What is the Griffin Region College & Career Academy?

             The Griffin Region College & Career Academy (GRCCA) is a partnership between the region's public school systems, institutions of higher education and regional businesses (including Pike, Spalding and Butts County Public Schools, Southern Crescent Technical College, Gordon College and the University of Georgia).  The GRCCA plans to offer a series of academic courses called pathways to meet the needs of the regional economy:

·       Mechatronics (automated equipment technician)

·       Therapeutic Services (This is a broad category that includes training in a wide variety of medical related fields including but not limited to nursing, physical therapy assistant, dental hygienist and pharmacy technician)

·       Audio-Video Technology and Film

·       Welding

·       Law Enforcement

·       Teaching as a Profession

·       Early Childhood Care and Education

·       Food Products and Processing  Systems

·       Landscape Management Systems

·       Aircraft Support and Flight Operations

Additionally, the GRCCA will offer a variety of advanced college preparation courses that are hard to staff or have limited enrollment that make the course challenging to offer.

              The GRCCA is slated to open in the Fall of 2016 adjacent to Southern Crescent Technical College.  Students will have many opportunities to gain high school and college credit, industry certification, and work-based learning experiences in their chosen field of study.  It is important to note that students electing to take courses at the GRCCA remain enrolled in Pike County High School and may continue to participate in extra-curricular activities.  The most likely scenario is for students to take a couple of courses at the GRCCA directly related to career goals and take their remaining classes at Pike County High School.  At this time, Pike County plans to offer transportation to the GRCCA.  More information will be forthcoming as the GRCCA partnership develops courses and calendars. 

Advanced Placement US History and Senate Resolution 80: What's All The Fuss About?

 

 

By Brad Weiser, Pike County High School AP US History

 

I have been a Social Studies teacher for eighteen years and seventeen of those I have taught United States History.  In those years I have taught the regular class, the gifted/honors class, as well as the Advanced Placement class for five of those seventeen years. Recently an education bill was introduced in the Georgia Senate concerning AP US History (APUSH).

First let me describe my basic goals for APUSH.  These students must learn at a depth far superior to what you and I did in our US History class.  The basic facts are necessary, but those are just preliminary to what the AP course contains.  It is about taking those facts and asking questions to get to the reasons behind why events happened.  Then students must be able to take similar situations in modern America and apply the lessons learned from earlier in our history.  In order to do this, we have to look at many aspects and points of view on the important events and issues…the good, bad, and the ugly as it were. 

One of the arguments made against the new AP curriculum by certain Georgia legislators is that it doesn’t adequately cover the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Although the names of the documents may not appear as often as proponents of Res. 80 would like, that in no way means those documents are not taught and referred to repeatedly as the class moves through the course.  No AP student would be successful in the class without a good understanding of those (and many other) documents from our history.

In no way does the College Board (the organization over all AP classes) deemphasize the founding documents.  What it does is allow instructors to use a variety of sources to help our students learn various concepts in the curriculum. The ability to pick source material is what allows Georgia teachers to use events from Georgia history to enhance student understanding.  For example, the APUSH curriculum has a unit on Civil Rights, but it does not say specifically to refer to Martin Luther King Jr. With that said there is no way I, or any other teacher in Georgia, could teach the Civil Rights Movement without our students being exposed to the teachings and actions of Dr. King.

Any other concerns about the specifics within the AP curriculum not matching with Georgia standards must be viewed in light of all Georgia students taking Georgia History in 8^th grade.  All of the specific events, people, and concepts as they pertain to Georgia are addressed in that class as well.

I have seen many things come and go in education in my career.  I have seen many instances of the Georgia General Assembly getting involved in education reform.  While I am sure many in Atlanta have good intentions, I cannot think of a specific example of anything that has come down from the state capital, be it instruction based, curriculum based, or student based, that has been a great success.  In my humble opinion there are 100 things that need to be reformed or eliminated in education, but the APUSH course is not one of them. 

 

 

Educating Students in the 21st Century: Part 5

By Mike Duncan, Superintendent

 

“If you want something you’ve never had, then you’ve got to do something you’ve never done.” 

                                                                                                            Dr. Seuss

So what?  What’s it all mean?

Preparing students for life beyond school has never been more challenging.  Based on your feedback over the past two years, we feel your support and encouragement to change the dialog around education.  Reaching consensus was easier than expected:  We need to equip students with skills to navigate a dynamic and rapid paced world.  Regardless of whether you philosophically believe the mission of schools is to produce employable workers, responsible citizens, or both, we can all agree that students who can think critically, problem solve creatively, communicate clearly, and collaborate effectively are better prepared than the students who memorized volumes of loosely connected factual information only to discard it immediately after the test.

It would be disingenuous to tell you we have this all figured out, because we don’t, but we have a plan.  We are engaged in professional learning and curriculum revision so we can deliver high quality instruction focusing on critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration.  To this end, we are in the process of refining and defining the most important knowledge and skills in the Georgia Standards for Excellence so students can engage learning deeply through inquiry.  Educating our children must be more than telling them what to think, but teaching them how to think.  Students must be given opportunities to make meaning and discover understandings in all content areas.  Being told what you should know and how you should think breeds laziness, apathy, and dependence.  It’s just not the American way, so I leave you where we began: “In times of change learners inherit the Earth: while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” (Eric Hoffer)

P.S.

I would like to thank our partners, The Center for Authentic Intellectual Work and EdLeader21, from whose ideas we have borrowed liberally and shamelessly.  Additionally, I would like to share with you sources that have framed our thinking:

·         Tony Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap

·         Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind

·         Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat

·         Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design

·         Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way

·         Ken Kay and Valerie Greenhill, The Leader’s Guide to 21^st Century Education

·         John Hattie, Visible Learning

·         Mike Schmoker, Focus

Educating Students in the 21st Century:Part 4 (Communication & Collaboration)

By: Mike Duncan, Superintendent

“Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.” 

                                                                                                                                                    Rollo May

We are communicating-for better or worse-exponentially more than ever before. Whether we communicate through text message, social media, Email or Prezi, the ability to leverage a wide array of communication tools purposefully and effectively is increasingly more important in the workplace.  The data collected from regional employers was telling: They ranked communication as one of the top 4 work skills and described it as deficient in the existing work force!

We broadly define communication as,

·         the use of effective interpersonal skills during conversations and discussions to build positive relationships;

·         delivering clear, concise and accurate ideas through spoken and written words using appropriate technologies and formats; and,

·         Listening to decipher meaning including knowledge, values, attitudes and intentions.

The link between communication and collaboration is evident.  How does one collaborate if they do not possess effective communication skills?  Thomas Friedman, in his book The World Is Flat, reveals the essence of a “flat” world where traditional hierarchies are replaced by global partnerships and collaboration.  These global partnerships redefine the workplace and the skills necessary to succeed.  Regional employers said the ability to work with others was essential and sorely lacking in today’s workforce.

So, what do we mean by collaboration?  Students skilled in collaboration can,

·         demonstrate the ability to work effectively and respectfully across diverse teams;

·         exercise flexibility and willingness to be helpful in making necessary compromises to accomplish a goal;

·         assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member; and,

·         work productively in teams for sustained periods of time to develop high quality products.

Why are communication and collaboration so important?  The McKinsey Global Institute published a study finding that increasing communication and collaboration through internal and external social technology platforms could potentially add over 1 trillion dollars of value by increasing the productivity of high-skill knowledge workers. Student who can effectively communicate and collaborate  will be highly valuable in the workplace of the 21^st century.

Educating Students in the 21st Century: Part 3 (Creativity)

By Mike Duncan, Superintendent

 

 

“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.”  Sir Ken Robinson

 

So often we think of creativity as the fine arts-music, art, drama-and, certainly, these endeavors are creative as participants use their mediums to interpret, challenge and reimagine the world in which we live,  however, creativity is much more than the creation of art; it is in part the essence of combining”…seemingly unrelated ideas into something new…” (Daniel Pink, 2006).  To this end, students think and problem-solve creatively when they create new and worthwhile ideas; elaborate, refine, analyze, and evaluate their own ideas; demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand real world limits to adopting new ideas. 

Innovation has been the life-blood of the American experience, creating the world’s strongest economy and the highest standard of living.  Major economic powers around the world are biding to enhance innovation and discovery.  “China is now focusing on how to unleash more creative, innovative juices among its youth” (Thomas Freidman, 2007). 

To address the issue of creative problem-solving, we are engaged in professional learning focusing on student work that requires inquiry and value beyond school. The High School STEM program is experimenting with design challenges to develop solutions using science, technology, engineering and mathematics to solve real-world problems.  Creative problem-solving is the most challenging issue we face; it’s just not in the DNA of American education today.

Educating Students in the 21st Century: Part 2

 

 

By:  Mike Duncan, Superintendent

“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” Albert Einstein

 What does it mean to think critically in the context of schooling? It is simply the process in which we develop an understanding of the world in which we live.  Education researchers, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins state, “To understand is to make sense of what one knows, to be able to know why it’s so, and to have the ability to use it in various situations and context.”  The process of developing an understanding requires students to think critically; that is, they…

·         Collect, assess, and analyze relevant information;

·         Reason effectively;

·         Use systems thinking (problem solving tools and methodology);

·         Make sound judgment and decisions;

·         Identify, define, and solve authentic problems;

·         Reflect on learning experiences, processes and solutions.

We are partnering with Spalding and Butts Counties to open a regional college and career academy.  In the process of developing the college and career academy, we surveyed and spoke with hundreds of regional employers and the message was clear:  employers are more concerned with what new employees can do, not what they know. The said give us young people who can think and learn; we’ll train them.  The ubiquitous nature of technology and the rapid pace of innovation creates a condition whereby those who can think and learn independently will thrive.  Our job is to teach students how to do it.  An Apple executive was quoted in an article I read as saying if you have to be managed you can’t work here.

Educating Students in the 21st Century: Part 1

By:  Mike Duncan, Superintendent

“In times of change learners inherit the Earth: while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exist” Eric Hoffer

Pike County parents, community members, local employers, pastors, teachers and students were asked in 2013 what the school system should do to prepare students for a dramatically changing world during a year-long community dialog around the purpose of schooling.  The input we received set us on a new course; one in which I believe will allow our students the opportunity to fulfil their dreams, and as parents, our dreams for them.

So, let us begin by setting the stage for the community dialog:  schooling has not changed much in the past sixty years.  Today’s schools, much like the ones all of us attended, were designed to prepare workers for a manufacturing economy; and, consequently, they look like a factory-students moving from grade to grade with the same pace in the same time window until "Viola", a graduate is made.  Unfortunately, many of those factory jobs that schools were preparing students for are now in China.

The notion that you can graduate from high school, get a job, work for a handful of decades and retire with a comfortable pension is gone.  US Department of Labor states that today’s students will average 10-14 jobs by the age of 38-all the while the demand for workers to complete repetitive routine tasks has decreased exponentially due to automation, digitizing, and off-shoring.  Students will be, by and large, employed to do jobs involving non-routine tasks, complex thinking, and enhanced communication.  To this point, Karl Fisch, in his video documentary Did You Know? , states the top-ten in demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.  Furthermore, he states, “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that haven’t been invented in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.”

 This is a seismic shift for traditional schooling.  Nationally, the response has been to push down expectations to younger and younger students, increase the amount of standardized bubble-sheet testing, and to expand the breadth of curriculum students are expected to know.   Not to get too semantically snobbish, but notice I used the word “know” instead of “learn”.  We’ll talk about that later. 

In response to all this change, we initiated a conversation with our community and the charge was clear: students must be able to think critically, problem-solve creatively, communicate clearly, and collaborate effectively.  In this five part series, we will discuss each of the 4 C’s and what it looks like for students and its importance in the job market.