On Wednesday, January 18, 2012 members of the School of Inquiry Staff will take part in the Freshman Orientation program at Plymouth High School from 6-8:30 PM.  During the Orientation program the School of Inquiry staff will participate in two events. 

From 6-7 PM the school will have a booth in the auxiliary gym where parents can come speak with facilitators Jennifer Felke, Grant Masson, Lisa Mercer and Charlotte Tyree as well as Director Ken Olson.

At approximately 7:45 Mr. Olson, Mrs. Felke, and Mr. Fishback will conduct a parent information meeting in the school auditorium.  This meeting will introduce key concepts of the program and allow parents to ask questions of the staff.  Open enrollment for the school will begin on January 19 for students who did not register during the early enrollment period.

On Friday afternoon Tammy Boys (TCU East), Randy Lemert (TCU District Manager), and Beth Styers (TCU West) of Teachers Credit Union presented Superintendent Dan Tyree and School of Inquiry Director Ken Olson with a check for $5,000.  This is the first part of a 5 year $25,000 commitment that TCU has made to support educational programs at the School of Inquiry.  

Just a final reminder that the Application for the 2012-2013 school year will be available at 8 AM on Tuesday, January 3, 2012.  The application is available online at this address: (Click Here) or can be obtained (in paper form) at the LJHS, PHS, or Plymouth Community School Corporateion Offices. 

After completing the online application, parents and students will need to print out the Commitment Contract (Click Here) (Espanol) and have both the student and their parent(s) sign and return the contract to the corporation office at 611 Berkley St in Plymouth.  The application is not officially complete until this contract has been signed and turned in.  The first 50 students to complete the application process during this early enrollment period will be guaranteed a spot in the School of Inquiry for the 2012-2013 school year.  Applications for early enrollment will be accepte

With the holiday break upon us I have had some time to focus on the School of Inquiry and wanted to utilize a blog post to highlight some of the happenings over the past month.  

School of Inquiry Facilitators Announced:
At the December School Board Meeting the four facilitators (teachers in New Tech) for the School of Inquiry were officially hired through the recommendation of the school board.  The teachers, and classes they will teach, are:  Jennifer Felke, Grant Masson, Lisa Mercer, and Charlotte Tyree.
Mr. Masson and Mrs. Mercer will team up for the Global Perspectives class that will combine World History with English 9.  Mrs. Felke and Mrs. Tyree will combine for the 21st Century Communication class combining Speech with Interactive Media.  Mrs. Felke will also be teaching our Leadership Institute for Freshman.

Parent Meeting held at PHS:
As the school system prepared for Christmas Break a parent meeting was held for the parents of perspective students in the PHS cafeteria (if you were unable to attend this one you can attend a second one on January 18 as part of the Freshman Orientation program at PHS).  During this meeting parents heard a short presentation on New Tech (click here to look at it), and had questions answered by Mr. Olson (School of Inquiry Director), Mr. Fishback (School of Inquiry Guidance Counselor), and Mrs. Felke.  

Courses for Year 1 at School of Inquiry Announced:
At the December School Board Meeting the School Board was given a presentation on the course for the first year of the School of Inquiry.  Those courses are; Global Perspectives which will combine World History with English 9, 21st Century Communication which will combine Speech with Interactive Media I, and Leadership Institute which will integrate leadership skills with a college and career course.  In addition to these courses, students will be able to take 8 class periods of courses in the regular high school.  This will allow for students to select electives based on their interests, be in a math course that is specific to their level of mathematics ability, and take biology if they have not done so at Lincoln Junior High.

Thoughts on a Recent Article:
One of the best parts of my job as an educator is that it gives me an excuse to devote large amounts of time on a daily basis reading from a variety of sources and to continually build my knowledge base and truly embrace the idea of curriculum vitae.  Recently I read two articles that were really encouraging to me as I thought about what we hope to accomplish at the School of inquiry.  

The first came from a special section of The Futurist and was titled 70 Jobs for 2030 (Link).  In the article, author Cynthia Wagner focuses on three drivers of new jobs:  Retrofitting-adding new skills to old jobs, Blending-combining the skills of 2 or more jobs to create a new specialty, and Problem Solving.  In addition to showing specific jobs of the future for each of these domains, she also lists 70 jobs that could be around in 2030 that do not exist today.  

The second article was more related to the School of Inquiry directly and came from the blog Democratizing Knowledge.  The blog, written by Mike Gwaltney had a recent post on titled PBL, Real World Situations, and Reflection Using Eportfolios (link).  The article talks about how PBL helps to engage students and create greater opportunities for learning.  Mr. Gwaltney does a great job of explaining why we believe that the School of Inquiry will offer a great learning experience to our students.  He not only writes about PBl, but also another component that we will be incorporating, which is a Portfolio project that they will begin as Freshman and complete as seniors.  

Announcement of Application Process:
Lastly, the Pilot News highlighted the application process in the newspaper on 12/20 (link).  The early enrollment process will begin on January 3.  The application will be available online at www.plymouth.k12.in.us and available in paper form at the School Corporation Offices.  Students and parents will need to fill out the online application and then print the Commitment Contract that will also be on the website.  The Commitment Contract needs to be signed by the parent's and student and returned to the School Corporation Office in order for the application to be considered complete.  During the early enrollment period (January 3-January 16) the first 50 students to complete the enrollment process will be guaranteed admission to the school.  Students outside the first 50, or applying during the regular enrollment period (January 19-February 3) may be subject to the lottery system if more than 100 students apply.  Please contact me at kolson@plymouth.k12.in.us if you have any questions.

Had a great day yesterday at CELL.  Heard some great discussion from the panel on Education Reform in Indiana with Dr. Tony Bennett-Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Mark Gerstle-Vice President of Community Relations for Cummins Inc., Dr. Wendy Robinson-Superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools, and Nathan Schnellenberger-President of the Indiana State Teachers Association.  Lots of good ideas were presented, for those of you on Twitter you can see some of the better ones by following us on twitter (schlofinquiry) as we retweeted some of the best comments by the panel and by audience members.  The highlight for me was getting to meet Dr. Bennett after the panel discussion and share with him what we are doing with the School of Inquiry, and get a very positive response from him-more details to be released at the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation Community Conversation on Wednesday.

Today we get to hear from Will Richardson, the Chief Learning Officer of Powerful Learning Practice.  He will be speaking about learning in a networked world, so I am very excited to hear what he has to say to us.  Then after some morning sessions-I am attending ones on Schooling for the 21st Century:  Unleashing Student Passion with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach of Powerful Learning Practice and PBL Meets STEM which is lead by Michael Gorman the Technology Integration Professional Developer from Southwest Allen County Schools-we will get to hear from Charlotte Danielson, of the Danielson Group, on Assessing Teacher Effectiveness.

I am in Indianapolis today and tomorrow for the annual CELL Conference on Indiana's Future.  This year's conference title is Choices, Challenges, and Change and will focus on education reform in Indiana.  With the New Tech Network being such a prevalent part of education reform, and CELL being s supporter of the network, a lot of the sessions are being conducted by New Tech Directors from Indiana, and I am looking forward to attending some of those with Jen Felke and Mr. Tyree.  

In addition to the conference, I am also attending a New Tech Network director's meeting this morning prior to the conference.  It is a great opportunity to meet some of the other directors from around the state, and listen to how the year is going for their schools.  While at this conference the following data was shared about the New Tech Network in Indiana:

• Indiana New Tech Schools have a 95.6% attendance rate compared to the comparison average of 94.6%
• Indiana New Tech Schools have a lower suspension/expulsion rate than comparison schools (Suspension Rate 11.4% vs. 17.2%, Expulsion Rate 10.0% vs. 13.1%)
• In 2010-2011, a greater percentage of New Tech students passed their ECAs than students at comparison schools. 
• In 2009-2010, New Tech students out-performed both comparison schools and all high schools statewide in both Algebra I and English 10 ECAs, with a greater percentage of New Tech students passing these assessment.

Two different New Tech Network schools were featured in local newspapers this week.   Lincoln New Tech, in Jonesboro, Arkansas was featured in the LogCabin Democrat in a story that highlighted the schools transition to become a New Tech school.  Click here for article.

In the second article, The Republic of Columbus, Indiana reported on the expansion of Columbus Signature Academy, a New Tech High School, to the local junior high school.  Click here for article.

On Friday I traveled to Eagle Tech Academy in Columbia City to visit  with Director Brady Mullett and learn about the courses offered at Eagle Tech and see the design of their building.  In their first year, Eagle Tech has 5 teachers and roughly 100 students.  They offer classes in BioCom (Biology and Communications) Current Events/Speech, Health Marketing, PE,and Algebra.
During my visit I was able to watch students in BioCom as they created a children's book about the parts and functions of a cell.  In addition to having to write and produce a book that appealed to small children and educated them about the various parts and functions of a cell, the students also had to have a central theme in which they created analogies about the cell for their story.  For example, one group that I spoke with had students who were involved in cheerleading, so their theme was cheerleading and they related the parts and functions of the cell to cheerleading.  For example, the nucleus is to the cell as a coach is to a cheer team.
In the Current Events/Speech class I was able to watch students have a seminar on speech technique in the commons area of the school, while other students worked on presentations in the classroom.  

My visit to the Algebra classroom was especially enlightening as I got to visit with Brett Eberly, the ETA Math Teacher.  Mr. Eberly uses problem based learning to engage students in a variety of challenging projects.  For example, on the walls of his classroom where large sheets of white paper in which students had written equations calculating costs, mileage, and travel times for a vacation trip.  Additionally, he talked about how he uses cumulative tests to help students retain and rework core concepts throughout the year.