1.Defining our structure for 11th and 12th grade is only 30% of the battle. The other 70% includes improving instruction. In most schools there is too much low level input and not enough high-level output. How do we know our students are passionate about learning?
2. Maintaining a focus on rigor & relevance. We need a curriculum that does not hold anyone back while not letting anyone fall through the cracks. At the same time we need to teach kids that both effort and ability matter. In high school, we tend to reward just effort and then students get to college and drop out when they realize effort isn’t enough. They should be able to demonstrate the skills and knowledge needed to succeed before leaving high school.
3. SLC’s are about college AND career readiness, not one or the other. We are developing SLC’s to ensure that ALL students are ready for BOTH college and careers.
4. We need to be thinking big. We have never really asked teachers to think outside of the box, their classroom or their department before. This is tough work.
After some discussion, Michelle then walked us through our six CTE pathways against the academy certification criteria set out by Linked Learning, an organization that supports the development of academies. Together we analyzed whether or not each existing CTE pathway at Kapa’a High School met the criteria in the areas of:
1. Enrollment - Does the pathway have enough students enrolled in it at this point?
2. Personnel - Do we have the staff to expand the pathway and offer a full academy in this area?
3. Kaua’i Office of Economic Development Target Industry Clusters - Are the programs in the pathway aligned with these clusters (Food/Agriculture, Energy, Arts, Technology, Sports & Recreation, Health & Wellness)
4. Partners - What are the potential and existing partnerships with local colleges and businesses?
5. Projects - Is there potential for interesting, student-led projects?
6. Connecting Subjects - What other subjects could support this academy?
7. Pathways - What other CTE pathways could support this academy?
After this exercise, it became clear to the group that we should start with the four most developed pathways when creating our academies. Our best thinking at this moment is that we would have two broad academies with two main pathways in each academy. The pathways could have more than one program. The two remaining CTE pathways would be embedded into the all of the other pathways for something like this:
| | HOPES (Health Occupations, and Public, Entrepreneurial Services) | IDEAS (Industrial Design, Engineering, Arts & Sciences) | ||
| Primary CTE Pathway | Health Services | Public and Human Services | Arts & Communication | Industrial & Engineering Technology |
| Program (s) | Health and Wellness | Hospitality & Culinary Arts | 1. Fine Arts 2. Performing Arts 3. Digital Media & /Graphic Design | 1. Auto 2. Building /Drafting 3. A+ |
| Connecting Subject Areas | Science PE JROTC Health Business | Science Social Studies Business | English Social Studies Business | English Math Science STEM Business |
| Partnerships | Mahelona Wilcox UH American Red Cross | KCC | KCC Hoike HMSA Business Partners | KCC Cisco |
| Kaua’i Economic Cluster Area(s) | Health & Wellness Food & Agriculture Sports & Recreation | Food & Agriculture Sports & Recreation | Arts Technology | Technology Energy |
| COMMON TO, AND EMBEDDED IN ALL ACADEMIES | ENTREPENEURSHIP | |||
| NATURAL RESOURCES/SUSTAINABILITY | ||||
| WORLD LANGUAGES | ||||
Our steps are for the Academy Design Team to reflect upon and develop this framework more fully. Ultimately each Academy will have a mission and vision statement, a description and course sequencing recommendations from 9th – 12th grade that will include both overall academy and specific program requirements. Once this has been developed, the Academy Design team will present this to the Smaller Learning Communities Leadership Team for review and approval. At the same time, we will also be working with Mike Neubig who is a Smaller Learning Communities scheduling expert on May 24th to ensure that we can indeed make this model work on a schedule. One big piece of successful SLC’s is cohort scheduling. This means teams of teachers and groups of students get to work together in the academies. We will be striving for purity, meaning that students from the same program in each academy will be scheduled together for at least 50% of their day (4 classes on a 7 period schedule) starting in Fall 2012 with our 11th graders.
Our day ended with a visit from Christel from the National Academy Foundation. Christel is friends with Michelle and spent the morning at Kaua’I High School. She shared with us about the possibilities and potential benefits of partnering with the NAF. She is working with several other schools in Hawaii so we were happy to make a connection with her.
All in all a great day and I want to thank everyone for their professionalism, hard work and dedication to ensuring that all students at Kapa’a High School are college and career ready.
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