Schools Try New Way of Teaching, Learning

By Jake Jacobs
Macon Telegraph
Published on: 10/6/08

Change is in the works for some high schools in Georgia as teachers and administrators look to get students more involved with learning.

The Professional Association of Georgia Educators is focusing its efforts on redesigning high schools, and they're not talking about bricks and mortar. It's a rethinking of how to get students engaged in their own learning.

Allene Magill, PAGE executive director, said the redesign, now in its second year, is "a real need" based on research from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation report "High Schools That Work."

"The refocus is to provide quality work to students," Magill said. "Are we preparing them now for jobs that do not exist? The dropout rate is falling, but schools can do better."
Fourteen schools across the state are involved in the redesign, including Shaw High School in Columbus and Hawkinsville High School in Pulaski County.

This is Shaw's second year in the process, while Hawkinsville is starting this year. The principals, James Arnold at Shaw and Mary Royal at Hawkinsville, are enthusiastic advocates of the process.

It involves a fundamental rethinking of the structure of high school, the role of the teacher and the work of teachers.

"If the students are engaged with relevant work, they are going to achieve," Magill said. The redesign puts more of a focus on the needs of the students, she added.

'DIGITAL NATIVES'

The need for change is underscored by the Gates Foundation report, said Tim Callahan, director of membership for PAGE.
"How does the school experience relate to later work? The report says it's not real, it's not 21st century," Callahan said. "We're looking for engagement, not compliance. Students quietly listening to a lecture and taking notes doesn't mean they're all learning. The goal is to engage the students in learning, not be a compliant person just taking it in."

Schools currently are modeled on 19th-century attitudes that stressed obedience and memorization, Arnold said.

"We teach the way we were taught. Most of us in education have a favorite teacher who had a life-changing influence on us, and we want to re-create that," Arnold said. "Unfortunately, that was done a long time ago. A lot of the old ways stressed conformity. Kids have changed and the materials have, too, but the process is practically still the same."
The redesign initiative is about finding new ways to allow new types of learners to discover access to knowledge, he said.

And in the classroom, "redesign" takes on a more physical aspect. One of the initiative's hallmarks is group activity, so the all-too-familiar rows of desks facing front are giving way to clusters of desks with students facing each other. It's more in line with a contemporary notion of an office with pods of desks instead of an early 20th century idea of a factory's assembly lines.

Perhaps the biggest underpinning for change is the nature of students today, Arnold and others say.

"Children today are 'digital natives' - they've grown up with computers and can multi-task in ways we never thought of," Arnold said.

As an example, Arnold offered his son, Austin.

"Austin loves to play 'Pirates of the Caribbean' on the computer, and one day he asked me if I wanted to play. I grabbed the mouse and tried to play. 'No, Pop, don't do that. You click over here, scroll down over here,' he told me. I said, 'Austin, you're only 4 years old and you can't read yet. How do you do this?' He said, 'That's all right Pop, you can be good at something else.' "

Children today are a different type of learner, he said, and educators have to adapt how they teach them and be effective at getting their points across.

"They're not going to sit down, take notes and then regurgitate it back on tests," he said. "We are not changing the teachers or changing the students, it's an attempt to change the way we present information to the students -collaborative learning."

DISTRIBUTION OF LABOR

At Hawkinsville High, science teacher Sue Gibbs said the engaged learning style involves a more hands-on approach, and she incorporated the Summer Olympics to emphasize principles of the pendulum.

In the past, she said, students would collect data from the book and draw a graphic to illustrate the principles. This time around, she hung different pendulums from the ceiling and students were up and participating, gathered around in groups.

"They could see how changing length or weight could make a difference," Gibbs said. "And we talked about the Olympics and Michael Phelps. They could see Phelps' arms working like pendulums in his swimming, and it brought the theory home to them. This is real, this is exciting."

Royal said she first heard about the initiative at a conference last fall and knew it was something "we'd like to do."

She had some reading to do to prepare - "Working on Work" by reform advocate Philip Schlechty. His group, The Schlechty Center for Education Reform, helps provide training for teachers and administrators in the initiative.

"Schlechty's book has the premise that we can't change the students and we can't change the teachers very much, but we can change the work students do in the classroom," Royal said.

Research shows students will remember the material they're engaged with, she said, and one of the tasks for the school and teachers is coming up with creative learning ways that engage students.

"We're already seeing students challenge teachers to get an engaging lesson," she said.

For instance, in an economics class, the focus was on distribution of labor, she said. The teacher gave out a piece of paper for making a paper airplane, and the class had competing teams. They divided the roles, with each student having a specific job to perform, such as making the fuselage or crafting the wings. They then test flew their creations.

"There was a big difference between an engaged activity and just reading about distribution of labor," Royal said. "We heard the students later in the day still talking about it, saying 'our plane was faster' or 'our plane was stronger.' There is a sense of teamwork, and we cannot stress that enough."

NEVER-ENDING STORY

Angie Jacobson, an economics teacher at Shaw, said she volunteered her class last year to be the pilot project for the initiative.

"I told the students we were going to try something new," Jacobson said. "I tell them every semester; I want them to know it's different. I teach them critical thinking, and they're very responsive. They like working together. It's hands-on activities for the most part."

Some students were resistant, she said.

"They're in high school and they already know 'the game of school,' and what they need to do to get the grades," she said.

In the past, she said, students were lined up in rows, and she would put notes on a screen, walk around and lecture.

"Now, students are arranged in groups, and I encourage working together," she said. "There are more projects for them, and I lead them through an activity but they come to their own conclusions. We've been taking up supply and demand, buyers and sellers, and they had to interact. It's more about discovery."

Jacobson said she has noticed students becoming more interested in the subject matter, and other teachers becoming more interested in designing.
"I want the students to learn and to love learning," she said. "It's independent learning, on their own or with their peers, and I'm designing work to guide them through the process, coach them through the process."

While the redesign does have a starting point, there is no end, she said.

"We're never going to be finished, there's no set time for it to be all done," she said. "It's a process.”