Former Dalton educators part of high school redesign effort

Submitted by PAGE

The Professional Association of Georgia Educators (PAGE) said today that its High School Re-Design Initiative (HSRDI) has added new staff and will be working with 14 schools this year, including “feeder” middle schools whose students move on to high schools which are already involved in the improvement program.

The program is now in its second year. PAGE executive director Allene Magill said that the urgency and need for change has been brought home by graduation rates, which some studies have shown are below 60 percent, and national reports, such as one done by the Gates Foundation which call for a complete restructuring of the nation’s high schools.

“When we are losing that many of our students along the way, something is terribly wrong," said Magill, a former Dalton Public Schools superintendent. These young people are not seeing learning as relevant to their lives or to their futures. If we don’t react to this and react strongly, we are going to lose huge percentages of an entire generation.”

Ricky Clemmons, HSRDI director for PAGE, noted that new coordinators David Reynolds, a former Dalton Public Schools educator, and Marta Walker, a former Lowndes County educator, have joined the PAGE staff to assist with the program. “We have found that there is a strong desire on the part of school leaders to re-think the way their schools are delivering instruction to students. The need to deeply engage students in the learning process is being felt and acted upon in all the schools we are working with,” Clemmons said.

Four high schools were in last year’s inaugural group (Oglethorpe County HS, Washington County HS, Shaw HS in Muscogee County and Sonoraville HS in Gordon County). This year they will be joined by four middle schools which send them students: Oglethorpe Middle, Blackmon Road and Midland Middle which send students to Shaw HS, and Sonoraville Middle.

Six more high schools are joining the program this year and they include Alexander HS (Douglas County), Calhoun HS (Calhoun City Schools), Camden County HS, Gordon Central HS (Gordon County), Hawkinsville HS (Pulaski County) and Lowndes HS.

Reynolds, a former elementary principal, curriculum coordinator and director of professional learning for Dalton Public Schools, will work with HSRDI schools in Douglas, Gordon, Muscogee and Calhoun City.

Walker, a former special education teacher and Lowndes County High assistant principal, will work with HSRDI schools in Camden, Pulaski, Lowndes, Oglethorpe and Washington County.

Clemmons says that the program makes extensive use of demographic and achievement data and the results, as reported by teachers involved in the HSRDI, are very encouraging. “The teachers I’ve been working with report their students actively and genuinely engaged in their studies. Attendance improves, discipline problems decline and best of all, test scores improve,” he said.

Use of technology in the classroom, student directed projects and team activities are all part of the “means of engagement,” notes Clemmons. “Anyone who is around young people at all knows that technology is key to their lives, as is social networking. We’ve got to bring this into our classrooms. Kids who text, download music, videos, etc., who post and play items on You Tube are not going to sit quietly in rows of seats absorbing a forty-five minute lecture.”

That doesn’t mean substantive curriculum and quality content instruction are pushed aside, Clemmons says. “The very same lessons that are taught using a traditional lecture format can be taught – and we are saying must be taught - in ways that much more fully engage our students. Today’s emphasis on a more rigorous curriculum and high stakes testing have made engagement more important than it ever was,” he added.

PAGE’s HRDI program emphasizes problem-based learning requiring students to work together in groups or teams solving a problem or answering a complex question. Permitting student choice and initiative and stressing depth of understanding that requires students to think through an assignment rather than quickly (and often mindlessly) completing it serves to engage the students in work that is both relevant and authentic to them.

PAGE, the state's largest organization for professional educators, is an independent association of more than 72,000 teachers, administrators and support personnel members providing professional learning to enhance competence and confidence, build leadership and increase student achievement.