Reading Reflection 2- BPHS

First and possibly of foremost importance, the Best Practices High School (BPHS) was started by a group of individuals with great energy and a similar vision of secondary education. Their ability to create and actually implement the classroom dynamics they wanted had the greatest impact on the school. The schools expectation that the teacher be a coach and model and not just a babble fountain of facts was tantamount to their success. Likewise, the emphasis on cooperative and collaborative learning helped foster the sense of community that the school sought. The individual attention afforded to the students with accommodation for the varying cognitive styles of students had a strong impact on the school. This troika of pedagogy created dynamic, engaging and community based classrooms that many of the tenants of the Second to None initiative suggested.
During my first clinical practice (CP1), I noticed that the school was making attempts to create a supportive environment. Many of the instructors on campus were involved in developing or implementing new programs such as the International Baccalaureate Program, a forensic science club and a Filipino dance club. They were trying to build the "climate" that BPHS recognized as important. Likewise, bulletin boards and all school announcements regarding upcoming college fairs and on campus visits by local colleges were abundant. Representatives from local community colleges were placed in classrooms as tutors and mentors discussing post secondary school opportunities.
The concept of getting teachers to coordinate interdisciplinary thematic units will not be feasible. The logistics are just too cumbersome in high schools that are so large and class sizes that are so huge. Moreover, many of the classes are represented by several different grades and the range of their aptitudes across content areas will not likely allow for this pedagogy to be plausible.

Reading Reflection 1- Rethinking High School

In my first clinical practice (CP1) I must have answered thousands of questions. More times than not, I would reply first with, "What do you think?" or "Where would you start?" The students would typically respond with those three melodic words, "I don't know." The prompt from me was not for information, but rather to promote student thought. The Best Practices High School (BPHS) notion of students being able to create meaning for themselves rather than being a short-term warehouse for information, is at the the core of how I feel students should be gauged. In chemistry and across the sciences, if you actually understand the concepts, you really don't need to be so consumed with absorbing factual information. I discussed this with some of my better performing students in CP1 and they admitted that it is usually easier just to memorize the facts. In the context of how they were going to be assessed, they certainly had chosen the path of least resistance.

The BPHS suggested that only a few subjects be investigated, but to a much deeper level. I did not see this as a great measure of reform. Perhaps, during the course of the school year, students should be allowed to explore a few topics in much greater detail. The chemistry course that I taught in CP1 was labeled as a college preparatory class. The aim is to present the students with a fairly large scope of chemistry concepts. If they choose to pursue chemistry in college they will have plenty of time to explore the discipline in greater detail.

The BPHS incorporated many of the Second to None suggestions for reform such as; teachers acting more as coaches and mentors, students receiving more individualized attention and teachers seeing fewer students during the day. The question I have and would like to explore further is how do we make these 3500 student high schools with class sizes exceeding 40 students seem small.