I alluded to a new project I was taking on being on the committee to start a new high school as an extension of the charter school my kids go to school at now. I am very excited about this as anyone who knows me, knows I like to talk educational philosophy with anyone/everyone (sorry mr Schwan man) Anyway, our school is an Expeditionary Learning school. What this means is that the educational subjects are tied together to go in depth on one topic. EL also has a strong 'hands on' component. (Last year my kids went on probably 10+ field works each.) Also, things like revising, rewriting, editing until a project is the best it can be is a quality of EL projects. Through the in-depth discovery of a subject, students are required to create a quality product/project of some sort that demonstrates their mastery of the subject.
As you can see, there is no elevator answer to what EL is. It's complicated, but I love the idea, and have been happy to see my kids delve into it. (Granted our school has a long way to go till we meet the ideals, but we are only 2 years old. It is emerging.)
Anywho, I submitted a first draft of a school schedule and have subsequently scrapped almost all of it. Here is my second draft. I would love feedback from an non-insider point of view. LEt me know if something doesn't make sense, some of what I said is based on previous knowledge of those on my committee. :)
And yes, It's long...so if you do give me feedback... THANKS a hundred times.
p.s. I'm a little scared to post this as I know there are real live actual teachers out there that read my blog (well would if I ever posted). But I'm tough let me have it...I may have missed some important things as I'm just a mom with no education learning but my own. But, if you don't tell me, who will???
EL High School Concept 2nd Draft:
I guess I’m the kind of person that needs to see what a day will look like from the kid’s point of view. In that light, I have taken what Lloyd was saying about the schedule being expedition driven (and credits being expedition driven as well), and what Scott was saying about his preference for trimesters & crew times and for our stated desire for such things as band, released time, AP classes, community involvement, rigorous schedule right now, but I think we at least need an idea of what it would look like to make sure it would be viable. Let me know what you think.
Time Daily Schedule
8:00-8:30 AM CREW
8:35-9:20 AM Mini Class
9:25-10:10 AM Mini Class
10:15- 3:00 PM Expedition
30 minute lunch
at some point in
there as well as
a 10-15 minute
afternoon break
Mini classes would be 45 minutes long and include Band, (BN) Released Time, (RT) Foreign Language (FL)—(no one has said yeah or nay as far if that should be something we include) and Independent Study (IS). Mini class teachers would be encouraged to find ways to enrich the expeditions that are being taught either through music or in some other way.
The IS class could be a ‘study hall’ hour for those that are struggling in a subject. Or it could be used as an IS AP class for those that would like to take college level courses. I did some investigating and I ‘think’ these classes could be online, unless of course we had enough interest to have a teacher for a class. This way, we could still have a strong band program and seminary during school could be an option as well.
During expedition time, classes would have access to the teachers they need to fulfill the credits for the expedition. As in Lloyd’s example the expedition would provide the instruction for certain credits. My proposal would be to have 9/10 ‘lock stepped’ with a rotating schedule. Meaning one year an expedition would meet the core standards for 9th grade and the next they would meet core standards for 10th grade. 11/12 would also be ‘lock stepped’ with a similar rotation with one exception that I will explain later.
In a trimester system we could have 3 ‘mesters’ (what do you call that anyway? It’s like calling the plural of Moose Meece.) Each section would be 11 weeks long and we could have 15 intensive days split between 3 or 4 intensive periods. I’m not sure what the magic number of intensives are or how long they should last, but I would want to make sure that an expedition period had a significant amount of time to produce a quality product. Whatever that may be.
This system would allow students to take 3 expeditions per year. I propose that we have a general name for those expeditions then a specific direction could be chosen by the group of teachers teaching it. For example:
In 9/10th grade One year you would have expeditions as follows: Biology/Geography A ; Biology Geography B; & Life Skills. The next year the expeditions would be Earth Systems/U.S. History A; Earth Systems/U.S History B; & Life Skills. 11/12th grade expeditions would be Chemistry/World Civilizations A; Chemistry/World Civilizations B; & Life Skills and the next year Physics/? U.S History II A; Physics/? U.S History II B; & Life Skills (specific combinations could be debated—these are just an example)
The ‘core’ expeditions would be chosen based on the core curriculum that needed to be taught for Biology & say Geography. English topics can be fit in with any expedition and math would be tweaked to work with whatever expedition was running. Because of needing more than one section per core expedition to teach all the students (based on a 300 student population). Students would be placed in the expedition according to their math class needs. For example you could have 2 sections of Earth Systems/U.S. History with one teaching Algebra 1 and one teaching Geometry. Each expedition would allow students to earn credits in (at the minimum) the 4 core subjects (math, science, history, language arts.) BUT, depending on the expedition, other credits might be earned as well. For example an expedition on Earth Systems/U.S. History might have an art component that could teach sculpture or painting or what not and earn fine arts credit.
The Life Skills expeditions would focus on the ‘other’ than core classes that are required. I would suggest 4 basic Life Skills expeditions that each student would need to take. These expeditions would not need to be locked and students from 9-12 grade could choose what year they took them. Some suggestions for these electives might be:
Healthy Lifestyles: Students could have an expedition that created experiences where they learned what they needed for Health, P.E., Financial Literacy, perhaps anatomy etc.
I would suggest these for general topics for the Life Skills expeditions:
Health—with credit opportunities as shown above.
Government—to make sure we can include our strong patriotism component
Applied Technology—to make sure all state required electives in this area are covered
Community—to give students the option of doing internships with community businesses or attending OWATC or even Weber State (not sure if schedules would match..but a possibility) . It would be an expedition that would be very student driven, likely with a mentor/teacher to guide them. Definitely a writing/presentation component would be an integral part of this expedition.
I would allow students to do these in any order they want with possibly the exception of the Community expedition being saved for the senior year.
I know we can’t be everything and do everything, but I think a schedule similar to this would allow us to keep many of the things that we deemed important.
The downsides that I see right away are:
1. Instructional time is down quite a bit from a semester system. In traditional schools that use trimesters students only take core subjects for two trimesters. If you took math first and second trimesters one year and then had it second and third trimesters the next that would be a HUGE gap of time for kids to forget what they learned.
2. Students staying in the same classroom and having the teachers move. Good for saving space, but could be boring for students to stay in the same place for so long. And, if they have no friends in their class or someone that really bugs them, it could make for a long day. I think physical breaks would need to be scheduled in to get the kid’s blood moving so their brains just don’t shut down.
3. There are more natural breaks for intensives. This could be good or bad, bad if you wanted an extensive intensive at the beginning and at each break as it might cut into expedition time and we want to make sure they have enough time to create quality work.
4. This type of schedule may not allow for weekly ‘P.E.’ time but I think that physical activity should be incorporated into the expeditions anyway. And, all ‘required’ credits for p.e. could be earned by taking the Health expedition. (I hope!)
Upsides:
1. Students though locked into grade level expeditions will still have flexibility to ‘go as fast’ as they want in subjects like math. If a specific expedition didn’t offer the math level a student ‘needed’ then they could take an IS period with a math teacher. (likely online/tutoring occurring here) They could then just opt out of the math credit given during expedition time. We can still offer students the ‘fast track’ to college as well as the integrated learning experience that will help them once they are there.
2. 3 expeditions per year so the kids don’t get bored. One complaint my kids have is that the expeditions now are ‘too long’.
3. Flexibility in scheduling teachers. If you have a set of teachers that are teaching at least 2 sections of an expedition, they could coordinate to have an extra long science day one day and an extra long LA day another. No need for a set apart ‘field work’ time.
4. Grand topic of expedition is based on the needed core curriculum, but teachers could find specific topic then teach it again in 2 years or find a different angle.
5. Mini classes & IS would allow students transferring in to take classes they might have missed because of not starting @ ninth grade.
6. IS would help make sure kids did not fall through the cracks and get lost in the shuffle. If they are struggling they can get one on one attention (for at least part of a class period) Also it would allow kids to not be held back when they want to excel. Kids could take up to 2 AP classes per year if desired online with a teacher mentor.
7. While ‘instruction time’ might be down over a semester system. If we had required ‘core’ expeditions every year, then kids would get MORE required core time over 4 years then they would in a traditional high school that does not require 4 years of math.
Seat time: Approximately 4 hrs & 45 minutes set aside for expedition. (Approximately 45 minutes of that set aside for lunch and breaks) If you go on 4 hours for the ‘class’ and you just count the 4 cores that are being taught you would have approximately 55 instructional hours per ½ credit of core class. 41.25 instructional hours per mini class per half credit.
Based on 300 students in the school, Each trimester, 200 students would be in the core expeditions ( this would mean you would have 2 sections per grade for core expeditions.) And, 100 students in the Life Skills expedition per trimester, meaning you would need 1 Life Skills expedition per grade.)
Each teacher would likely be teaching 4 ‘periods’ per expedition time period. 2 periods of Core expedition and 2 periods of Life Skills expedition—especially, in the case of the English teachers, though math teachers might have 3 periods during expedition and also teach IS during mini time. Not sure exactly how a master plan might look yet. But I think there would be built in prep time for all the teachers.
Grading/completion of a credit would be based on state core benchmarks from the point of view of the expedition. So…have I lost you yet? Let me know what you think. Ask questions if you don’t get what I am saying. It is late and I have been thinking about this pretty much non-stop since yesterday so I could be off in the head. Also, I will be out of town next week and likely won’t see my emails from Monday-Friday, so if I don’t answer right away that is why.
--Kennecott Copper Mine from the window of the airplane
Tim Pogo Sticking in Manila
Flying the kite
