Signature Charter IB School Evansville Indiana

On Wednesday we travelled 2 hours by bus to Evansville. The low rolling hills around Bloomington give way to flat landscape that is dryer, warmer and the trees are only just turning orange/red. The town sits right near the border to Kentucky and we saw the Ohio River. The school we visited was a charter school running an IB platform. It was ranked no. 10 school in the USA and number 1 in the Midwest by the Washington Post. It has many other awards. The students were superb and highly motivated. We sat through a TOK (Theory of Knowledge) class (TOK classes are a specific requirement of the international IB programme). Three boys delivered a superb analysis on 'The System is Broken' - an outline of preferential treatment of the rich and or famous when it comes to being judged by all of us, the media and the law. It was all done to rap tune and they didn't miss a beat! All of the students were clearly well informed and discussed education and societal issues of all sorts. They and the staff were a delight to be with.

Charter Schools are as contentious in the USA as in NZL. Examine some of the debate here fromt he New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opinion/sunday/schools-that-work.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

The Evansville School is a special charter of the school is all about motivation. They have about 340 students and accept anyone who wants to come to them. If they have an excess of students they run a random lottery system - so any type of student theoretically can be enroll. Its likely, however, that students and families will be pre-selecting themselves in reality to a large degree. The students work incredibly hard, as do the staff, and are extended much more on a continual basis than you might expect in other public schools. However, this comes in a background of less overall breadth of opportunities. For example, sports and ESL and disabilities services would be catered for if students got to enroll, but are not 'givens' or extensive as part of school life. The school students accumulate a lot of community service hours as part of the school's focus and note that this is too a requirement of the IB programme. Funding is a continual issue for the school and they are not as well funded, in fact one of the poorest, as others in the public funding system. I liked the tennis ball idea on the scrapping chairs!

ESL Schools in Indianapolis

On Wednesday we all went by bus to Indianapolis. It was cold for some, but not for Kiwis from the south. We visited two schools that focussed on integrating immigrant students into the US school system. One school was a K to 6 grade school and had an immersion model. Approximately, 75% of all students in the school of c. 380 had a first language other than English - and most of those were Latino. One of the features of the classroom was flexible seating: beanbags, different shapes and sizes of chairs, bouncy balls. The active seating idea allows for those active students to keep active while they learn. Also, it is found that having these options mean students try to get to class to get the seat they want. If they are not there, someone else gets the seat! The model of immersion was seen as best for learning English at this younger age.

An alternative type of school (A 'Newcomer School') was next door. Only established in the last 4 months, this school had about 150 students (grades 7 to about 10), was a public school and received its funding from the local county as all other public schools do in this area. The school is rapidly growing and pools from across the city. The staff work closely with parents and the community. Unfortunately, quite a few of the students have had harrowing backgrounds on their journey to the US and I won't go into those.

So the school represents a laudable commitment by the state to improving outcomes for these students. Here, immigrant students learn together in different grade levels and are not in the usual public school immersion. The idea is that as the language of specific subjects get more complicated, students coming into English language learning will be best served when language learning is the whole focus in their different subjects. The results speak for themselves. Students show rapid development in language ability and we saw many confident young speakers. The staff were fully committed to improving the outcomes for their students. The director has worked out that with this system they get double the amount of explicit English language practise per week than they would in an immersion type system: In the latter they may sit in classes that are unproductive for them, because they simply can't communicate well enough..

The two different models have lead to quite a discussion amongst the Fulbright DAT's with respect to best approaches.

Visit to PBL Schools Columbus

Today we visited two Project Based Learning Schools in nearby Columbus Indiana: one elementary school and one secondary school (grades 9 to 12 - about year 10, 11, 12, 13). Both are examples of magnet schools. These bring students toward them (like a magnet) from within the county and outside the county. These schools are not charter schools, but do offer a focus that is different to the larger public schools. The elementary school is guided by about 4 different topics and themes for inquiry per year per grade level. However, the staff will go with the direction the students select re timing and topics. A lot like our UCF platform. At the moment they are looking at (Grade 1) Endangered Animal, (Grade 2) Animals in Indiana, Grade 3 Columbus - their city, (Grade 4) Giving Back - community, (Grade 5) Clean water for Cambodia, and (Grade 6) Colum Tykes - the students response to the local city initiative of encouraging bikes for all. These topics start with a member of the community in these fields coming into the school and discussing the situation with the students. They have a 1:1 tech, device to student ratio for grades 1 to 6. They also have a kindergarten attached to the school. We were 'ambassadored' around by some wonderful young people from each of the grades, Clearly it was normal for them to do this kind of thing. There are about 350 students and they take both special ed. students and those across the capability spectrum.

The secondary school was initiated by industry in its conception with a focus on engineering. It has developed further form there to involve a wider range of subjects. Teachers strive to get students to be self regulated learners by prompting them through a process that starts with a topic to study that student select, key prompting questions that promote further investigation. Students are very enthusiastic with the programme. The school was started from scratch with 100 students and 450000$. The principal reckons that a size of 400 max is enough for this type of school, because building a culture of trust, respect and innovation. The classrooms are arranged around central corridors with open class fold out doors. It is part of the 'New Tech Network' of schools of which there are now 180 in the US. Note that there are some of these in Australia. Class sizes are as high as 28 for freshman (Year 10) and as low as 10-15 for older specialised subject groups. Some subjects are Physics, Chemistry, Physics and Chemistry, Biology, Citizenship and Social context, Art and Design, Business, IT, Mathematics, Geometry and Calculus ESL, Spanish. It takes the full spectrum of learners re ability. This school works in partnership with the local much bigger standard state school. Students who graduate from the PBL school do so with the bigger public schools qualification, but with a PBL endorsement. Some of the projects going on here were building boats, algae in fish tanks, bees, windmills etc..... Similar to a YES approach. See you soon here comes some donner and blitzen!

Field Trip Hydrology

Before our road trip, I helped out my host teacher Angie and her Environmental Science classes. The students are all about 17 or 18. I manned a water quality monitoring site in an urban catchment in Bloomington. We measured dissolved oxygen, nitrates, phosphates, clarity, temperature and pH at our site. Nearby the students did an invertebrate study. Many of the same invertebrates we would see in NZL were here too.