AT A GLANCE
Small Learning Community Objectives
A steering community that has worked on the development of small learning communities for the last two years, identified three objectives as part of the process:
To prepare all students for success in post-secondary education and careers without the need for remediation.
To provide an environment in which a core group of teachers, along with an assistant principal and counselor, know the needs of the students and provide academic and other support.
To create an Advisory Program that allows time weekly for students to catch up, participate in interventions/tutoring, discuss course of study or issues/concerns with their advisor, seek academic advising and support special work in Advanced Placement and dual credit course.
Source: Fayetteville High School
FAYETTEVILLE — Fayetteville High School is gearing up a new model of delivering education designed to create stronger bonds between teachers and students and focus learning more clearly.
The first major reorganization, scheduled for the 2011-12 school year at the high school, involves only teachers, staff and administrators. But the years following will see the student body organized in a new way designed to capture some smaller school advantages within the framework of a 2,500-student institution.
Beginning with the school year that begins in August, high school teachers will be reorganized into groups of 35 to 40, each with an assistant principal, a counselor and a lead teacher. They will work together in those small group settings. Each will have a lighter class load — five classes instead of six — and they will have more time to work together as a group, to collaborate on projects or to share ideas.
They also will have more time to get to know each other and the students in their classes.
The move represents the start of the school’s reorganization into small learning communities.
The Fayetteville School Board has discussed the small learning community concept for the last few years. The creation of small learning communities was formalized as designs for the high school transformation began to take shape.
Architects have worked with groups of teachers to incorporate features for classrooms and large group learning spaces that can be arranged in small learning centers. Old classroom space in the high school will be transformed in groups around large learning spaces as part of the second phase of construction.
The first large classroom space, or small learning community, will be developed in phase one for the alternative program now housed at the former West Campus. It will be large enough to accommodate about 450 students.
“It all boils down to wanting to touch students in the middle,” said Susan Heil, school board president, referring to the students whose academic performance falls between the highest achievers and the students with special needs at the lower levels of achievement.
Sallie Langford, who will take on one of the lead teacher roles, said the small learning community is intended to keep students from getting lost in the shuffle of a large school.
Fayetteville spent about four years debating how to update, expand or replace the high school, and part of that discussion involved the question of creating a second high school. The school board opted to maintain Fayetteville as a one high school city and developed a plan to move ninth-graders from the junior high schools to the high school. In Arkansas, the high school curriculum begins in the ninth grade.
The result will be a new high school that will house 1,800 students to start with and will grow to nearly 2,500 when all four class levels are on campus.
But administrators and teachers have visited other larger schools and learned that smaller school experiences can be achieved through the development of communities within the larger institution.
Students tend not to feel so overwhelmed in a smaller group, Langford said.
But Year One will not include grouping of students. The teachers will use the 2011-12 school year to adapt to the new organizational structure and make adjustments based on their experience.
Students and teachers will be divided into the small learning communities in the 2012-13 school year, meaning students in 10th, ninth, eighth and potentially seventh grades today will be the first to experience the new educational model.
Those students will be assigned to one of the four communities based on their interests expressed during the annual conferences with counselors and parents when they map out their classes.
Teachers have already expressed their first and second choices for the learning communities, based on their own interests, said Evelyn Marbury, an assistant principal who is working with the lead teachers in setting up the communities.
Four communities are being established in the high school, each one built around similar electives. A fifth community is organized around the Agee Lierly Alternative Learning Services Center, the alternative high school program now housed at West Campus.
Core subjects, such as literacy, math or science, will be taught in each community. Students remain in their communities for those subjects but may go outside the community for electives offered in other communities.
Principal Steve Jacoby said a new assistant principal will be hired so each community is headed by an administrator. The new administrator will be hired as part of a $1.2 million grant the district received for the transition to the small learning communities. The grant, from the U.S. Department of Education, is for more than $600,000 a year for two years. It can be renewed for up to five years, Marbury said.
Some new teachers will have to be hired as well, Jacoby said, but added, the number and disciplines haven’t been determined. The need for additional teachers is created so that the high school can move to the five-class teaching load for teachers.
The four lead teachers were chosen from 11 on staff who applied for the positions, Marbury said.
Deanna Easton, another of the lead teachers, called the transition “energizing.”
“It’s better for the kids and better for the teachers,” she said. “We’re not operating in a vacuum or isolation.”
Langford and Easton are joined by Anna Beaulieu, Michelle Miller and Jeter Morse as the lead teachers.
The lead teachers said they view the relationships that can be built between teachers and students within each community as one of the strongest benefits.
One way those relationships will be fostered is through an advisory program in which each teacher keeps close tabs on 12 to 15 students.
Teachers will get to know those students well and vice versa, Miller said.
Langford called the transition a proactive move.
“Fayetteville has been doing well,” she said. “We’ll make it better.”
Langford was one of the local teachers who visited Mountain Home High School, which has been divided into three career academies since the 2003-04 school year.
“The kids had a great deal of pride. ‘My teacher knows me,’” Langford said. “That was impressive.”
The small learning communities concept is considered a strong organizational strategy to make a large school seem small, a professor at the University of Arkansas said.
“I’ve never heard of any criticism of it. It seems a reasonable way to deal with the concerns a lot of parents have about a school getting too big,” said Gary Ritter, an education reform professor.
Personalizaton is a critical piece for teachers and students, said Jan Struebing, a retired Springdale teacher and noted national consultant on college and career issues, including small learning centers. She was a key administrator guiding the development of career academies at Springdale High School nearly a decade ago. Career academies are a type of small learning community.
A student once told Struebing she was the reason the student came to school every day.
“She thought if she missed I might miss her,” Struebing said, adding many students can feel that way.
The Fayetteville teachers agreed.
Students are far more likely to graduate if they are in a personal relationship with a teacher, Morse said, who will be the lead teacher in the ALLPS alternative program.
“Education will go on,” Struebing said. “It will be more personalized.”
Small Learning Communities
Small learning communities, or houses as they are sometimes called, at Fayetteville High School will each be grouped around a common thread of interest. Tentative plans including the following groupings at the high school for students in the 2012-13 school year.
Wellness: Intended for those students and teachers interested in health and wellness. Courses will be geared toward understanding the importance of a healthy body and mind, as well as offering opportunities to explore future professions. Post-secondary pursuits related to this interest might include: medical occupations, journalism, film, photography.
Creative Expression: Intended for those students and teachers who are creative and use their talents to generate a product. Courses will be geared toward assisting students in the creation of a unique product for a public audience. Post-secondary pursuits related to this interest might include: musician, journalism, publishing, trades.
Modern Culture: Intended for those who are very technologically savvy and follow all the current trends. Courses will be geared toward encouraging students to experiment, design and test theories. Post-secondary pursuits related to this interest might include: marketing, business, engineering, computer programming, web design, analytical careers.
Nature/Environment: Intended for those who are interested in the relationships in the world around us (people to people and people to the environment). Courses will be geared toward getting students involved in hands-on experiences to make an impact in the world. Post-secondary pursuits related to this interest might include: horticulture, wildlife management, outdoor recreation management, education, child development, agriculture.
Alternative education: The district’s alternative program at the Agee-Lierly Life Preparation Services Center will be the fifth small learning community.
Source: Fayetteville High School