Columbus Signature Academy High School -- A Project Based Learning Secondary School

This school is led by the Principal, Mike Reed (who incidentally, would love to get an invitation to come to New Zealand to talk about his school and this type of learning ... and then fit in seeing the sights of course. :-) ) This school is a New Tech Network school and is based on using 21st century skills. The training was done in Napa Valley. The school is based on the skills valued by industry -- being tech-rich, having a collaborative environment and having the skills of agency, being able to discuss, communicate and negotiate. The philosophy is to use authentic projects to solve authentic problems. The school opened with 100 Freshmen, and added 100 each year. (Freshmen, Sophomore, Junior, Senior.) There are 400 in this school, as opposed to 2100 in Columbus North and 1600 in East High School. This is classed as a Magnet school; students have a home school of East or South, but they  do most of their classes at CSA, and only go to their home school for things not offered at CSA such as sports teams, high level French and music. This way they can be in sports teams and band in the other schools.

New Tech schools have been driven by economic development. To attract business to a town, you need to have good schools. The town of Columbus is the base of Cummins Diesel Engineering Company and as such the town has more engineers per capita than any other town in the US. The school has a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) focus, but not all go on to do engineering. They use Project Lead the Way as the basis of their learning. All projects are applied using science and maths and using a problem solving process. Many of the courses are integrated. For example, Probability and Statistics is integrated with English in a course called Social Justice. It looks at how data is used and decisions are made.

Like the other Signature Academy schools, it is representative of the community and must have students who are entitled to texts and lunch being provided by the state, it must have Special Ed students and also English as New Language (ENL) learners as well. Their study hall is called an Ac. Lab (Academic Lab). The corridor is the "Collaborador" where students get together to work on their projects. No bells are used in this school and students have a five minute 'passing period' to get from one class to the next. Students here are also required to do 100 hours of community service to graduate. (North High School requires 10 hours of community service.)

There is a consensus model of decision making. Students are involved in the timetable making process, as are the staff. It is not just done by an administrator. Students are always on interview committees when new staff are appointed. The transition to this type of learning can be tricky for new students. They need to ask questions, analyze an issue, not wait to be told by a teacher. Students learn to advocate for themselves, to problem solve and to find answers. In saying all this, Mike was realistic that he is dealing with teenagers and there have been some suspensions of students in the time he has been there; generally for second offense substance abuse and continued defiance.

No complaints if you wear a bow tie.

And, you can wear what you like to school.