My Completely Idealistic Reconstruction of the K-12 Experience

An aquaintance of mine talked to me about going to his son's back-to-school-night and being blown away by the history teacher. "That guy was incredible! He was engaging and helping us make all of these connections. I seriously wanted to take his class." I've heard comments like this before. While I hope that the teaching profession has improved and will continue to improve, I think a comment like this is not just because this history teacher was better than any teacher my acquaintance had in school. I think it's actually more likely that the 15 year old version of himself would have been way less sold on the class. My theory is that it has less to do with the quality of teaching and more to do with what it takes to truly appreciate education.

As a student, I think I was an okay spanish student. I took it for four straight years and got pretty good grades. But I wasn't extremely motivated to learn. Last year I started to get more ambitious. I started to think "what if I we could offer a math class taught in spanish to our AP Spanish students? What if I could teach math in a spanish speaking country?" I had motivation related to my profession that made me want to learn. So I did. I audited one of our spanish classes during my plan period.

The point is, it really seems like humans are more ready, willing, and able to learn when we have been matured by life experience. We are more able to appreciate what education has to offer us. I've heard the same thing about college. "I was kind of an idiot when I was 18. If i entered college when I was more like 21, I think I would have taken it more seriously." So this makes me think that maybe our timeline is off. And though it would be a massive undertaking, I decided to take a look at how we can help our students appreciate their education more by giving them a variety of experiences.

Grades K-5 (Ages 5-11)
I'm admittedly not an expert about this stage of education, so I do not want to propose my own drastic changes. I can point to a couple different models, though. In Finland, for example, students do not start formal schooling until they are seven. Up until that age, students are encouraged to play creatively.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, students may start working with basic math concepts as early as pre-school in the United States.

Though I don't think there is anything wrong with four year olds counting blocks and playing with shapes, letting children develop before any type of formal teaching is more in line with the message of this blog.

Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-14)
I once heard a middle school teacher jokingly suggest that the best thing for middle school students would be to send them all to an isolated island for three years then bring them back to high school. It's a stupid joke, but the idea is that middle school is so crazy that we should just find a way to skip it all together. My version of that joke involves just skipping school and putting them to work for three years (but that's extreme, too. And yeah yeah, child labor laws. I get it). So this is my completely serious proposal: we cut some percentage of instructional time and devote that cut time to students completing service projects. Each grade would be split into groups, and each group would complete one service project per quarter. The group would have to plan, make calls, find a way to purchase needed equipment, figure out logistics, etc. As they move through the middle school years, they will theoretically get better at planning them and will be able to complete more complex projects by the time they hit 8th grade. After each project they will reflect on what went well and what could have done better. They will reflect on their individual contributions and how well the group worked together. This process will teach them a lot of important skills, allow them to contribute to positively to the world around them, and give them freedom to work on something that they will hopefully believe in.

Grades 9-12 (Ages 14-18)

Year 1 (15 years old)

Semester 1: The first semester of high school will be an orientation to adulthood. There will be workshops about relationship building, conflict resolution, financial literacy, good work habits, finding purpose, living a healthy lifestyle, time management, etc. There would have to be a way to fit normal freshman year content in as well, but the priority would be a variety of activities and workshops that will be completely focused on helping students learn to navigate life.

Semester 2: Semester 2 will kick off with an introduction to different field experiences students can have in their next three years of high school. These field experiences could theoretically be expansive. The students could work with automechanics, electricians, plumbers, accountants, people in the medical field, teachers, tech companies, etc. The obvious obstacle here would be getting professionals in the field on board with taking on teenage apprentices. 

Students will learn about different fields. They will learn about the education and experience required, the benefits of pursuing a job in the field, the challenges with pursuing a job in that field, starting salary and potential for salary increases. By the end of the semester, students will pick their field experience for year 2 that will go hand and hand with their education.

Year 2 (16 years old)

In their second year of high school, they will begin their formal high school education. Let’s say there is a requirement that they spend, say, 12 hours a week within their field experience. That requires an average of just over 3 hours a day. The typical school day is around 8 hours long, meaning students are usually in school for about 40 hours a week. In order to make a true field experience realistic, either some of these hours need to be repurposed for work experience or we would need to extend the school day (or a combination of both). I think it seems realistic to extend the working day to 9 hours for students and to devote 12 hours to their field experience. That’s 33 hours of school with 12 hours of work per week. Obviously transportation is an issue here. Maybe it makes more sense to have students spend one 9 hour day a week actually at their field experience and 3 hours a week doing work offsite. 

During their formal learning, they can all bring perspective from their various work experience. They can talk about where they see the skills they are learning show up in their jobs. Where do they see critical thinking show up in their job? Where does the ability to analyze text seem to be useful? Who is benefiting from scientific and analytical thinking? Ideally, part of their academic experience would involve tying knowledge and progress into their work life.

At the end of year 2, students will reflect on their year of learning and working. They will decide if they want to continue with that particular field or try something else out. This either gives students an opportunity to get experience in a different field or build on their first year of experience in the same field. 

Year 3 and 4 (17 and 18 years old)

Year 3 and 4 will look similar to the first year. Students could potentially have three different field experiences or work in the same field experience for three straight years. During those three years, they will also be working on some kind of modified high school curriculum to account for the reduced instructional time to make room for the work experience. Year 4 will culminate with a portfolio displaying all of their work progress in those 3 years. Examples of what they have done/produced, how they have grown, which field they are drawn to, and where they see themselves going in the future. 

Year 5 (19 years old)

At this point, students have completed the normal k-12 educational period. They are adults, so they should be able to do whatever they want. Within this idealistic model I’m working through, the norm would be to now work within the field that is drawing them most for a full year of work free of formal education. They could interview people from all over the world in the field asking them for advice and learning about what it takes to be successful in the field they have chosen for their year long apprenticeship. They will work for a year using the skills they gained in their four years of high school. They will actually be able to make an informed choice about their apprenticeship because of the knowledge and experience they gained. They will hopefully be able to save up a little money and mature and grow even more before making a decision about college.

Undergraduate schooling

In this model, the ideal situation would be for a student to start their undergraduate education when they are 20. The thought is that they will be more mature and experienced, and will thus be able to get more out of college. They have also already learned about a variety of different career paths. They will know what courses will benefit them for different career paths and what level of success they will need during their undergraduate experience. They will also have developed good work and life habits that will help them remain healthy and productive. By the time they exit undergraduate as a 23 year old, they will be fully prepared to take on the professional world and take their life in whichever direction they choose. 

Reasoning behind the model and pros

-Students have more time and experience to mature them before they take on college life

-Students learn about a variety of fields before making important education decisions and have the opportunity to actually gain work experience in up to three of those fields

-The skills they gain completing their service projects in middle school will directly help them in their field experiences in high school, which will help them in college and in the professional world.

-Students are given more freedom to explore and also learn how to use that freedom. It starts with choosing and planning service projects and progresses to choosing different field experiences.

Obvious cons, downfalls, and questions

-Is the professional world just going to screech to a halt when there is suddenly a year when they don’t have a giant pool of 22 year old graduates ready to work? The transition into a system like this would be a logistical nightmare. But maybe it would be a slow transition where a few schools try it out before, if successful, the model began to spread.

-Money money money. Ideally the students would receive some kind of compensation for their field experiences. That would mean the people hiring them would have to have some kind of paid position available (and overall there would need to be enough paid positions for every student).

-Content loss: We would have to somehow come to terms with the amount of instructional time we would be losing. My argument is that the skills students would gain with the repurposing of those hours make it easily worth it. But there are state and national standards. A national overhaul would require a reworking of those standards. Individual schools trying to adopt a model like this would run into obstacles, too. As a math teacher, I cannot imagine trying to figure how to make sure that students learn everything they need to progress through the 6-12 curriculum successfully in addition to everything else I am proposing. But we won’t know if it’s possible until someone tries to sit down and build it.

-Buy in: what happens when a student isn’t drawn to any of the field experiences? Or what happens when they hate the job 3 weeks in and they’ve committed for the next year? To be fair, that is a real life experience that many adults have, but how can we help an immature teenager navigate those feelings?

Conclusion

A lot of this might sound pretty crazy and impossible. But here is what we are dealing with: high school students are begging for life experience that they don’t feel like they are getting from the high school experience as it currently exists. Colleges and professionals are begging for students that are more prepared and able when they finish high school. And maybe most importantly, there is currently a large disconnect between what we as teachers believe is important for students to learn, what the curriculum is telling us to teach, and what students believe is important. If we don’t make a change in how we structure the high school experience, the results will either remain the same or potentially worsen. I think it’s time to try something different. 

In Alive at Work, Daniel Cable writes about the importance of giving people freedom to explore and learn in their professional lives. It allows people to feel more happy and purposeful at work. This model gives students more freedom to explore. In Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth talks about how an important part of developing Grit is developing passion and purpose. This model will give students more of a chance to develop passion by exploring different fields until they hopefully find one they truly believe in. 

Regardless of where education goes in the future, I think that all educators could benefit from two questions: 1. How can I improve what I am offering students in the system as it currently exists? 2. What systemic changes do I believe could benefit what we, collectively, are offering, and which of those changes seem most realistic? Is there anything I can do to help start that change?

Those are two of my major focuses as an educator. My hope is that I will continue to grow as an educator and that maybe one of my crazy ideas might just stick on day. If you think that anything in this post is too ridiculous, I would challenge you to push back and maybe even come back with a counter idea. If you think the model as it currently exists is the best way to do things, then I’d love to hear about that, too.