After our meeting with Dr. Jon Downs this evening in class I find myself completely inspired, full of questions and disappointed.
As a State College native I am familiar with the Delta program although before tonight I must admit that I was ignorant as to what the program truly is. So it is fair to say that I learned a lot (this is an understatement) in the short hour and 15 minutes that we got to spend conversing with the director of the program. I think Dr. Downs was one of my favorite speakers we have had in class so far.
So let me start by explaining my disappointment. I am disappointed in myself for not having inquired about the Delta program when I was a student at State High. Now don’t get me wrong, I had a great high school experience. However, after hearing Dr. Downs talk about the Delta program it almost made me want to go back in time and choose to go to Delta instead of State High. I wish I had been more curious as a student in high school. But I know I can’t go back and change that, so I can only move on and learn from my mistakes. Moving on.
Let’s talk about the Delta program a bit and what I learned about it during class. The Delta program is part of the State College Area School District (SCASD). It is not a charter school. It is another model of secondary education that differs in many ways from that of the “traditional” high school. For one it provides a smaller environment. Instead of going to school with 2,000 kids (State High), you are 1 of 130. You have an open campus, meaning that when you don’t have class you are not confined to the walls of the school but can go down town and grab lunch if that suits you. But most of all, you, the student, decide what you want to study according to what you are really interested in. Of course there is some structure and guidance but when it comes down to it, the students get to create their own curriculum so that they are studying what they are really passionate about. This sounds kind of like college, only for 14-17 year olds and I found it to be really cool. However, I do see some potential problems with this system and I will get to that later.
Two important words that Dr. Downs used that are integral, indispensable parts of this educational model are 1) Ownership and 2) Accountability.
The idea of taking ownership of ones education at the high school level and even earlier in some cases somewhat blows my mind. When I started high school, I really did not know what I was interested in. As previously mentioned I lacked curiosity and was somewhat content to just to go with the flow. And so I followed the pre-prescribed path that many had already taken before me. Of course I took electives but what I was really interested in was seeing my friends, chasing after boys and of course driving. Although I had a very positive experience in high school and some great teachers along the way, no one ever really encouraged me to take ownership of my experience. As a result, I finished high school just as confused about my interests as when I entered four years earlier. (Luckily I had met some students spending a year in State College through the Rotary Youth Exchange Program my junior and senior year who inspired me to go abroad myself which in turn changed my life, but that is another story.)
The fact that Delta students have so much so much say in deciding their curriculum requires them to take ownership of their studies from a young age. This is something that I think many college students struggle with. I know I do. From our class discussions it seems that when high school students take ownership of their studies instead of following a rather straight path, it really helps them to hone in on their true interests and really dig into them. Again, something that some incoming college students struggle with. I personally did not start taking ownership of my education until after graduating high school and I am still working on it.
Accountability was the second word that came up a lot in our discussion. In the Delta program, students are held accountable for their actions in and outside the class room. They are given a lot of freedom with the open campus set up. They need to be self-motivated to return to school to go to class after a break and conduct themselves in an acceptable fashion even when there is no one to watch over them. They learn that if they don’t do this, there are consequences. In the classroom these students are expected to take initiative and construct their own ways of learning and to take responsibility for it. It’s not all up to the teachers.
Teaching students accountability and ownership from an early age seems to be a really good idea. In any case, if you don’t learn them in high school you will be taking a crash course once you get to college or join the work force and at this stage in the game, these can be hard lessons to learn.
My question is, how much ownership and accountability should a 14 year old be expected to have? Is it too much to ask someone so young or even younger to start creating their own educational path? Dr. Downs did say that there are some students who come in and are just not able to handle it.
I’m not sure of the answer but this could definitely be something to explore.
Another very defining characteristic of Delta is that it is a democratic school meaning that students and parents have as much say in what is going on as teachers do. One interesting example that Dr. Downs gave us was that when they hire a new teacher for the program the hiring committee consists of three students, three parents, three teachers and himself. Now I don’t know about any of you reading this but I sure did not have any say in who was hired at my school, heck I didn’t even know when there was a new hire happening. This type of system seems to put a lot of power into the hands of the students and the parents and would be part of the ownership part of this program.
Giving power to the parents implies a lot of parent involvement in the schooling of their child (children). Maybe it is because my parents were rather “hands off” when I was in high school that this concept seems odd to me but it also raises a red flag in my mind. It raises the question of how “involved” a parent should be in their child’s education. I definitely agree that there should be some parent engagement and I don’t think that it is a dichotomy of either being involved or not. There is probably a scale of involvement. But again, just how involved should parents be? Should they be the ones choosing the teachers? Could this involvement lead to over-involvement, as in becoming something like a “helicopter parent”? How does a school balance parent involvement with student ownership? I don’t have the answers but these are some questions I would like to explore a bit more in the process of writing our policy papers.
An issue that I have with this sort of program is that it creates an exclusive group of students within a public school district setting. This seems to me an oxymoron. I thought it was the responsibility of the schools in the public school system to provide an education to everyone. However, the way this program works, if you are not able to take ownership and be accountable at 14 then you get sent back to the “regular” high school. Hmm. Something just doesn’t sit right with me on that one.
Overall I really loved learning about the Delta program and it seems to be working out great for the students there. I believe it has some very valid educational methods and I especially like the idea of taking ownership of ones education before getting to college.
I think this could be something to really be explored in the future and maybe expanded to benefit more students.
I look forward to continuing the conversation with Dr. Downs in the near future.