculars and Friday night football games is alive and well and available to most of the nation’s 17 million or so high schoolers, it is no longer the default model. 

Instead, thousands of young people now attend high school each morning in facilities that more closely resemble workplaces, professional training grounds and research labs. Quite often, young people are in actual workplaces for part of their school day, either as apprentices or taking part in something resembling career tourism, trying out jobs to see what fires their imaginations and fits their tastes.

2

They focus intently on exactly what their students need.

Most of these schools are small by design, so the traditional mission of serving thousands of students with countless courses — as well as the requisite menu of after-school activities, such as sports, music, and drama — is out of the question. 

In its place, many new schools now offer one key thing: focus. Intense, unrelenting focus.

At Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College in Providence, R.I., students show up for class each morning dressed in scrubs. They spend four years learning the bedrock values and basic skills of the nursing profession, earning college credit before they graduate.

The school’s laser-like focus is perhaps its greatest strength, said Principal Tammy Ferland, a veteran educator. “This is a health care program, a nursing program,” she said. “If you don’t want to be a nurse, if you don’t want to be in health care, then you don’t belong here.”

Students can still play sports or perform in the band — they just need to find those things at their neighborhood school or elsewhere —after they remove their scrubs.

The same focus is on display at Urban Assembly New York Harbor School on Governors Island, a ferry ride south of Manhattan, where the East River meets the Hudson. Students must choose among eight maritime-themed career and technical education pathways before they close out their freshman year. 

Clad in life vests, protective goggles and welders’ masks, students get a chance to earn industry certifications in marine science or technology before graduation — bona fides that help them enter the workforce or pursue further education. 

Most of its students come to the program with an interest in marine biology research, environmental science and aquaculture. And while many pursue these fields, others migrate to ocean engineering, professional diving and even vessel operations. 

3

They embrace internships and personalization.

Many of these new high school models focus less on one industry than on imparting what students need to know about the modern workplace more broadly, through intensive, often personalized, coursework and professional internships. 

At Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies in Overland Park, KS, students spend about three hours a day working with professionals in one of six industries, from food science to aerospace engineering. 

Housed in a light-filled, three story building that more closely resembles a high-tech office, the program enjoys support from the local school district, which created it as a half-day program that serves only juniors and seniors. 

Students return to their neighborhood high school for required coursework. For accreditation purposes, the district treats the entire enterprise as a class.

“Blue Valley CAPS treated me like a working adult,” said alumna Sophia Porter, who now holds dual degrees in physics and applied mathematics and statistics from Johns Hopkins University and serves as a project manager and test operator for BE-4 engines at the Texas aerospace company Blue Origin.

At The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in Providence, students spend much of what would typically be class time working on personalized projects prescribed by advisors, who follow small groups of just 16 students throughout their high school career, intimately learning about their interests and academic needs. Students also spend much of their four-year career in a series of bespoke internships at local businesses, nonprofits and educational institutions. 

Founded in 1996, The Met is renowned among a brand of progressive educators seeking to create small, personalized high schools around students’ passions and interests. “That’s what the Met taught me,” said Jordan Maddox, class of 2007. “Don’t really limit yourself.”

Maddox admits he initially didn’t quite know what to make of the place. “I remember telling my mother, ‘Mom, this is a daycare for high school students.’ And she was like, ‘Give it a chance. Give it time.’”

These schools also offer a kind of freedom and agency to students that would have been unheard of to their parents.

At One Stone, a tiny private high school near downtown Boise, Idaho, students are deputized to run much of the operation, serving as officers of the board and filling two-thirds of board positions overall.

“A lot of people don’t believe that high school students can do meaningful, big things,” said Teresa Poppen, One Stone’s executive director and co-founder. “And I have always believed that they can do meaningful things when empowered and trusted.”

Or, as recent graduate Abella Cathey put it, “Being treated like an adult is what makes you act like one.”

4

They prepare young people for jobs in emerging industries.

Just as the first public high school offered to educate young people to compete in the high-tech industries of the era, the new breed of high school offers the same promise, only in medicine, aerospace and tech-assisted agriculture.

In Lodi, Calif., as the number of wineries begins to match its status as a major grape-growing powerhouse, the nonprofit San Joaquin A+ has partnered with the Lodi Unified School District and others to create an internship pipeline that gives students real-life learning and experiences across a variety of roles in the winemaking industry.

The partnership turns rural wineries into state-of-the-art classrooms where students spend time inspecting vines, cleaning storage tanks with pressure washers, and setting up tasting. In the end, they learn about the whole business: growing grapes, making wine and selling it.

Across the country, at Anderson Institute of Technology in western South Carolina, students from three districts now get real-world experience early on in their educational careers in preparation for jobs at companies like Bosch, Michelin and Arthrex.

Much like the Blue Valley model, students take core classes at their home high schools, and then commute to AIT to take classes like aeronautics, auto shop, and medicine. They work both in traditional classrooms and “labs” that mimic real-world work environments — an automotive garage, aerospace engineering lab or a surgery room.

“It’s all about giving kids a purpose in life,” said Don Herriott, a local business owner. 

5

They’re rethinking what classrooms, campuses and school days look like.

In many new schools, such personalization takes place among new campus facilities, but in others, students navigate between several physical and virtual sites to attend class — sometimes all in the same day.

In Arizona, the 86 students who attend Phoenix Union City High School choose from a menu of some 500 options that include coursework at the district’s brick-and-mortar schools, its online-only program, internships, jobs, college classes or career training programs.

“The pandemic gave us an entree,” said Chad Gestson, until recently the system’s superintendent. “It enabled us to go to a system with no limits.”

Phoenix Union now operates four small high schools with specific themes, including law enforcement, firefighting, coding and cybersecurity. This fall, Phoenix Educator Preparatory welcomed its first students. It also operates standalone “microschools” housed in existing high schools — they include a program aimed at students working toward admission to highly selective colleges. 

6

They redefine who high school is for.

Just as many schools now redefine what kind of space a high school should occupy, others are rethinking their customer base.

At Roybal Learning Center’s new film and television production magnet high school in Los Angeles, show business industry professionals last fall put up millions to launch a program to give Black, Hispanic and Asian students a pathway into good-paying jobs in the movie industry, helping them become “part of the machinery of storytelling,” said Bryan Lourd, an executive at Creative Artists Agency and the agent of actor George Clooney, a key supporter. 

The school plans to match students with mentors in the industry and eventually develop an apprenticeship program to offer early experience in their chosen field. The goal, said Deborah Marcus, who manages education efforts at Creative Artists Agency, is for graduates to not only land their first job on a crew, but their second and third as well.

7

They serve students of color in a more supportive way.

At New York’s Brooklyn Lab School, social workers visited nearly 100 homes to find students as absenteeism soared after the Covid pandemic.

More than three years later, each Lab School student now has a personal advocate, an advisor who starts each day with a non-academic meeting to build relationships and discuss health or current events over free breakfast.

Two teachers now lead each class, at least one of whom is special education certified, as the school adopts an all-inclusion-model. 

Morning office hours and a six-week night school offer more chances for students to bridge academic gaps made worse by the pandemic. And teachers are paid to lead and attend professional development sessions. Roughly 80% are Black or brown, serving about 450 students who are predominantly Black, Latino and low-income. 

“When you’re a school of this size, you have the ability to respond and cater to the community that you’re serving, and be more personable with the families that you meet, the people that you work with, and the staff that you hire,” said assistant principal Melissa Poux.

8

They cut through traditional structures to find what works.

Perhaps most significantly, many high school programs are finding new ways to serve at-risk students.

For many, what they need most is more time to grow. At New York City’s Math, Engineering, and Science Academy Charter High School, recent graduates are paid $500 to participate in a six-week “13th grade” Alumni Lab that offers resume writing, interview support and sessions exploring growth mindset, self-awareness and making goals — skills that help young people, particularly alumni of color, work through feelings of inadequacy, shame, or feeling like an imposter. 

“Life has not gone as they were led to believe it would,” said MESA’s co-executive director and co-founder Arthur Samuels. “…You have all of these kids who are not tethered to any institution, but the institution that they are tethered to is their high school. We need to leverage that relationship.” 

The program last spring wrapped up its third cohort, with 71% of participants matriculating back to college or into a free workforce development program.

Schools, Samuels said, “create this artificial bright line that happens on the day of graduation: June 23, you’re our kid. June 24, we give you a diploma and you’re someone else’s problem.” 

At Goodwill Excel Center Adult Charter High School in Washington, D.C., part of a network of Goodwill schools for adult learners nationwide, educators have compressed the traditional 20-week semester into a rolling series of eight-week terms. Coursework is based on competency, not seat time, and four assessments over the course of each term keep students on track.

But those who don’t succeed, even with individualized tutoring, can simply start over again at the end of eight weeks. Students with heavy work or family commitments can stay enrolled by taking just one class per term.

“We like to put high school dropouts into a box and say, ‘This is why they’re a dropout,’” said Excel’s Executive Director, Chelsea Kirk. “But we don’t ever think about what structures caused that. We don’t ever think about ‘How could a school change its structures to embrace people?”

— James Fields, Beth Hawkins, Linda Jacobson, Marianna McMurdock and Jo Napolitano contributed to this report.

]]> /article/around-the-world-teens-raise-fish-for-school-lunch-turn-cooking-oil-to-fuel/ Wed, 30 Aug 2023 10:15:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=713946 Picture a school where students collaborate with engineers to solve the world’s greatest challenges, big and small. A place where students construct mountain bikes from native bamboo using math and science, learn how to make biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil and grow, harvest and prepare sustainable meals. 

This is not an imaginary scenario — these lessons and activities are happening at real schools around the world. And the lessons their students are learning, both formal and informal, as they follow their own curiosity, are invaluable as they grow as stewards of our future. We can see it in how two schools, in particular, approach climate change.

set out to build the most sustainable school on the planet. Indonesia is an archipelago with 180 million people living in coastal regions. It faces the imminent threat of rising sea levels and is no stranger to weather-related disasters. Green School Bali is a much-needed inspiration for environmental education far beyond its borders. Students at this international school actively learn about sustainable agriculture, renewable energy systems and ecological conservation, applying fundamental literacies such as critical thinking and writing. They demonstrate what it means to be .

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A continent away in Hungary, addresses similar concerns in a different way by focusing on alternatives to dangerous, unsustainable agricultural practices. The school opened a vegan cafeteria that supplies delicious, locally-sourced food for school lunches and the public. Students have a voice in the menus, are involved in the food planning and learn valuable lessons about supply, demand and food sources. By providing families and community members with tasty vegan food, the school encourages the community to lower its meat intake, thus decreasing the need for unsustainable farming practices. 

I saw this all first hand last year, during a 12-month transformational journey exploring innovative educational practices in 34 countries on six continents. I approached this exploration as a life-long educator and co-founder of , a diverse-by-design high school in the heart of Memphis, Tennessee. Here, students use in all of their classes to make education more meaningful, often in collaboration with nonprofits and researchers.

For my tour, I wanted to see what commonalities exist among innovative schools worldwide. I also wanted to see how world events like political shifts, war, youth movements, human migration and climate change affect teaching and learning.

As an educator committed to preparing students for an uncertain future in a swiftly evolving world, my main focus was learning how schools across the globe approach similar goals: namely, how they’re helping students become generous collaborators and original thinkers — all while mastering foundational knowledge and fundamental literacies. These guide teaching and learning at Crosstown High and in other innovative, student-centered . 

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For more ideas on rethinking the high school experience, read The XQ Xtra — a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

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Student-Led Innovation Creates Sustainable Schools 

Around the world, schools embody the same learner outcomes we use at Crosstown and other XQ schools to prepare students for these immense challenges. 

“Change starts with an idea, an intention or a problem to be solved,” said Green School Bali Principal Sal Gordon. School educators tasked their students with researching the greatest environmental impacts on their local school community. Through an extensive study of numerous factors, students identified automobile traffic on campus as a leading contributor. With the help of engineers, chemists and automotive experts, students developed a process to convert school buses from diesel to cooking oil for fuel, which they collected from local restaurants. 

Each week, students in the “Grease Police” procure the oil from a 15-mile radius of the school for refinement and use as fuel, providing a greener alternative to school transportation. Through this kind of project-based learning and hands-on experiences, they gain a profound understanding of the interconnectedness between their actions and the environment. 

The school’s entire facility encourages this type of learning. Each open-air classroom is constructed of bamboo and thatch, with tables and chairs made locally from sustainable products. Students also manage their own lush gardens at each grade level that provide food for school lunches. They eat fish grown in the student-managed aquaponic system and eggs harvested from the fifth-grade chicken coop. 

In Hungary, REAL School Budapest Founder Barna Barath intentionally designed the vegan cafeteria to serve as a living example of the school’s purpose. In a traditional school system, a common purpose is to prepare students for postsecondary opportunities that provide individual prosperity. At REAL, the purpose is to live a purposeful and fulfilling life for collective prosperity. Students and parents invest in that vision for the betterment of the community. REAL’s educators are creating a community space and showing what it means to be learners for life and generous collaborators.

Connect Student-Directed Learning to Academic Standards

Educators at schools anywhere can prepare students for an uncertain future, specifically where that uncertainty relates to environmental change. A key takeaway from the two schools in Indonesia and Hungary is letting students take the lead in their learning. In each case, students investigated problems and found solutions, resulting in deep learning. There are many examples of schools doing similar work in the U.S. At Crosstown High, science teacher Nikki Wallace lets students take the lead by connecting them with local researchers through powerful community partnerships. 

We need to think big. Assigning simple projects around collecting plastic bottles or bags isn’t enough to move the needle on the environment and won’t truly engage kids. Even though Indonesia has specific concerns about rising sea levels, schools anywhere can — and should — engage students in learning about and studying the effects of droughts, heatwaves, floods and storms that result in crop failure and food scarcity. Here are a few steps to get started:

• Get students to think audaciously about solving local problems. What’s the big issue facing their neighborhood, town, county or state? How can they learn about it? Who can help them uncover solutions? For example: What is the condition of the local water source? What in the community is impacting local water? Who in the community can share expertise around this issue? 
• As they problem-solve, consider all connections to academic standards. How do research and problem-solving by students connect to the learning standards in your state? This is the crucial jumping-off point for connecting “academic” knowledge to “real world” solutions. At Crosstown High, we’ve done an in-depth study of human migration involving people who immigrated to Memphis. This project closely relates to the standards covered in our history, geography, sociology and psychology courses. 
• Get outside the box. Keep asking, “Why?” and push your students to think bigger and broader before zeroing in on the small tasks. At Crosstown, our students conducted an in-depth project on how life could exist on Mars. This encompassed everything from food sources, water, breathable air, transportation and architecture. They used persuasive writing and research — touching practically every subject area.

Unlock Students’ Passion and Curiosity

Helping students find the urgency and passion in learning, and the joy of finding a solution, are key components to solving increasingly urgent local and global issues. But they’re also the ingredients we need to make learning, in general, more engaging and relevant to high school students. Our high schools can and should do a better job cultivating students’ natural passions and curiosities, helping them discover how their unique gifts, talents and interests help them meet the challenges of an uncertain future. Understanding their place in that future builds the confidence needed to be a change-maker.

Luckily, students are naturally forward-focused. They constantly think about what life will be like when they grow up. We can improve the high school experience by activating their natural curiosity and augmenting it with essential skills such as critical thinking, creative problem solving, information gathering and collaboration.

All of these skills are necessary for college, career and the real world. By combining passion, urgency, curiosity and essential knowledge and skills, our students can grow into the superheroes our planet needs to lead urgent and necessary change on the local, national and global stages. Schools around the world are setting examples, and we can, too. 

Want more ideas for making your high school more student-centered? The XQ Xtra is a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

]]> /article/innovative-high-schools-the-met/ Wed, 16 Aug 2023 10:30:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=710200 Providence

After weeks working side-by-side in a tiny nut-free bakery, Susan Lagasse and her young apprentice reached what was perhaps their most fraught lesson: the scourge of cake crumbs in buttercream frosting.

“Once you have a little crumb, it spreads throughout the entire cake,” said Lagasse. “It’s like a disease.”

The apprentice, 17-year-old Caroline Bonga, nodded in agreement. For the past several weeks, she’d been spending a lot of her time on crumb control at Lagasse’s bakery, Awesome Sweets, covering naked cakes with a base layer of frosting prior to decoration. 

Across the small table sat Lillian John, who gently guided the conversation back to a key question: How can we end this internship with a bang?

John is an adviser at The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, a legendary public high school universally known as The Met. For more than a quarter of a century, Met advisers have been sitting in on meetings like these, transforming work-focused internships and student-driven exhibitions into a coherent education for some of the state’s neediest students.

Originally housed in space shared with the University of Rhode Island, in 2002 The Met opened in its current configuration in the Upper South Side, Providence’s poorest neighborhood. Built on the site of abandoned housing, next to a former hospital, the school sits on a wide-open swath of green with four small schools, each in a corner of campus.

The size is intentional: Each school houses fewer than 150 students, in core groups of 14 to 18, led by a single adviser like John who guides them from freshman to senior year. 

It’s an unusual arrangement that leads to something rare in high school: long-term, trusting relations between kids and adults that bear fruit in ways most schools never aspire to, said Met Co-Director Nancy Diaz.

Schools should be small, she said, their relationships loving and caring. “That’s what we do.”

While they meet with their entire groups several times a week, advisers don’t necessarily teach traditional classes, instead spending much of their time managing students’ individualized learning plans. 

In fact, the only subject routinely taught in a traditional classroom is math, and that’s via a designated specialist. Virtually everything else a student needs to learn, according to The Met, comes from projects, individualized assignments from advisers and, most notably, internships in the real world, like Bonga’s at the nut-free bakery.

As a result, most days students come and go in a relaxed fashion, an experience more akin to an elite college campus or white-collar workplace than a teeming high school.

‘The plan behind the madness’

Created in 1996 by educators Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor, The Met has quietly become a touchstone among educators nationwide seeking to create small, personalized high schools around relevant, career-focused aspirations. Its enrollment is highly diverse: 79% are students of color and 71% come from low-income families. Its latest graduation rate: 96%.

Twenty-seven years later, The Met essentially runs its own school district, one that comprises these four schools as well as two others here and in Newport, R.I., with a total enrollment of about 820 students. Its enrollment is lottery-based, with a waiting list that resets each year so students can’t be on it for more than one year. No entrance exam is required.

Like many Met students, Mei Mei Long, class of 2017, took a while to discover its possibilities. “I didn’t really like it the first year,” she admitted at a recent alumni gathering. 

Interested in medicine when she arrived as a freshman, Long found she couldn’t find any internships in the field that would enroll a 14-year-old. So she broadened her criteria and tried out a host of different topics, eventually settling on international relations. Six years later, it’s now the topic of a masters degree she’s earning at URI, a top destination for Met students. 

“It definitely helped me prepare to be more independent in school as well in the career field,” she said. “I’m not afraid to just go out there and learn new things.”

Jordan Maddox, class of 2007, floundered at two traditional high schools before he applied to The Met for junior year. An aunt and cousin worked there and urged him to consider it.

One look at its flexible structure and dearth of organized classes and he didn’t quite know what to make of the place. “I remember telling my mother, ‘Mom, this is a daycare for high school students.’ And she was like, ‘Give it a chance. Give it time.’”

After a disastrous first quarter, Maddox’s adviser took him aside and gently noted that he was doing just enough to get by — and it showed in his projects. That wasn’t good enough, she said.

It would take him a few months to grasp “the plan behind the madness,” as he calls it: “I realized I wasn’t doing much with my time, and students around me were making things happen.” They’d created impressive internships and other experiences.

After taking in a few classmates’ quarterly independent-study exhibitions, he stepped back and realized that those who were using their time wisely “had excellent exhibitions.” Students who “loafed around” had terrible ones. 

Then he got it: “The Met is similar to the real world. What you put in is what you will receive.”

Maddox began challenging himself in subsequent efforts, in the process tapping into his own interests. A year later, he developed an ambitious, eight-week afterschool curriculum for children that explored R&B, jazz and the Motown sound. He raised enough money to take a group of students on a two-week summer trip to Detroit, Memphis and Chicago, one that brought them to Motown’s headquarters and other music-related sites. 

“I think that’s what the Met taught me: Don’t really limit yourself.”

‘They’re not just hanging with 15-year-olds’

The power of the internships stems from two simple realities: They push teens to try lots of new things, and to spend time with adults, not peers.

After 27 years of sending students into the workplace, The Met maintains a database of more than 6,000 internship sites. They typically run for about three months, and most students do two or three per school year.

“They can realize what they love, what they hate, and what they really want to focus on,” said Diaz, the co-director.

One of senior Angel Feliz’s recent internships had him helping an architecture firm power a homeless shelter with solar energy — a resume-worthy credential. But in the process, Feliz realized he didn’t enjoy working in an office “where everybody was super quiet.”

So he focused instead on information technology, and last spring interned at the University of Rhode Island’s more convivial, far less quiet, I.T. Department. His latest assignment: Improving cybersecurity and updating databases at its .

“You go through a lot of trial and error here,” he said, “but through that you understand what you do like.”

Curriculum Director Joe Battaglia said one of the school’s key values is to help students build their extended social networks, which can be particularly difficult for students of color. That’s not something most high schools do, he said.

Co-founder Littky said one key to the school is that it puts students in proximity with adults. “They’re not just hanging with 15-year-olds or 18-year-olds” all day, he said, so they learn professional behaviors that will stay with them for years. “It’s way beyond, in my mind, any other skills they get.”

Rigor vs. vigor

For critics who might scoff at the idea of a smooth crumb coat as the kind of rigorous work a high schooler should undertake, Battaglia, the curriculum director, said state standards in culinary arts likely list “smooth crumb coats” as a core competency. For what it’s worth, at nearby Johnson & Wales University, , its cake production course, requires students to “assemble, ice, stack, tier and finish” cakes using a variety of ingredients, including buttercream.

Battaglia also said The Met hews to a basic tenet: depth over breadth. In that sense, it reflects the values of the, which for 30 years promoted not just depth but personalization, trust, and teachers as coaches.

Littky noted that the late Hungarian-American psychologist, father of the concept of “flow” in work and play, has written that the way one becomes an adult thinker is to study something — anything — deeply.

In schools, Littky said, the way most adults think about rigor is all wrong: It’s about output, not input. A math teacher who fails most of his students is “rigorous,” he said, much more so than the science teacher who inspires all of his students to become scientists.

Washor, Littky’s co-founder, likes to talk about “vigor rather than rigor” — “rigor,” he jokes, is Latin for “dead and stiff.”

“Schools are places of certainty, run by churches and people who want to install certain content. But the world is uncertain. The world is alive and dynamic.”

Young people, he said, thrive in uncertainty. “They want to take risks. We want them to be measured risks. We want to go along with them on those risks.”

Since 1996, Washor has moved on to working with The Met’s umbrella non-profit, , while Littky has remained on campus as a co-director. He retired in June.

At 79, Littky is partial to wire-rimmed glasses, kufi caps and flashy sneakers. He ends his phone conversations with “Peace” and speaks plainly — on occasion, profanely — about what makes the school tick. The internships, he said, may eventually make someone like Bonga into a skilled baker, but that’s not the point. “She does great, but I don’t really give a shit” if she becomes a baker, he said. What’s important is finding what ignites her interest.

“It’s our job back here to make it deeper” than just learning how to frost a cake. “It’s really about how do you place a kid in an environment where they want to work?”

It’s a tricky formula that often takes years to get right. While a few Met students focus early on their dream careers, by the time most graduate, they’ve spent four years zig-zagging through multiple internships and experiences, often in wildly divergent fields.

Last fall, before she was a baker’s apprentice, Bonga spent two months on the water with the group , sailing as far south as the Florida Keys. That got her thinking about more ways to leverage her time for travel, perhaps as a flight attendant. 

Coming back to earth, someday she’d like to run her own bakery. But first she must master “the most essential skill” of the smooth crumb coat, said Lagasse, her bakery boss.

Before long, the talk at Awesome Sweets turned away from buttercream and toward Bonga’s planned year-end project: a huge, $500 cake for her school’s June 6 awards ceremony, attended by upwards of 150 people. Lagasse committed to offering her protege the space, time and resources to create it, but with Spring Break looming, Bonga would have just 10 days in the bakery. 

Six weeks later, she met the June 6 deadline and produced a towering, ever-so-slightly off-center, four-tiered cake in gleaming white frosting. Decorated with silky red roses and purple violets, it showed not a hint of crumb.

]]> /article/10-cool-powerful-ways-to-inspire-teens-to-self-start-learn-in-the-real-world/ Wed, 02 Aug 2023 11:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=712497 This article has been produced in partnership between The 74 and the .

Imagine a high school class where students use 3D modeling software to create blueprints, gather around a mixing board to produce a song or turn their custom artwork into streetwear. These experiences are far from what we see in many traditional high school classes. 

Innovative educators are using to make their classes more engaging and relevant. More than an academic buzzword, PBL involves students in their learning by embracing real-world issues with hands-on solutions. It also gives them a taste of life beyond classroom walls, especially when a school works with community partners in business, academia or the nonprofit sector. 

Educators at XQ high schools engage students in meaningful PBL year-round. They’re among schools nationwide where educators enrich and strengthen their approaches to PBL by embracing , one of the six research-based for successful high schools. Learning becomes more when students take what they’re studying at school into the real world, seeing how academic concepts apply to places and people they know. 

Here are 10 examples of projects to inspire educators and community groups for the upcoming school year. 

1. Nurture Entrepreneurs

in Oakland, California offers students the opportunity to do long-term internships, particularly during their junior and senior years. Students can spend a month working with tech companies, local businesses, the courts and nonprofits in the Bay Area. When the pandemic posed challenges in arranging internships, Dean of Students Christian Martinez organized a two-hour class on Mondays and Tuesdays for seniors to gain financial literacy. He focused the class on the stock market, and encouraged students to develop brands and messages that resonated with their identities, cultures and histories. He ensured the course aligned with the state’s content standards, emphasizing research and evidence-based learning. Martinez said he came up with his idea for the class after seeing how the seniors didn’t seem excited about school when they came back in person during the pandemic. 

His students learned graphic design with software programs. They also had to pitch their ideas to community members, incorporate feedback and articulate the story behind their brand through presentations of learning. 

Martinez said he leveraged a grant from Nike to give each of his 16 students $500-$1,000 to have their hoodies, T-shirts and tote bags printed nearby. They then sold the clothes at Latitude’s big celebration of learning in the spring of 2022. Their brand names included “Cruzando Fronteras” (crossing borders), “Truth and Lies,” and “Humble Beginnings.” 

By the end of the spring semester, Martinez said, “I saw the spark that I needed to see from them for them to end the year in a place where they feel successful — regardless of whether they go to college or work.” 

2. Make Music

The Memphis Artists United Project served as a powerful platform for collaboration in the fall of 2022 between eight talented musicians from Memphis, Tennessee and the students of music production class, led by teacher Ty Boyland. Together, they embarked on a musical journey to create “,” a song addressing gun violence with a bilingual verse by a talented 12th grader, shedding light on the impact of guns within the Latino community. The song got attention from local media and at youth conferences, leading to conversations about how young people experience violence and what solutions they can propose. Also at Crosstown High: science teacher Nikki Wallacemakes some powerful community partnerships by working with local researchers.

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3. Start a Small Farm

At in Endicott, NY, students designed a greenhouse in their math class, building scale models. The winning model is now flourishing in a garden with multiple raised beds, small fruit trees, native berry bushes, a fence and an underground water reservoir that redirects runoff from nearby tennis courts. Principal Annette Varcoe said the students collaborate with a local farmer who encourages their understanding of agriculture, farming and the marketplace. 

In July of 2023, students added a trellis arch for climbing beans. They also harvested zucchini, cucumbers and rhubarb. Some cooked rhubarb pies in their café. Five 12th graders received internships and mentoring from Kathy, Dave and Eric’s Flavored Coffee Company. Students conducted surveys to determine which baked items to make and sell in the café. They are now working on an online ordering system and backend software to track sales and inventory for the 2023-24 school year.

4. Collaborate with Artists

Members of ’s class of 2022 responded to a devastating storm that hit the Cedar Rapids region in August 2020 and destroyed up to 70 percent of the local tree canopy. Students contracted with local chainsaw artists to turn fallen wood into sculptures. They auctioned the work for Trees Forever, a public-private partnership dedicated to “re-leafing” the damaged tree canopy. Over the three-month project, students had to engage and organize artists for the carving effort, obtain permits from the city government, generate publicity through the local media, and execute the sculpture auction. By the end, their “Splinters” project raised $25,000, nearly four times the students’ original goal of $6,000. A majority of the funds went to , with the rest paying the local artists for their time and skill. Student-led projects with community partners are the defining feature of Iowa BIG’s design.

5. Let Students Choose Science Projects

Student voice plays a significant role in projects at in Tennessee. For one project, students selected genetic diseases and conditions to study, then interviewed researchers, teachers, health professionals and those affected by these conditions. They created infographics to share their research, which were printed and displayed in the science wing to inform staff and students about genetic conditions.

6. Build a Community Garden

In partnership with the Houston Parks and Recreation Department, in Houston, Texas created community gardens in the adjacent 900-acre Herman Brown Park and later on the high school’s campus. The gardens now house more than 100 fruit trees throughout the school grounds on more than two and a half acres, providing many spaces for students to learn about the natural environment and contribute to the community. The school’s Career and Technical Education program has an educator in charge of coordinating community partnerships in agriculture, food and natural resources.

7. Build a Hydroponic System

At in Indiana, students built a hydroponic system through a science project. They conducted extensive research as they designed and constructed a method for growing produce sustainably and cost-effectively. The students then identified how to use those vegetables to address real-world community needs, such as providing healthy lunches to community members in food deserts. Students at this network of high schools work on projects with community partners throughout the year.

8. Make a Micro Museum

At in Sanford, Florida, students constructed a series of mobile micro museums to take around their community, educating residents, tourists and younger students about the history of the city of Sanford and Seminole County. Students met with historians and exhibit curators from the Sanford Museum to learn how to conduct primary research, preserve artifacts and build interactive designs. The year-long project started with design thinking for students to find out what elements of their community residents wanted to learn more about. Then, they built their traveling exhibits on topics such as natural history, agriculture, sports and media, and industry and technology. 

“In an age where history is more controlled than ever, it was amazing to see the students really become energized knowing their local history and how it connected with their own studies,” said Sanford Museum Curator Brigitte Stephenson. “It showed not only the power museums have, but also how important it is to have various ages give their input on how history is presented.” Currently showcased at the Sanford Museum in commemoration of its 65th anniversary, these micro museums will travel to elementary and middle schools, downtown businesses, Seminole State College and the Seminole County Administration Center.

9. �鶹Ӱ�� Local History with Artists

The partnered with , a local arts nonprofit for young people, allowing 10th graders to take a nine-week course led by Diatribe artists, focusing on the history of housing inequality in Grand Rapids. They learned about red-lining — the practice of excluding certain groups, such as Black people, from particular neighborhoods — and its long-term negative impacts. Students toured various neighborhoods, explored the city’s gorgeous, dynamic and learned how discriminatory housing practices have shaped their city’s look and feel. 

But, typical of the school’s approach, the course was more than just lessons and field trips. Students discussed what they learned and grappled with their reactions by creating poetry, story-telling and spoken word pieces. Teachers wanted students to understand how historical events like the Civil Rights Movement were experienced nationally and within the Grand Rapids community.The partnership with The Diatribe fit closely with GRPMS courses, which aimed to blend history with social justice and English language arts in a way that makes the past feel relevant to students’ lives. 

10. Make Green Alleyways Possible

Students at in Santa Ana, California, partnered with the local architectural firm to think about a new green alleyway project for the city, working alongside professional architects to model and learn the ins and outs of drafting tools. ��í�����ܱ��Dz� became so adept with project-based learning that its school board and the approved four PBL courses that will count towards California’s “A-G” subject requirement credit. The four courses are now available as an elective to all high schools across the Santa Ana Unified School District, the sixth largest district in California — showing how community partnerships and projects in one place can inspire more schools to try them.

Share examples of how your high school uses project-based learning with community partnerships with #rethinkhighschool on social.

Community partnerships are just one way to rethink high school. For more, check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of The 74.

]]> /article/innovative-high-schools-one-stone/ Thu, 13 Jul 2023 11:15:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=710194 Boise, Idaho (Updated July 19)

As high school seniors across the nation crammed for finals last spring, Abella Cathey was in her glory, enjoying a warm spring day as she joined a group of 24 children and their grandparents planting sage, yarrow and milkweed along the banks of the Boise River. 

The project was the culmination of a months-long, self-guided inquiry into , a phenomenon in which people become disconnected from the natural world. 

Cathey, 18, attends One Stone, a student-driven private high school near the heart of downtown Boise. While she was out planting, her classmates were similarly engaged: One threw a free, three-day music festival for pediatric cancer patients and their parents. Others were busy advising a local chef about food waste. 

This is the kind of thing that unfolds most days at One Stone — part four-year high school, part educational R&D lab, part design-and-advertising agency — that turns virtually every high school tradition on its head.

Teachers are called “coaches,” and students not only guide the school’s board, but, according to its bylaws, hold two-thirds of board seats and 100% of officers’ positions. 

“A lot of people don’t believe that high school students can do meaningful, big things,” said Teresa Poppen, One Stone’s executive director and co-founder. “And I have always believed that they can do meaningful things when empowered and trusted.”

Or, as Cathey put it, “Being treated like an adult is what makes you act like one.”

Each student shows up in the fall expected to manage their own learning, sitting down with advisors to create a personalized learning plan built around their interests and the importance of serving the community. 

“It’s kind of rare for two people to do the same thing,” said Henry Fears, 17, who has spent much of the past year designing a dual-purpose windbreaker for mountain bikers. In the event they take a spill, it doubles as a sling.

While factual knowledge, here as elsewhere, plays a key role, the school’s four-part “Bold Learning Objectives” — a framework endearingly called the BLOB — puts knowledge in its place, giving it equal footing with creativity and a forward-thinking way of approaching problems that has has become an education buzz-phrase: a growth mindset. The result is a bespoke, four-year education that supporters call a “toolkit for life.”

‘We had no intention of building a school‘

The school may seem like an experimental throwback, but its brand of thinking has been building steam — and converts — for years. 

At least part of its model, a complex “growth transcript” that tracks students’ development in several non-traditional ways, could soon be more widely available: Last year, the school secured close to a quarter million dollars in funding to further develop the idea. It’s testing the waters via licensing agreements with a handful of schools, in hopes that the transcript can provide an ongoing, if small, future revenue stream.

Like most endeavors of its type, One Stone started life as something else entirely. It began in 2008 as a project-based afterschool program for local teens. With its young clientele pushing for more, One Stone’s founders brought groups of 150 high school juniors from across Idaho into a local hockey rink, where they brainstormed what to do next.

“What they came away with is [that] they needed a place to explore their passions and really find out what drives them,” said Celeste Bolin, who directs Lab51, One Stone’s high school program. Essentially, students wondered: Why can’t school be more like One Stone?

“We had no intention of building a school — zero,” said Poppen, the co-founder. “Nor did we really love the idea when kids brought it up.”

But the students made a powerful case that they needed a place and a schedule that allowed them to focus more closely on their interests — no small endeavor for a generation diverted by .

“They don’t want to go from class to class, hour to hour to hour,” Poppen said. “When they find something that they want to dive into, they want to be able to dive into it in ways [that] are meaningful.”

The rink sessions also revealed that teens wanted a more purposeful kind of education, one that embraced both community service and their own personal goals.

So, reluctantly, and with a grant from the Boise-based , the school opened in September 2016 with 32 students.

For its first six years, the non-profit charged no tuition. But with the Albertson grant sunsetting, the student-led board last year voted to enact tuition on a sliding scale — from a maximum of about $16,000 to virtually free for families who can’t afford it. One Stone says families with incomes below $75,000 pay as little as $150 annually.

Mackenzie Link, a senior who chairs the board, said the move, though difficult, “can keep us around for 10, 20, 30 more years.”

Before finalizing the move, Poppen sat down with every One Stone family. Just three opted to leave.

‘The space for uncertainty’

Day-to-day, the school looks nothing like a typical high school. Its one-story building comprises a handful of open-concept rooms, bordered by coaches’ offices and closed-door spaces for cooking, 3-D printing and music production.

The rooms shift quickly from meeting space to arts workshop to performance space. The furniture never seems to stay put.

The school day begins later than virtually any other high school in the nation — 9 a.m. “7:50 (a.m.) is too early for most young brains,” said Bolin. “They are not switched on yet.” 

Students rarely attend formal classes — here they’re called “workshops” — instead  working alone, with coaches or in small groups, on material that pushes their projects forward. In math, for instance, they rarely follow a prescribed sequence. In order to graduate, they take part in eight “math experiences” keyed to their projects, said Josie Derrick, the school’s “lead math innovator.” While they might not necessarily take a course labeled Algebra I, One Stone’s transcript translates its offerings into traditional courses for colleges.

Students might find themselves, on occasion, in a classroom watching a coach demonstrate math concepts, Derrick said, but it’s rare. Often, it’s students who come to her wanting to learn more about a topic because they need it to advance their project.

“I think a lot of the magic in what we do is creating the space for uncertainty and complexity,” said Michael Reagan, a One Stone coach and Lab 51’s director of design. 

But skills aren’t totally left behind. Derrick realized last year that a few students weren’t getting enough math and built out the school’s math workshops.

Nonetheless, a few students seek outside help.

Last spring, after a year at One Stone, sophomore Caden Chorlog enrolled at Boise High School with a dual-enrollment agreement at, a nearby public magnet school. But he soon realized he missed One Stone.

They welcomed him back in the fall, along with his dual enrollment at Treasure Valley.

Many would say that’s actually a very One Stone thing to do: Find what works for you and make it happen.

As a result, virtually every student has a different experience. For instance, while many students spend time making music or putting together benefit concerts and other events, others find both refuge and purpose in , a workshop that houses woodworking and welding tools, a 3-D printer, a laser engraver and a fearsome — a massive automated tool that precisely cuts all manner of materials. The size of a giant dining table, it dominates the room.

The Foundry is where Daniel Krafft, who graduated in 2020, spent most of his time. Krafft has since become a One Stone celebrity with a wildly popular that takes viewers through his 3-D printing projects. At last count, Krafft had 2.1 million subscribers and his videos had nearly 148 million views.

Cadence Kirst first dabbled in the space as a way to make handmade wooden swords for roleplaying games. She then moved on to manufacturing painstakingly detailed wooden boards for a strategy board game called Quoridor.

“I’m hoping to be in here ‘til the minute I graduate,” she said one recent afternoon as she prepared a few of her prototypes for the school’s “Disruption Night” expo, held at nearby Boise State University.

It was there that Fears showed off his prototype windbreaker, developed in a One Stone after a biking trip with his father, who broke his clavicle and had to descend a mountain unassisted. And Chorlog, the dual-enrolled student, showed off another invention prototyped in The Foundry: a small, 3-D-printed reusable box for small mail parcels.

A group of students detailed their efforts working with the chef of a local high-end restaurant to reduce food waste, while another talked about developing a manual for kids to learn about distracted driving so they could discuss it with their parents. Tabitha Smith, an official with the Idaho Transportation Department, told the crowd she brought a draft of the manual back to the office and showed it to co-workers, who were “blown away” by the students’ handiwork.

“I have worked in highway safety for about four years now and this is unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” she said. “They picked a whole new audience to market to.” 

By this fall, Smith said, Idaho drivers should see a final, co-branded version of the manual “in your DMV, county offices and pediatrician’s offices.”

‘They’re tenacious’

The manual, as well as other materials, come compliments of the school’s studio, a professional-grade branding and marketing firm that every One Stone student takes a spin through. And yes, the name is a play on the famous adage about what to do with one stone. Run by a recent alumna and powered by student labor, the firm sells its services to local, regional and national businesses, with proceeds underwriting the school’s budget.

“We build our schedule around experiences,” said Bolin, the Lab51 director. The lab’s name comes from the concept of “51ing” an idea, she said. “We say your first 50 ideas have probably all been thought of as not very creative. We need 51 and beyond.”

To get there, she said, One Stone students are “constantly practicing, talking about what they did, how they grew, what was hard, what they’d like to do — over and over and over again. They’re writing about it, they’re talking about it. They’re telling big groups of people about it and telling small groups of people.”

They’re talking to team members, parents and mentors, she said. “Practice, practice, practice, practice.”

As a result, she said, they begin to see that their experience has value and their endeavors are worth fighting for. “They’re tenacious … They don’t just give up.”

One Stone boasted an 83.8% college acceptance rate this spring and more than $2 million in projected four-year merit scholarships.

Dean Kahler, vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Idaho, said he’s starting to get applications from One Stone students and has enrolled a handful. He’s impressed. 

“It is a neat school and they do produce really wonderful students that are problem-solvers and leaders,” he said. “And they’re collaborative with one another.” 

‘The next thing to care about’

As she prepared for graduation recently, Link, the board chair, was also working on securing the school’s accreditation with the . The school’s highest-ranked officer, she can hold forth on nearly any detail: finances, operations, strategic plan. She has also been known to stay late and sweep the floors. 

Asked what’s next for her, she laughed and said, “I’ve gotten to the point where I’m really comfortable saying, ‘I don’t know.’”

She just earned a license to be a certified nursing assistant. She also plans to work at a lavender farm this summer. Maybe she’ll go to the University of Idaho in the fall and join a sorority. Eventually, she’d like to work as a midwife or nurse practitioner in developing countries.

But she’s also really interested in construction management. It’s all very exciting, she said, and she’s in no rush to decide. She just wants to find something she can throw herself into completely. “I want the next thing to care about.”

]]> /article/how-portrait-of-a-graduate-is-spurring-innovation-in-springfield-schools/ Tue, 29 Nov 2022 21:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=700362 Last spring, a group of elementary school students at Mary M. Walsh Elementary School in Springfield, Massachusetts, excitedly showed their families and other community members the results of the endangered species project they had been working on all year. They had not only learned about the animal they researched, but emerged with improved communication skills and a better understanding of local history, regional geology and how to advocate for a cause, respond to feedback and make revisions along the way to a final product.

This project-based learning experience is one of many new community-inspired initiatives that are part of a six-year strategic plan to reimagine Springfield schools. It’s the result of the “Portrait of a Graduate” project that the district worked on with 12 other communities across New England with funding from The Barr Foundation and technical support from The Learning Agenda. Springfield Public Schools is the second-largest district in New England, serving a population of nearly 24,000 students that is 18% Black and 68% Latino. English is a second language for nearly 30% of the students, 25% have a disability and nearly 90% come from low-income households.

The idea behind “Portrait of a Graduate” is simple: It’s a guiding vision for student success. Although a major goal of K-12 educators is to watch their students grow up and eventually wear caps and gowns at graduation, it is also important to make sure students have the skills necessary for success when they do, whether they choose to work or pursue higher education. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important but not sufficient. There’s just so much more that’s necessary to navigate the world and thrive.

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When we examined data on outcomes for Springfield’s students after high school graduation, we saw that too few were matriculating to postsecondary education, persisting and earning degrees. Students needed to be able to overcome challenges. They needed to know where to go to for help. They needed to know how to advocate for themselves and others.

When formulating our “Portrait of a Graduate” plan, we didn’t talk only to educators. We had 200 community conversations and got input from a diverse group of 2,000 stakeholders including leaders of local businesses, colleges, nonprofits and faith-based organizations, first responders, families and students. They told us what they think students need to know and be able to do. A major theme was that people wanted what students learn in school to be relevant to them outside the school setting. Once we gathered input from the community, we created a “Portrait of a Graduate” that became a blueprint outlining our vision of what we want for every student who graduates high school, and how to get there.

Now, we are putting the plan into action. We are creating opportunities for students to gain knowledge and skills they will need after graduation, such as communication, collaboration, persistence and critical thinking. For example, a major theme across the board in our community conversations was that students need to know more about money. As a result, we have made financial literacy classes available to our high school students.

We’ve got a long way to go, but early results are promising. So far, we have rolled out our new approach aligning teaching and learning with the “Portrait of a Graduate” in 16 Springfield schools — nine last year and seven this fall — and reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Educators like the ability to try something new, and administrators appreciate how this new vision is tailored to who their students are. Community members are grateful that their ideas and needs are being heard and turned into programming that is building the skills their future workers and community members will need to succeed. Students appreciate that their voice is being heard in the reimagining of school and that the district is prioritizing opportunities for them to express choice and their unique identity in their learning.

Anchoring meaningful school transformation in a community-driven “Portrait of a Graduate” that serves as north star can be a model to help close the education gap and prepare students for their future path, whatever direction it may take. It has reinforced our belief that there are multiple pathways for students to take, and that it is our job to support their development so they have the knowledge, skills and confidence to pursue those paths after graduation. Through this process we have also reaffirmed the value of community input — so much so that the superintendent created a new district position, chief of family and community engagement, with an office that includes family liaisons in each school.

The seeds of knowledge planted in an elementary school classroom in Springfield could blossom into innovative strategies and skills that benefit students and communities for many years to come.

]]> /article/teachers-view-project-based-learning-can-help-educators-and-students-succeed/ Mon, 29 Aug 2022 14:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=695591 In my Advanced Placement U.S. government and politics classroom, students take on the role of attorneys and argue a Supreme Court case in front of student justices and an actual judge from the Iowa Circuit Court of Appeals. They also work together to run mock political campaigns, while their peers report on the election as journalists. And they design political action plans for an interest group focused on immigration policy. In 15 years of teaching this way — with project-based learning at the heart of my instruction — I’ve seen how each of these experiences increases student engagement and achievement.

I use project-based learning as my primary instructional approach because it makes the classroom experience more relevant, more authentic, more effective and frankly, more fun. I’ve known this from my own observations and student feedback. And research now confirms it. Lucas Education Research, a division of the George Lucas Education Foundation, and university researchers across the country released last year showing project-based learning improves student achievement across a variety of core subjects in elementary, middle and high school — including the AP course I teach — as well as academic gains and improvements related to social and emotional learning for all groups of students. This includes those from historically marginalized groups.

My students at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa, have diverse backgrounds and experiences. Some come into my course with a great deal of knowledge about how government works, while others may not have that background and may even come from refugee families. With a embedded in their AP coursework, all of my students have an opportunity to think, learn and grow at high levels. 

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I came to understand the power of this approach in 2008, when I was teaching social studies in Bellevue, Washington, and was invited to help for the class. As both a designer and implementer, I have seen and used the curriculum’s many iterations. I now teach other teachers how to use and adapt it so it works well for their classrooms and is meaningful to their students, always emphasizing that they are curriculum designers as well. 

So why haven’t schools and districts expanded project-based learning?

I think one of the big challenges is that teachers need more curriculum resources to deliver this inquiry-based approach to instruction. It’s not easy for educators to come up with course designs on their own, and while many teachers try to weave forms of project-based learning into their instruction, that’s hard to do. Most would benefit from a strong, cohesive curriculum that guides their practice and allows embedded projects to drive learning in the classroom. A high-quality curriculum should be aligned to content standards and empower students to learn about a subject deeply and to apply what they know toward solving real-world problems that are relevant to them.

To spur development of curriculum that is engaging for students, Lucas Education Research recently released a for helping curriculum developers, whether they’re traditional textbook publishers or district-led teams. As someone who had a hand in the design of a project-based curriculum, I think the recommendations are sound. 

In particular, it’s important to use core design principles that value student voice and encourage collaboration and reflection. Teachers, students and families should be involved in the curriculum design process. A curriculum that is created without this input is less likely to resonate with students and lead to learning gains.

also shows that the more a teacher can adapt a curriculum to local needs, the more students engage and learn. A strong curriculum offers that kind of flexibility. For district leaders working with existing materials, it’s helpful to provide guidance around productive adaptations. 

High-quality professional development opportunities are always important. With project-based learning, as with most approaches, these should be led by expert facilitators who know the content being taught and practices that must be developed. The experiences should be collaborative and ongoing.
Students have faced tremendous disruptions to their schooling because of the pandemic.
The will be long lasting, and historically marginalized kids will continue to be the most severely impacted. Expanding high-quality project-based learning is one important tool that school leaders and educators can use to improve teaching and learning and boost engagement. Now is the time for those who create instructional resources used in classrooms to meet this vital need.

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