REAL-LIFE LEARNING by Alicia Woodard Green
Jesse Hood is the kind of kid you'd want your daughter to date. He is polite,
clean-cut and respectful. He comes from a nice family, makes decent grades and
always has a summer job. But until recently, he wasn't a student that people noticed
in his Corbin, Kentucky high school, located between an old-fashioned root beer
stand and a Caterpillar manufacturer.
Jesse, a junior, was coasting through high school on an average
track. “To me, it kind of seemed like a waste of time doing honors courses,” he
says. “I guess, being a 16-year-old boy, I just decided I'd rather just lay back
and take the general courses and make it through the year.”
Education reformer Gene Bottoms says that high schools nationwide
are putting students like Jesse Hood on a dead-end path, setting them up for
failure in today's highly competitive global economy. In the late 1970s and '80s,
Bottoms toured the country and saw students placed on one of three tracks: college
prep, general or basic. “Only about 30% of the kids were getting a real, solid
academic program of studies,” he says. “About 40% of the kids were finishing
the general track that was preparing them for nothing. And then the kids in the
technical program were getting very low-level academics. It was very obvious
that we were producing a generation of folks who… would not be prepared for the
kind of high-tech jobs that would begin to emerge.”
Bottoms reached two conclusions that became central to his reform
model, called High Schools That Work, which Jesse's high school adopted in 2001.
First, students in the bottom two tracks are often capable of accomplishing much
more than many of their teachers, or even their parents, demand of them. Second,
you must connect academic learning to real life. If you do so, he says, students
will strive. In Jesse's case, he was right.
Thinking Ahead: Setting Sights Beyond High School
Jesse's transformation started quite innocently. He was filling
out his junior year schedule, saw an honors computer class that sounded interesting
and signed up. A woman named Linda Cupp was the teacher. “I've been told that,
no matter what class I teach, it's the hardest class in the school,” Cupp says. “Because
I like to push my children.”
Cupp is a pleasant, motherly type, with a no-nonsense streak.
As a long-time math and pre-calculus teacher, she is mindful of giving her students
skills that will serve them well beyond high school. Computer technology class “is
hands-on,” Cupp says, but adds, “it's not to give them a skill. That's not the
idea. We're hoping that it will improve their academics… I want the students
to be able to think through the problem. If something doesn't work, not be scared
to try something new. We call it problem-solving, but it's thinking. Because
if you have that skill, you can do anything you want.”
Cupp taught Jesse and his classmates how to take apart, re-assemble
and repair computers along with keyboards and printers. Jesse was so intrigued,
he signed up for a second semester. Next, Cupp started sending him into other
classrooms to help teachers and students with computer problems. “He has taken
to this like a duck to water,” Cupp says with a laugh. “He's very serious about
his work.” Jesse is so serious that when he was bedridden with the flu, he was
also guilt-ridden about missing class. He called Cupp personally to apologize. “I've
never had a student call in sick before to me. He literally called to say he
was so sorry he could not come.”
Now, Cupp sends Jesse to schools throughout the district to repair
computers. “He's gotten so involved with technology and technology repair, I
don't know what we'd do without him,” says Corbin principal Joyce Phillips.
The benefits for Jesse extend far beyond Cupp's class. He has
transformed from a student who didn't stand out, to one every teacher knows by
name. “When I started out… the teachers were teachers, and I was a student,” Jesse
says. “Now, I'm out in the school and I'm working with them and they kind of
seem more like a colleague than they do a teacher. I feel more confident when
I'm around them, more like we're on the same level and the same page. We both
know what we're doing and we're able to get our jobs done.”
Jesse is also more engaged in his classes, demands more of himself
and is thinking about his future. “Next year, I'm going to take honors pre-calculus,
and I normally wouldn't have taken that,” he says. “I'd already made out my schedule,
just taking the normal elective classes I wanted to take. Pretty much a laid-back
year. Then Ms. Cupp and me started talking and we decided that pre-calculus is
something I really need if I want to pursue a future in computers.”
Jesse has his sights set on Eastern Kentucky University, and
earning straight A's his senior year. He says the push from Cupp was exactly
what he needed. “She's been a really good influence and kind of makes me think
about how I need to work harder, do more to apply myself more. And by doing that,
I'll get more out of school. I'll learn more, and I'll have a better chance at
having a great future.”
Hooking Kids
Cupp's class is just one example of the many different strategies
Corbin High and other High Schools That Work schools use to engage students.
It's something Joyce Phillips calls a “hook.” “You have a certain percentage
of kids who are going to learn no matter what, probably about 20% of the kids
that come here… But then, we have about 80% of the kids that need some kind of
a hook, something to get their interest, something that will make them want to
come to school and want to learn and want to do their best.”
As a former vocational teacher, Gene Bottoms, the architect behind
High Schools That Work, knows the power of connecting academics to the real world. “Many
youngsters have to see a reason to learning algebra and geometry and trig, chemistry
and physics,” he says. “And the best way to do that for some students is to link
that to experiences in their lives, to the community or to a career in which
they have an interest.”
At Corbin, students in automotive class repair cars that belong
to teachers and townspeople. Drafting students help local businesses create floor
plans. Botany students work in a greenhouse and landscape the school grounds.
Corbin also has job shadowing and co-op programs where students can work everywhere
from hospitals to banks to welding shops.
Experts agree that finding a real-world hook works. “For high
school kids the question is, ‘Why does any of this matter?'” says Kati Haycock
of The Education Trust, a Washington, D.C. advocacy group for disadvantaged
children. “And what the High Schools That Work folks have been so good at is… connecting
the requirements of today's workplace with what's going on in classrooms and
trying to make that real for a set of kids who often don't have much in the way
of aspirations for themselves. And that connection, between work opportunities
and this tougher academic curriculum, has been very powerful.”
Phillips says that with help from High Schools That Work, she
and her staff have made great progress hooking kids. But she adds, “there are
many more of them. We have a long way to go. We want to get every student hooked
on something and excited about school.”
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