Changing the way schools educate

New curriculum built around career clusters

An education and business initiative to design a radically new curriculum for Kalispell's high school students is attracting statewide attention.

Local school and work-force leaders are being invited to speak with university groups, state education officials and others who want to hear about School District 5's proposal for developing career clusters.

High school class schedules mapped out within those career clusters will connect students with courses best geared for their success beyond graduation.

"This is hard work," said DeAnn Thomas, director of the Flathead High School Career Center.

"It's a huge change and a shift for schools - which don't change easily - and for businesses, which don't change easily."

She and Dan Zorn, assistant superintendent/curriculum director, were talking recently with Virginia Sloan, a Department of Labor business advocate with the Flathead Regional Business Center. Over the past year, Sloan has become a rich resource for linking economic development with educational interests, from kindergarten through the second year at Flathead Valley Community College.

"Kalispell is very much the leader," Sloan said, fresh from a visit with MSU-Billings, which just got a sizable grant to implement a construction technology program. Nationally, 19 states had career-cluster initiatives in progress last June.

Sloan is happy to see that "we're all pulling on the same rope" after five or six years of study and curriculum design.

"It's all about communication," she said, "and it's all about building relationship."

When both Glacier High School and Flathead High School are in session in fall 2007, that adage will expand to include students as well.

The career cluster concept is based on offering classes that will ground students in information specific to their career interests while ensuring they get a core education in the traditional areas.

Driving the design phase of this new plan is a 29-member Curriculum Transition Team of business, Flathead Valley Community College and School District 5 representatives.

Six individual "field action teams," to be appointed in April, will come up with proposals for courses to include in each specific career cluster. Their work begins in May or June.

Another team will design a freshman academy, a grouping within the high schools to build a smaller learning community while freshmen students are making the transition to high school.

One more team will design a Career/IT Literacy course and a Career/21st Century Literacies course.

As the transition team knuckled down to customize a plan for the Flathead Valley, one model it consulted was from the Nebraska Department of Education.

The team came up with its own adaptation:

-At the center of every course of study are classes teaching universal skills in computer literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork and interpersonal relationships.

-Core curriculum would offer four years of English, 2.5 years of social sciences, two years of math, two years of sciences, a year of physical education, a semester of health, a semester of information technology, a year of fine arts and a year of vocational/business classes.

-Classes would be grouped under six career fields, with electives in each:

Arts and Communication: Includes arts, communication, information technology.

Business and Management: Includes marketing, finance, hospitality.

Engineering and Industrial Technologies: Includes manufacturing, architecture and construction, engineering technology, math and science.

Health and Related Services: Includes health science.

Agriculture and Natural Resources: Includes agriculture.

Social and Human Services: Includes human services, education, government, law.

"This definitely is meant to help create small communities" within a larger school, Thomas said. "We started out looking at creating academies, but we couldn't get that far because the amount of change was too much, too quick."

She said course offerings at each school are a big question on parents' minds. She reassures them about the full curriculum offered at each school and a transfer policy to accommodate choice.

The two schools won't be so different at the beginning, but over time will differentiate based on strength of programs at each.

As students advance from ninth through 12th grades, courses will become more career-specific.

"This will bring relevance to the courses they take in high school," Zorn said, "so they can see themselves as adults going to work or a two-year college or a four-year college."

Choosing a career cluster will not lock students into it - they can change their minds at any point. And sticking with one cluster will not preclude a graduate from an entirely different career.

"It's so important to know they're not on a luge track," Thomas said.

No longer is the business world anchored by bricks and mortar, Sloan said. A well-prepared work force looms ever larger in the overall picture, so businesses stand to gain through working with schools.

And education, which "historically has not been that nimble," Thomas said, will need to react quickly to changing business options and technologies.

More nimble responses from educators will be critical.

"We really are trying to turn a corner in our curriculum," Thomas said.

Tight Kalispell school budgets and massive changes with buildings and grade configurations may pose hurdles in turning that corner. But it's a prime opportunity, she said, to deliver on a promise to change curriculum.

"I'm proud of the staff," Zorn said. "They've been open to change even though it's been tough."

He said they have kept focused on the students, who come from 15 different school settings to feed into Flathead High School.

"It may be the kids in the middle who are not really getting noticed as the best or the worst who might get more focus from this," Zorn said.

The career cluster concept is a work in progress, they said, but one which hinges on a major shift in the approach to the secondary school process: Forget the old memorize-and-test template and embrace the fact that public school teaching and learning will be a continual process of growing and changing.

Curriculum in the career cluster system will be successful, the three said, if it remains fresh and responsive to whatever it takes to help students be successful in life after graduation.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com