Charlestown High School (CHS) is a sprawling complex which serves nearly 1,000 students. Assistant Headmaster “TC” gave me a quick orientation to the building and a handy list of staff with room numbers. I was happy to see “Welcome back” greetings posted at the entrance and in the main stairways. Large buildings can be intimidating and impersonal without such friendly messages. I was also pleased to see attention given to social-emotional dynamics within the academic subjects.
CHS has two programs for recent immigrants, native speakers of Spanish and Chinese. Intensive ESL classes were in session, with students practicing greetings, finding the names of classroom objects, and learning a sentence pattern for comparing and contrasting human characteristics.
As in every school I”ve visited over the past three years, there was a lot of learning going on throughout the building. In a class that was analyzing text, I wondered what “rhetorical triangles” were “ check out the photos for an explanation in the students” words! A humanities teacher showed a short video to spark discussion of stereotypes about Muslims, while a class of students learning Arabic read the beautiful script and worked on their pronunciation.
In one small math class, students were manipulating negative numbers, explaining their problem-solving process to classmates. Art students were learning how to use a rubric to self-assess their work. When I first stopped by Rich Fox“s forensic science class, there was a sign on the door saying that they were outside investigating a (simulated) crime scene. Hands-on learning is not dead!
I was intrigued by the “Fences” project in one class, inspired by August Wilson”s play about the African American experience of the 1950s. Students were responding to the following prompt: “If you were to build a fence around your life, what would you put inside of it and what would you want outside?” Using cut paper, many had created 3-dimensional fences. This could have been an art, history, theater or language class, and I appreciated the teacher”s interdisciplinary approach. The lesson clearly engaged students” interest, fostered complex thinking, and involved their spatial intelligence in developing symbols to represent the things they value.
Charlestown High offers a wide range of programs, from Advanced Placement to support for those in danger of dropping out; amid ongoing construction, teachers and students remained fully focused on learning. Since most of my own teaching experience has been with K-8 students, I am always impressed by the variety and depth of high school coursework “ and by how articulate most students are at explaining their work. Invite me to visit YOUR school this year!
Amika Kemmler-Ernst, Ed.D.
amika45@comcast.net