PVHS 2.0 Mitchell Raver, Matt Ciuppa, LaVar James
Plan for PVHS 2.0 Name: Maple Hill High School Overall Education Philosophy: Our overall education philosophy would be to have a strong connection with the students and their own personal interest, or to at least help them find their interest. Just as importantly, we would also like to have a strong bond with the teachers and the students in small intimate class rooms. We want the students to be comfortable at all times, and to also not be completely stressed all the time. The environment will be an overall comfortable one, a place that will both challenge the students and be one that students don t dread going to every day. Schedule: We would make the school day begin at 9am and end at 3pm. This schedule would give students the opportunity to sleep for an extra hour while still going to school for 6 hours to get the education they need. Classes: The classes would consist of everything we have now along with classes such as job specific. For example, electrician, carpenter, mechanic, ect...
Plan for PVHS 2.0 (Continued) Building policies: No bullying other students, no running in the hallways, Who would you hire?: Teachers would only be hired if they had experience teaching before and a degree along with experience in the field that they are teaching in. For example, a person who is teaching an electrician class, must have a degree in teaching this subject, experience teaching at another school, and experience working as an electrician. How would they be trained? They would have to do a demo class for the head of the department with a real class. How would you select them? Whoever was the most personable with the students and whoever made the best connection. How would you pay them?: We would pay them based on their experience teaching before this and give them periodical raises based on their performance and student reviews.
Plan for PVHS (Continued) Building and amenities: Two nicely sized gyms, one strictly for sports games and the other for sports practices and gym classes. A swimming pool for the swim team, and if kids want to exercise after school. A cure for senioritis: Since most of the kids only care about the first half of the year for colleges, the school could make it three marking periods instead of four to make the first and second marking period longer. This will cause the students to focus on their work for a longer period of time, knowing that colleges take great interest in your first two marking period grades.
How can a school be designed to be fully in line with Maslow s hierarchy of needs? Physiological: School can offer a sleep lounge during lunch periods to let the students rest up and take a quick power nap. Schools can offer healthier lunches and change up the food they serve more. Hallways can have vending machines that have different snacks and drinks Safety: Have a security guard on every floor at every turn at every door to insure the safety of the students. Love/Belonging: Allow students to be in classes with students they feel more comfortable with. During group projects always let them pick their partners so that they are always with someone they like working with.
How can a school be designed to be fully in line with Maslow s hierarchy of needs? (cont.) Esteem: Do not make students feel like they are worthless. When they do a good job during class acknowledge it instead of just grazing over it. Instead of students having to hope to get respected it should be freely given by teachers as well as other students. Self-Actualization: Have specialized but optional classes where students can go to and try to further their education and reach their full potential. Identify what each student's particular interest is and set them up with someone who has a great understanding in the one area or profession and help them strive to reach their highest potential.
How can a school inspire and cultivate autonomy, mastery, and purpose? Autonomy Teachers should not just assume students understand their work. You have to ask them if they understand. Mastery Teachers can not pass students because they feel bad. Purpose Teachers should link all the students work to everyday world. Instead of just saying, We have to do this because we have to, relate it to everyday world so they are interested in learning and want to do the work well.
How can students be given opportunities to achieve flow? Students can be given the opportunity to achieve flow by offering a more broad type of career classes that spark the students interest. The classes can be more hands on work instead of just testing so that the students can stay interested while also not being too stressed to study. Students usually are not able to achieve flow because their heads are in 100 different places with all the test and quizzes that are given, so maybe a classroom where there are little to no quizzes and is mostly just graded on hands on activities could help have flow. Examples of classes that could do this would be Car Repairs, Engineering, Communication, and many more. Our school will also offer students a study hall every week so students can catch up anything they need done.
How can genuine intrinsic motivation be cultivated so that forced obedience and compliance are not necessary? We believe that instead of forcing students to take specific classes all four years of high school, students should be given the opportunity to choose every one of their classes and schedule each year. The process of selecting classes for freshman students should be the same as sophomore, junior, and senior students. Being that students are more likely to engage in academic tasks that they are interested in, if every class was about something the student is interested in or plans to pursue in the future, grades would be higher and the effort level would also be much higher. For Example: Instead of a student being forced to take physics junior year, they should be able to have a choice of the science class that they want to take.
How can we create an ideal environment for authentic and personally meaningful learning that matters? We think that we can achieve this by having smaller class sizes, of about no more than 12 students, so the teachers can focus on each student s need. We can also have a teacher aid in the majority of the classes to increase the help for the students. Teachers can also hold extra help sessions during lunch periods for specific subjects since a lot of students have to attend after school activities like sports and work.
What are we doing wrong now? We have teachers that seem to not know their area of study well enough Many teachers put down students instead of motivating them Many students that have no motivation to do any schoolwork Lack of care towards the use of drugs during school hours Not enough healthy food choices Teachers giving meaningless homework that will not help on quizzes or tests Teachers just giving busy work when they don't feel like teaching Blocking websites on laptops that could actually be useful.
What ideas and proposals for school reform and improvement that are out there today are misguided? One attempt New Jersey has done to increase the fitness and healthiness of students was to have a fitness day once every week. On paper this idea seems like a good one, but it seems as if the students do not really take these days seriously and actually have a more physical workout doing other games that the students actually enjoy. Our school s idea would be to have one day of the week where the students can vote on the activity they want to play. Another idea that has been misguided would be how schools have tried to put all the students into one lunch period. This sounds like it would be good because the school will just have to focus on one period and all the students can be with one another, but in reality the lunchrooms will be over crowded, the lines will be very long, and it will take seniors too long to leave and get back into their designated parking spot.