nexgen+on+Duke+City+Fix

The following was originally published November 28, 2009 at http://www.dukecityfix.com/xn/detail/1233957:BlogPost:395636 //Proposed front entrance to nex+gen Academy//

I don’t know if anyone has paid attention to the media in the past year when they have spoken about changes at Del Norte High School, which sits at the corner of San Mateo and Montgomery. Even if you have been following it, you might not know it, but something big is about to happen there – something that makes most of our own high school classroom experiences seem a tad old-fashioned.

It turns out that a large part ol’ DN (my alma mater, and also the place where I taught physics for 12 years) will soon be razed, and in its ashes will arise two different schools. One will be the newer, sleeker 3-story Del Norte 2.0, and behind it, in the back corner of the property, will be the other school, called “nex+gen Academy”

“nex+gen” (with a lower case n, because the font was cooler) will be smaller – only 450 students for a 9-12 school, and it represents a significant shift in the way we approach high school education.

How much of a shift? Imagine that upon arriving to high school, you take a look at your course list, and while some of the classes have familiar topics, they are joined in very different ways: A combination Biology/PE/Health class that is aimed at making you very fit, and giving you the physiological knowledge to maintain that fitness; a combined English/Geography/History course where you learn to write well because you are exploring and explaining primary documents; a combined geometry/design class, where you learn the fundamentals of geometric relationships while exploring the elements of design.

Then imagine going to class, and finding that the instructor doesn’t give you worksheets, nor does he start lecturing; rather, she starts the class by presenting you with a real-world, complex task/problem that you must solve collaboratively with the other students. You learn how to break down the complex problem into constituent parts; you learn how to write contracts with your fellow students so that all of you contribute meaningfully to the solution. Lectures happen, but they happen because you as a student have identified something that you need to know, you’ve communicated this to the teacher, and he or she provides the instruction as necessary.

And as a student, you know that you can start researching the solution to the project right away, because the school has assigned you your own laptop that you can take home. You’ve learned to use collaborative tools online like Google docs, so that you can share your work with your fellow group members. Your teacher posts the week’s agenda, all class materials, and your grades online, so that you can access your work whenever you need to, and you always know where you stand with your grade in the class, whether at home or in school. Of course, your parents can also see all of those resources too.

At the end of the project, you may have a conventional test, but you certainly must defend your work orally, and not necessarily to the teacher. Rather, the teacher brings in outside experts to assess your work, and they give you feedback on your knowledge in very real ways.

These projects aren’t namby-pamby-making-birdhouses-and-singing-kumbayah; they are rigorous, standards-based, and complex. Here are three examples of projects that have taken place in schools based upon the same model as nex+gen:

For a combination Physics/Precalc course: //Students must design and build a piece of art that has an electric circuit embedded in it. The circuit must invite the viewer of the art to interact with it; it must include both motors and lights; it must have some parts turn on while others are off; it must have a master “kill” switch//. Students must display their art in a public space, somewhere in the city.

For a geometry class: //Students, in partnership with TLC (The Learning Channel) must design furniture to accommodate Little People.// The presentation for the furniture was actually aired on “Little People, Big World” on TLC. The project was carried out by inner-city kids in LA.

And for a combination English/Econ/Gov’t class, here is a project that was run in 2001, and sounds amazingly prescient: //Due to a rapid rise in oil prices, the United States is facing a severe economic crisis with high levels of inflation, high unemployment, and slow economic growth. The President, whose approval ratings are plummeting, has asked a Special Task Force of the Council of Economic Advisors to recommend a policy to deal with the crisis without increasing the national debt. The (Student) Task Force is asked to make an oral presentation with visual aides, outlining monetary and fiscal policy recommendations to a panel composed of representatives of various constituencies.// Students presented their work to local business folk and parents.

Where is all this coming from? How did APS take on such a different approach with this high school? It turns out that this has come about via an extraordinary collaboration between the school district, a non-profit school development organization (New Tech Network), and several local business interests, chief among them Sandia Labs and Intel.

All of the descriptions of projects above come from a high school model that emerged in Napa, California, where a similar consortium of business and school interests created a cutting-edge progressive school called “New Technology High School” - not to be confused with High Tech High in San Diego - that would teach kids not just the content of math, English, etc, but also teach sustainable skills like collaboration, critical thinking, professional writing, and presentation skills. They would do so by teaching via Project Based Learning, and by giving every kid a computer, so that they could do their jobs much the same way that you and I might do ours. The school started in 1996, and remains in place today. Through initial funding from Bill and Melinda Gates, New Tech began creating new schools like it in California, and then across the nation, to eventually form what is now a network of 41 schools in 9 states.

Nex+gen came about because some folks at Sandia Labs liked the New Tech Model, and worked with the district to deploy a school like Napa’s. They are paying the fee to the New Tech Network to provide the training, support, software, and know-how to create this kind of school. Intel has committed to purchasing the first 100 laptops for students at nex+gen to use. The Hispano Chamber of Commerce has also pledged support.

How do I know all this? While I taught at Del Norte most of my career, I also taught at NewTechHigh in Napa for 2 years. Now I work for the New Tech Network, and I’ll be the “coach” for nex+gen, training the teachers, working with the principal and staff for the next 3 years or so. The planning for the school is already well on its way, and the Principal, Dr. Mike Stanton, and the two lead teachers, Jay English and Amelia Milazzo have been doing an extraordinary job of creating an extraordinary school.

Nex+gen will open in the Fall of 2010, with 110 freshmen, and 110 sophomores, bringing on a new class each year thereafter. Acceptance will be based on lottery, though they will reserve half the slots for students from the Del Norte district, with the other half open to the Albuquerque population at large. You can learn more about the school at [], and you can find out more about New Tech Schools at [].