Jr. High Honors, New School Groundbreaking, New 7th Grade Math Classroom and Summer Break

Lots happened in the last few days of school. One thing that happened was the opportunity to honor those students in the 7th and 8th grade who excelled both academically and socially. Mrs. Hargrove and Mr. Shultz led the awards and it was a lot of fun. Several parents came in to watch and the students enjoyed some well-deserved recognition.

Another exciting event was the groundbreaking ceremony for the new school that is being erected on the site of Sam Adams Elementary. This new K-6 building will be state of the art and I am thrilled that my own 1st graders will be able to attend. Most of the students from Sam Adam's and Frank Squires attended the ceremony and many inspirational words were said. I was truly honored to attend as President of the Chamber of Commerce and speak to the connection between business and education. The true purpose of all education is to prepare students for whatever comes next, whether it's the next grade level, college, the world of work or the military. It is truly my honor to assist the teachers as they work to ready all of our students in the best way we know how.

Education is evolving. There was a time that the jobs that school was responsible to prepare students for were found in factories. Good money was made as a line worker at the local RV manufacturing plants or through Ford or GM. A person could expect to raise his or her family in middle class comfort and education reflected that process. Each student got a text book that had been printed at least a year prior to the student having it in his or her hands, and usually many years before that. This doesn't even include the time it took to develop the information, write it, edit it, align it to various state standards, get it approved by various state education departments, market it, sell it, and final get it shipped, a process that could take 3 to 5 years or longer. This means that in the old system, new textbooks already had old information in them.

It was a comfortable time, a slow time when teachers taught and students learned. It was linear, first students learned A, then B, then C, and so on. Students were taught in rows from the front of the class. There was a belief in education that if teachers taught it then students should have learned it. Teachers had to move on if they were going to cover all of the material, so they lectured and gave worksheets for homework. Rote memorization was the name of the game and many parents, who had time to come home at night and help with homework did so because he or she worked one job, made a good living and had more time to be available for those kinds of activities.

Those days are gone. Information happens almost instantaneously. Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, is constantly being updated and has a better accuracy rate than Encyclopedia Britannica. Even if schools buy brand new textbooks every year, the information is outdated before the students ever open the book. Now, students grow up by getting the information they need without having to wade through what they don't. Lectures and worksheets, especially worksheets that come out of ten-year-old plus textbooks, cannot compete with computers, cell phones, I-Pads, mp3-players, the internet, You-Tube, online video content posted by television stations and backed up by toys in Wal-Mart.

To top that off, there are almost no more living wage jobs out there that come with only a high school diploma. The RV plants have closed, the car manufacturers are bankrupt, and the union protected health care has become outsourced to some guy in another country. Even those individuals who get those jobs find themselves back in training almost immediately because the position has changed and new skills are needed. Education is no longer optional and teachers are responsible not only for what they teach, but for what the students learn. The old factory approach is no longer viable and something new has to be put in place.

About three months ago I was introduced to a small company called Quik-2-Learn connected to Wayne State University in Detroit. Its owner/operator is a man named Jim Hare and he has a plan. His plan is to provide sustainable and scalable one-to-one technology to all students, specifically those in the Detroit Public Schools. That means the technology remains viable for more than three years (which is about as long as computers are good for, especially the ones that schools get off-lease, which means they are already two years old) and can be used to help both small and large districts. If students had access in the classroom to a computer, then textbooks become unnecessary. Sites like NetTrekker (a teacher vetted search engine all teachers in Michigan have free access to with computer based lessons, plans and activities), Gutenberg with 32,000+ free ebooks and Hippocampus with lessons broken into specific objectives are no longer add-ons to be worked in when the computer lab is available, but how we teach in real time, every single day. The information is current, up-to-date and interesting. The possibilities are only limited by the internet and the teacher finding the lessons. Those students who don't understand can get individual instruction while those who do can move on and not only is "No Child Left Behind," but no child gets held back either.

Jim Hare was putting together a grant for the federal government and was looking for people to be involved in his consortium and pilot the program. We have had some challenges in our MEAP scores from 8th grade math (which tests the learning from 7th grade math) and so Mr. Weatherspoon (our superintendent), Mr. Diol (our technical director) and I went to see how this process would help. We were all very impressed with what we saw, especially with the data from a variety of districts that started using the process in years past. Mr. Hare wanted to bring our district onboard, first as a pilot and then, if the consortium is awarded the I3 grant, the entire building. The cost to the district is nothing and so we agreed.

Last Wednesday, Mrs. Hargrove's 7th grade math room was turned into a one-to-one computer classroom. Cassopolis is moving ahead and away from the factory model of education based on past information and into a place where education engages students in real time. It will connect with students and how they learn, not try and force them into the model of how we learned. It is what needs to happen but what has always been held back by cost, especially for small rural districts running on a shoestring. We have gotten around it all.

The vision for these advancements stems from a district-wide desire to do more than leave no child behind, but to help every student reach his or her full potential so that when they move to what's next it will be as global competitors who never have to worry about working two or three jobs to make ends meet. The job they have may be moved somewhere else, but they will have the skills and desire to learn what it takes to stay ahead of the game and always find a new, high-paying job. We will engage them and make them life-long learners and they will achieve. I am proud to be a part of this vision and honored to work with the teachers who are committed to it. Our students will succeed because of those teachers and their desire to do what it takes to help them learn. The computers won’t change that, but they are a helpful tool. It’s a very exciting time for Cassopolis Ross Beatty Junior/Senior High School.

Finally, this is the last Blog Entry for the year. You can always contact me at the school, 269-445-0541 and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Have a great summer, and see you in August!