As they enter, they see the open space that is unique to New
School High. About the size of a
football field, the space looks more like a modern library or a roman
atrium. On the western facing
wall, there are three long rows of Apple desktops where students sit. On the eastern facing wall there are
rows of bright wooden tables, where students work with their materials spread
out in front of them. In the back
corner of the building, there is a large reading/meeting area, filled with
beanbags and plush burgundy leather chairs. And on the far back wall of the open-space there is a large
u-shaped table where some students eat; cooks busily move about the inside of
the U, serving oatmeal and fresh fruit to the students. Some students work while they eat,
others sit beside classmates at the oversize family style table and
converse. Beside the large
u-shaped kitchen table, there are teacher offices. They are open space cubicles, designed so that three to four
teachers work in one space, and students can see them working.
Along the base of the glass roof of the building, there is a
long narrow scrolling screen with red and green letters, like the one at the
New York Stock exchange. It runs
the length of the school and can be seen from anywhere in the atrium. At 10 AM, Javier Mendez and Jonathan
Black’s names scroll across the screen.
They know what this means; it is time for their weekly assessment
meeting.
They take out their laptops and open the movie editing application. Javier and Jonathan have always been
movie buffs. So they chose to
spend their combined craftsman allowance – a chuck of money each student gets
from the school to hire a master craftsman – to hire a local documentary
producer to be their teacher.
Susan - the documentary filmmaker they hired – Arthur – one of the many full time core content teachers – and Javier and
Jonathan sit together at a large wooden table to analyze the work. They watch a portion of the movie
Jonathan and Javier have finished, and they critique the boy’s individual
accompanying essays on ‘The Ethics of Documentary Filmmaking’. Afterwards, Susan and Arthur discuss
the movie and the essays with them; they ask questions; pose suggestions; field
questions; and finally grade them according to the rubrics. Every project at New School High has
three rubrics: one to grade the project; the second to grade the accompanying
Math and English core content work; and the third to grade to grade the group
dynamics. The core content teacher
and the master craftsman grade the rubrics together on a weekly basis. The final rubrics are graded on the day
of the spring exhibition.
Susan and Arthur finish grading, and they leave to file the
grades in a computer system. Other
names of students scroll across the screen, and the process continues, over and
over again so that students meet with their craftsman and core content teachers
once a week.
At the center of the atrium, there is a large white cube,
each side 4 feet tall and wide. As
students encounter problems or questions that they cannot find answers to on
the internet, they stick post it notes on the white cube. Every 20 minutes, a teacher walks by
the cube and pulls off the post it notes.
The principal then makes an announcement inviting the student/s who
asked the question to meet with a teacher in a designated area. The principal also invites anyone who
is interested in the question meet as well.
As students need, they stop working and take a lunch
break. They head to the back
kitchen table, and are served a healthy lunch, often prepared by other
students. And so the hours pass,
and the official ‘school-day’ comes to a close. It’s 2:30, which means it is clean up time. The words ‘clean-up time’ scroll across
the screen at the top of the atrium.
For 20 minutes, all students and teachers stop working on their
projects; they grab their assigned tools from the closets and begin sweeping,
vacuuming scrubbing, raking, mowing, gardening, and weeding. Once the cleaning is complete, the day
is done. Some students and
teachers head home, and others stay at school to work, to participate in a
club, or to play an organized school sport. This is a day in the life of a New School High student.
The days and weeks go by, each student working on his or her
project and breaking when he or she wants to eat. It runs like clockwork and leads up to the days of the
spring exhibition. On these days
the work areas are pushed to the back of the atrium, and a stage is constructed
- fully equipped with visual, audio, and lighting features to make the
presentations an interactive experience.
Then the presentations begin.
Presenters are grouped together based on project categorization:
engineering, math, and science projects in the morning, humanities and world
travel projects in the afternoons, and arts and crafts projects in the
evenings. The presentations take
several days, but it feels like the hours pass by quickly like a brisk fall
wind; and student’s anticipation fuels the burning excitement around the spring
exhibition.
After each presentation, judges, content teachers, and
craftsman teachers meet to calculate a grade. Grades are calculated not according to the average grade of
all assignments, but rather they are calculated based on the how much evidence
of learning and evolution occurred from the projects inception to the projects
finish. Then the grade is
calculated and given to the students.
After the exhibition days end, students start a new
project. With the help of their
content teachers and peers, they begin brainstorming the next project, begin to
plan their next overseas trip, and begin the process of starting anew.
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