New Tech High School Built On Projects

ROGERS — Instead of textbooks and lectures, hands-on learning will define a high school option coming to Rogers in 2013.

Plans are in progress to open a New Tech affiliate high school to Rogers’ freshmen in August 2013. New Tech Network schools emphasize technology, teamwork and a concept called project-based learning. The goal with project-based learning is for students to understand the everyday applications for the concepts they learn, said John Mergendoller, executive director of the Buck Institute for Education. The institute offers sample lessons and teacher training for project-based learning.

Project Learning

A project-based lesson starts with a question. Students research an answer and complete a project with what they have learned.

Students may not be interested in a lesson that begins: “What is momentum?” Mergendoller said. However, asking middle school students “Why do I fall off my skateboard when I try to go around a corner too fast?” can be the foundation for a great lesson, he said.

“Teachers are surprised by what their students do when they give them opportunity,” Mergendoller said.

For six years as a high school math teacher in a traditional school, Micah Pillmore said she often heard students ask “Why do we have to learn this?” Pillmore, now a counselor at New Tech High @ Coppell in Coppell, Texas, heard that question once during the two years she taught at the school. That day she was lecturing instead of using a project.

“I think it’s amazing. They already know why they’re learning it because it’s in a project,” Pillmore said.

Instead of working through a textbook, Pillmore planned lessons starting with state-required objectives. A unit on logarithms explored population growth. A graphing unit charted sales.

There is a learning curve for teachers also, Pillmore said. The coaching that is part of New Tech helped her design units and adjust her teaching style to one that prompts the students to ask questions.

Some concepts in math and foreign language are difficult to translate into a project, Pillmore said. For her it was imaginary numbers, a concept used in the real world by physicists, but not by high schoolers. If a project is too wide in scope she uses word problems.

“The ‘real world’ of Algebra I is higher concepts than Algebra I,” Pillmore said. “It’s not high school level to teach that project.”

Projects Are The Envelope

Research regarding the success of project-based learning is nonconclusive, said Gary Ritter, professor of education and public policy at the University of Arkansas.

The best strategy is to incorporate the progressive ideas of making things relevant to students, yet making sure students understand those underlying rules, Ritter said.

“It’s clear that kids benefit from being taught things in diverse ways,” he said.

The project is just the envelope that holds learning together, Mergendoller said. Lecture might be part of lesson. Tests are still required.

“All of the traditional methods can certainly be used,” he said. “Accountability does not go away just because you’re doing a project instead of reading a textbook chapter.”

Basing instruction on a project is achievable for an individual teacher at the elementary level because students are not rotating classes every hour, Mergendoller said. The strength of the New Tech model is the way the culture and the structure of the school are built around making projects work, he said.

Transcripts look standard at Coppell, Pillmore said, but an English class may be combined with biology.

She co-taught a combined Algebra I and physics class. Block scheduling and combination classes allow time for projects. Students get speech credits for their many presentations, Pillmore said.

Overcrowding Solution

Rogers officials settled on the project-based concept after three years of searching, although as of now no formal agreement with New Tech has been signed, said Mark Sparks, deputy superintendent.

Adding a small high school option will ease overcrowding at both high schools and give the district a new way to reach out to students. Other options were exclusive of some student group, Sparks said. An Advanced Placement magnet school would exclude low performing students and an at-risk program would not allow for high performing students.

“There was always a group in and a group out and that’s not what we wanted,” Sparks said.

Administrators will attend a July conference to learn more about joining the New Tech Network. An application will be filed with New Tech in July and, after a site visit, a final decision on adopting the program will be made before winter.

In its first, year the school will accept freshmen and will grow from there, according to some district discussions. The program would be housed in the Annex building, formerly Birch Kirksey Middle School and now used for teacher training and the Crossroads alternative program.

School enrollment will be by blind lottery and the district officials will begin recruiting potential students in spring, but those details and others are still being ironed out, Sparks said.

District officials have enthusiastically endorsed the move in School Board meetings. The school will not be a fit for every student and will be limited in size. Offering a New Tech school gives more options to parents.

“It meets the needs of kids and addresses education in a new and exciting way,” Sparks said.