High school students at Dearborn Stem Academy, a Boston public school, take an intro to programming computer science class, on October 28, 2015 in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The students learn coding and problem solving – learning from each other’s work. Photo by Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor
What will it take to educate students for our global and tech-driven career landscape? By some estimates, 65% of today’s children will ultimately work in careers that don’t even exist yet. If traditional schools are struggling to prepare students for today, how can they possibly plan for tomorrow? At Dearborn STEM Academy, a Boston Public School and a Boston Plan for Excellence (BPE) Teaching Academy in the heart of Roxbury, we have spent the last three years reimagining middle and high school, designing courses, work-based learning experiences, career pathways and an overall culture that equips students with the skills and mindsets necessary to succeed in our city’s rapidly changing labor market. Our school model thus far has been successful by many measures. Most significantly, all of our graduating seniors over the last year were accepted into at least one college, and the class of 2018 received an average of $20k in scholarship funds per student.