Fall/Winter 2008-09 Issue - Center Grove Community School ...

long-range facilities plan
the new 3 r’s
We adopted the “New 3 R’s” terminology
from the 2005 Bill Gates speech to the National
Governors’ Association entitled, “America’s
High Schools are Obsolete.”
“High Tech High’s scores on statewide
academic tests are 15 percent higher than the
rest of the district; their SAT scores are an
average of 139 points higher.
These are the kind of results you can get
when you design a high school to prepare every
student for college.
These are not isolated examples. These
are schools built on principles that can be
applied anywhere – the new three R’s, the basic
building blocks of better high schools:
The first R is Rigor – making sure all
students are given a challenging curriculum
that prepares them for college or work;
The second R is Relevance – making sure
kids have courses and projects that clearly
relate to their lives and their goals;
The third R is Relationships – making sure
kids have a number of adults who know them,
look out for them, and push them to achieve.”
We work with those definitions, but after
additional contemplation, research, and
applying the concepts to Center Grove, we
changed the order to relationships, relevance,
and rigor.
Willard Daggett, Ph.D., founder and
President of the International Center for
Keystone is a class that all freshmen take during their first semester.
The class is an orientation to high school, and develops study skills,
career interests, and college readiness. Career interests are identified
through career inventories, career clusters, and job shadowing. The
students also learn about college requirements for their potential career
choices.
The final exam for Keystone has been
to create a portfolio which included their
high school career major (one of eight),
essay, a Power Point presentation of their
job shadowing experience, and other
information. The portfolio was placed in
a binder and later provided to their STaR
teachers.
This semester, the class is utilizing
the Epsilen Environment, the on-line
professional networking environment
which each CG middle and high school
student may access through a personal
account. The final exams will now be to create an electronic portfolio
which can follow the students throughout their high school careers and
beyond.
and how they will be incorporated into the proposed High School Redesign.
Leadership in Education, said that the
point about relationships is that learning is
personal. When students have strong, trusting
relationships with their teachers, they work
harder and achieve more. It’s so common and
so easy to get excited about the rigor (this could
be technology, new classroom pedagogy, etc.)
that we forget to build strong foundational
relationships before setting off on our journey.
Once the relationships are established, we
can move to relevance. The more students
understand how what they are learning is
relevant to them, to their community, or to the
world at large; the more motivated they will be
to learn.
next issue:
smaller learning communities
Paul Buck, Assistant Principal at Center Grove High School and leader of the High School Redesign Team, talks about the New Three R’s,
As leaders it is important to create change
narratives that address relevance. The most
powerful narratives address relevance in two
ways: 1) How is this new action or way of doing
things going to affect YOU, as an individual?
and 2) How is this new action or way of
doing things going to affect the world outside
yourself?
Leaders who can create narratives that
express the ways change will take care of the
stakeholder’s personal concerns, and at the
same time explain how the change will be
making the classroom, school, or world a better
place; have set the scene for great things to
happen.
Relationships and relevance make rigor
possible.
When the decision was made by the
community to maintain one high school for
the district, it came with a mandate to keep the
school personal, and as enrollment continues
to grow to make it “feel” smaller. In the next
issue, we’ll address the role smaller learning
communities will play. They affect this
element of the equation, however, in creating
an environment for student-teacher and peer
relationships to develop and thrive. Another
excerpt from the Bill Gates speech:
“The three R’s are almost always easier to
promote in smaller high schools. The smaller
size gives teachers and staff the chance to
“The New 3 R’s” continued on page 7
Relationships: Electronic Portfolios
Tracy Buck, CGHS Lead Teacher for Keystone: Orientation to Life and Careers, talks about the new electronic portfolios
being created by freshmen in the class of 2012.
The e-portfolios will include a resume, showcase (work they’ve
done, presentations, essays, art work, video projects, audio files, and
more), interest inventories (value survey, learning style, personality
traits correlated to types of jobs), post secondary education plan, and
career and college resources. The menu is customizable, so students
may also include additional information such as
transcripts and test scores. They may also apply
access codes for information that is private.
When these students are assigned to their
STaR or future advisory classes, their teachers
can simply access their e-portfolios on-line,
and learn all about the aptitude and interests of
the students. This allows the relationship piece
to begin before the students ever arrive in the
classroom!
“Everything they do here is preparation for
the college classroom,” said Mrs. Buck. “And the
kids love it! They come in and ask every day, ‘Are
we going to the computer lab?’”
When they begin to apply for college, scholarships, or the job market,
they can simply include a link or URL in their applications and their
e-portfolios will be available for viewing.
Page 3 Fall/Winter 2008-09