Let kids run the school

If you could design your senior year, what would you do? These students had the opportunity.

Today I spent quite a bit of time visiting classrooms, talking with students. I saw incredibly high levels of engagement and critical thinking in the psychology and conflict resolution courses. I didn't see core courses in action, and I wonder what the students would design. Would they push their math skills? Some may. I saw them pushing their thinking this morning as they built cardboard boats for the physics course and our annual boat race.

It may be an interesting project to have a group of juniors design an ideal senior year. It's relevant and timely. Rigorous.

Has anyone done this? If so, what has been your result?

Innovation in Scheduling

About a year ago, my faculty and I decided our school should participate in the iZone, an initiative from the NYC Department of Education designed to help personalize education to meet student needs, motivations and strengths.

At the same time we were considering piloting hybrid coursework, we heavily considered moving to a trimester schedule to ensure that all students were successful, while accelerating student achievement so advanced students may take CUNY College Now courses or other college coursework.  

This past weekend, I co-presented at The Celebration of Teaching & Learning, to share how we as a school organized to meet our students' needs.  Over this past year, we've implemented trimesters, which not only allowed flexibility in the schedule, it allowed us to stagger student start and end times.  This one change has made a significant difference in our students' level of happiness, as those who desire early morning courses are programmed for zero period, while those who are not early birds have an extra hour to two of sleep.  

An unintended benefit of this programming structure allowed my teachers smaller course loads, with more preparation time during the day.  This led to increased teaming structures and common planning by department and co-teaching teams.  

Here is a copy of the deck from my presentation.  

What you are doing to personalize education for each student?