School District 5 to begin career cluster curriculum this fall

School District 5 is setting the bar for high schools across the state with its career cluster curriculum, scheduled to begin this fall.

Assistant Superintendent Dan Zorn outlined the district's planned curriculum Thursday during the Montana Career Clusters Conference. About 300 people from the business and academic communities are meeting in Kalispell this week to discuss collaboration between the two groups.

Flathead High School's graduation rate is 80 percent - significantly higher than the nationwide 68 percent average. But the Kalispell district still saw the need for change, Zorn said.

"We're still losing 20 percent of our kids," he said.

Statistically, a student's freshman year of high school is the pivotal year. The highest number of dropouts occur during the ninth grade.

"Connectedness" plays a large role in this, Zorn said. The district hopes to connect the student majority - the kids who are neither at-risk or standouts - with one another and with adults who can serve as positive role models and mentors.

"The more adults in a child's life that care about them and care about what they're doing, the more successful they're going to be," Zorn said. "It's the kids that get that disconnect - that's where the problem comes from. That's where the dropouts come from."

But there's more to Kalispell's plan than merely keeping kids in school. While they're there, they need to know that what they're learning is relevant in the real world, he said.

To that end, the district has developed a curriculum centered around what Zorn called "universal skills." Information, literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, interpersonal relationships and character are all areas in which students need instruction, he said. These are the soft skills nearly all employers look for.

The curriculum also includes the core classes the state requires for graduation, as well as technology integration and general electives. The latter are just as important as the core math, science and English classes, Zorn said.

"High school isn't just about preparing kids for a career," he said. "It's about preparing a whole person, the whole language arts tradition."

For the most part, Flathead High School has featured all of these already. What makes the new curriculum unique are the six career fields - clusters of elective classes geared toward particular areas of interest.

Next year's students at Flathead and Glacier high schools will be able to take classes in arts and communication, business and management, engineering and industrial technologies, health and related services, agriculture and natural resources, and social and human services. Students will be able to explore different career options in these fields.

Another key change taking place this fall is putting ninth-graders with the rest of the high-school student body, something that hasn't happened for the last 38 years.

The freshman curriculum centers around the Freshman Academy. Students will be divided into four teams of about 100 students each, with four teachers per team. Freshmen will take their core classes - English, math, science, health and 21st century literacies - with their teams.

Twenty-first century literacies will teach students study skills, financial skills, human relations and information literacy. The class will also help freshmen begin to think about their futures: They will explore various careers and, by the end of the semester-long class, develop a five-year education plan.

They'll expand on some of their information literacy skills their sophomore year in IT (information technology) essentials. Students will learn various software programs and use the Internet to research more career and post-secondary options.

Students have four "exit points" after graduation, Zorn said. Whether they go straight to work or to a tech school, community college or four-year university, he added, it's the school's responsibility to prepare them for that future.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com