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imagine southwest

teachers explain the process of resdesigning the school curriculumn

Changes are a constant part of school systems. Recently, a huge change has been put into action for the school, in an attempt to reconstruct how the students learn in a more updated and realistic manner. It’s called “Imagine Southwest.” Principal Scott Roberts is one of many leaders on the team helping put the program into action. He said he hopes all students will be engaged in school after it’s complete.

“It started when we did a survey almost three years ago and from what students told us and what staff told us, there was a big disconnect,” Roberts said.

The survey contained questions involving how relevant or meaningful the students believed the school curriculum was and to the staff’s surprise, only 38 percent of the students thought it was.

“We also asked, ‘Do you feel like your teachers know you and interests outside of school?’” Roberts said. “Teachers had this really high number and students had this really low number.”

After realizing multiple aspects of the school system did not meet the needs of both the students and staff, “Imagine Southwest” was born.

“I have noticed that education just kind of happens to kids and that they don't have a say in their education,” Roberts said. “We should be asking how you want to learn and how you want to experience things. So we're going to try to start figuring out how we can start to provide that for the students.”

According to the plan, the process is meant to last four years. It started in 2018 and began with surveys and testing to see which steps to take next.

The first two years are called “trials.” The last two are focused on implementations in the school curriculum and final touches. “Next year, we have to design everything and get started,” Roberts said. “By the fall of 2021, the school should look quite a bit different. Yeah, it's going to take time, but then those implementations will happen. So for students that are freshmen, their junior and senior year is going to look different.”

Science teacher and professional development coordinator

Melissa McCarty is also a leader involved in “Imagine Southwest” and said she hopes to redesign the school in such a way that it is more similar to the outside world.

“We don’t want students always traveling hour by hour, working on two completely different topics,” McCarty said. “We'd like to help students see some more relevant learning experiences. We want to make it feel like what they're learning in one hour interacts with what they're learning in another hour, and they can see the connections a little bit more.” The type of education where students have seven different hours and subjects may change with the redesign process in one way or another.

“For the most part, our high schools are pretty disciplined,” Roberts said. “Well, the world isn’t really disciplined like that for the most part. For example, if you go to a doctor, multiple agencies are going to work together and that’s multidisciplinary. We feel like students need that experience. The world of work is much more global, interconnected and multidisciplinary than what our current structure of high school is.”

McCarty said during the third quarter of this year, teachers are putting some changes into action. She said changing the daily schedule, start and end time, free periods during the day and the learning structure of the classrooms are all future possibilities.

“We have a lot of ideas,” McCarty said. “We really would like to do more of pairing different classrooms together. So, a science and a math class could teach together and have more flexibility in the class day. Maybe not as flexible as Timber Time, but sections of time where students could get more work on classes that they need more work on and less time in a class that they don't need to work on. We want to individualize it for students and would love to see that in the future.”

Part of the redesign has already been put into action. For example, a grading system in Spanish classes was one of the first steps in this process. This way, the most recent assignment is worth more than the previous one, giving students the opportunity to improve their skills as they obtain them.

“You probably have noticed you’ve done more group work and maybe more presentations — different kinds of learning, maybe less lecture and more interaction,” McCarty said. “I have definitely seen a shift as far as teachers planning their classrooms differently.”

Roberts said he realizes that a handful of students will not like the change that redesign brings, and would rather go to school to complete book work, memorize material and take tests like a standard classroom.

“In some ways, that might be approximately the experience that a student has and for them, that’s OK,” Roberts said. “We also have to build a schedule around that, but we know that is actually not how the world really works. How do [students] have these new experiences even though they may thrive in a different fashion? That’s the idea.” Roberts said ideally, the redesign will incorporate features students can use in order to better prepare themselves for college or help them consider a different career pathway. “Blue Valley has been on students to go to a four-year college, but it’s not for everybody,” Roberts said. “So what does a student do who maybe feels like they shouldn’t go to a four-year college? We want this to help them.”

Roberts said programs like CAPS are necessary for “Imagine Southwest” to be successful. He said it is very important for all students to have an experience like it in high school to avoid a bad attempt at college their freshman year.

“We have these partnerships with Johnson County Community College where you can actually get industry certifications and get college hours for free while you are still a junior or senior in high school because maybe the four-year degree isn’t exactly what students need,” Roberts said. “Students could spend their time getting college credits, getting industry certifications and expanding what their opportunities are, because there’s a lot of job opportunities that we don’t traditionally see.”

By using the CAPS model in the making of “Imagine Southwest,” the staff could potentially assist students who do not see a four-year college being well suited for them.

“What we are working on is, ‘How do we have professional connections and how can we provide professional connections for our students?’ It’s very similar to the experience that kids have at CAPS,” Roberts said. “When you go to CAPS, you get a mentor and you work on authentic problems.” Sophomore Emma Payne said she plans on taking classes at CAPS in the future to help her get an idea of life outside of high school. She said she wishes she could have an experience more like it in her home building.

“I am really looking forward to CAPS and as a student relatively new to the school district and Southwest, I heard a bunch of good things about it,” Payne said. “I have always been curious about why it is so far away. I think it would just be easier if we could do all the same things here during the school day.”

Payne said she had never heard of “Imagine Southwest” before, but McCarty said the staff has been working to get spread the word and this is the year they focus on that. “We’ve been getting student feedback here and there, but we’re hopeful this semester we can really push it out to lots of students,” McCarty said. “We have a few groups of students that naturally are together during the day like AVID and study halls that we use to help us spread around this idea.”

Though there is a lot of work that must be put into this program coming together, the end result is meant to benefit all students for the better.

“You know, it’s a lot of work and the staff is working super hard on it,” McCarty said. “I mean, the teachers are always doing more and they’re working a lot. So everything we do is not going to be perfect and we’d like a little grace from the students, but we do want honesty from the students. Know that we truly do want to make this better for you.”

| sydneywilson