Secondary schools and their students need a clear goal or telos to flourish. If the goal is “finish high school” or “get into college” or even “get into a selective university,” the goal is extrinsic, and the learning itself is devalued.
Magnet schools and programs don’t have this struggle. Their telos can be STEM, liberal arts, health sciences or something else. The goal gives unity and purpose to the course of study. The purpose of learning is intrinsic to educational design.
For school systems, like my own, that care about educational equity, this challenge is even more pronounced. We have students who are ambitious, want to be challenged, and are solid applicants to elite universities. We also have students who struggle to make it to the finish line of graduation – and then have few promising prospects. These students attend the same school; participate in sports, drama, and music together; and share some classes. Yet they can complete their high school years without and understanding of what makes our city work – and the role that they can play in it at any stage of life.
A Purpose for a Public High School
In our city, we have an 8-month, tuition-based program called Leadership Charlottesville in which class members work in teams to come up with viable solutions to various community issues. Participants come from all sectors of the city – executives, entrepreneurs, activists, non-profit leaders, retirees, local government employees, etc. The beauty of the model is that they learn how our city works in a cohort model, and then actively contribute to the well-being of our city through their capstone projects.
What if our public high school was defined by a course of study similar to Leadership Charlottesville? What if our students met civic leaders – elected officials, volunteers, minority business owners, foundation executives, university professors, general contractors, wedding photographers, graphic designers, engineers, electricians, counselors, and others – as a central part of their education on a weekly basis? What if they had the opportunity, 4 to 6 times per year, to visit non-profits, businesses, and government offices to see how our city works, and to meet the people who do that work?
Learning by Design
Great instructional design begins with clear learning goals. Here’s what I’m suggesting: At the end of four years of elective participation, students will:
- Know how the public and private sectors differ, what each contributes to the common good, how they interrelate, and how they can work together.
- Interact with civic leaders in government, business, and non-profits to gain a personal understanding of our city.
- Understand what a business, non-profit, or civic organization must achieve in order to sustain itself and create value in the community.
- Develop skill in analyzing and suggesting innovations to civic leaders that can help their organizations to thrive and create additional value.
- Understand the characteristics of streets, buildings, and other urban features (train tracks, bridges, sidewalks, parks, pools, etc.) that contribute to a thriving or struggling neighborhood.
- Cultivate skill in identifying and proposing changes to streets, buildings, and other urban features that would help more neighborhoods thrive.
- Identify the knowledge, understanding, and skills required to create value in the various sectors and vocations that compose our community.
- Develop a portfolio of vocations-of-interest to explore through internships, apprenticeships, and a capstone project.
Active Learning for Students
On this proposal, students would have responsibility for:
- Active listening: Prepare questions for each civic leader.
- Analytic Summary: Explain in writing what each civic leader does, and how this contributes to the civic substructure of Charlottesville. In so doing, students are writing for a purpose – documenting the civic architecture of Charlottesville.
- Creative problem-solving: Suggest an innovation or solution that might help the civic leader.
Forming Students’ Vocational Imagination
How can a high school student possibly know all of the vocational possibilities that there are in a community? Their daily life involves going to school. They know their parents, teachers, relatives, and a few people in their neighborhood – and may not even know what all of them do for their vocations. Consistent interaction with civic-minded adults who can articulate what they do and the role that it plays in the community allows students to imagine themselves in a similar role.
For example, consider the General Contractor who presents to students. The GC explains that he oversees teams of tradesmen and women who have developed expertise in an area such as plumbing, electrical, framing, roofing or finish carpentry. The GC himself studied history at UVA, worked in the building trades in carpentry, then as a supervisor, and at age 30 established his own general contracting firm. He has to understand tax and labor law in order to know how to comply with it; he has to build a budget and create a profit and loss report; he must understand the physics of the buildings he’s constructing – as well as that of the tools that he buys, maintains, and uses – to deliver value for his clients. He also has to hire, fire, and manage employees to ensure that they deliver high-quality work on time.
A high school student who met this GC could see a path through the trades to business ownership that requires hard work in high school to master math, science, psychology, and economics. He could even ask the GC for an internship opportunity to try it out to see if the hard mental and physical labor is as rewarding as it sounds.
Establishing Critical Social Capital
Disadvantaged students, by definition, lack access to social capital. A course of study that put them continually in contact with civic leaders (who are potential mentors and employers) would multiply their access to networks through which they could explore vocational options. Not only would they develop an understanding of the various roles of public and private entities (a good in and of itself), students build the crucial relational connections with community decision-makers, mentors, sponsors, and employers.
Being Formed as Creators Rather than Consumers
The course of study I am suggesting entails two significant creative components:
- Creative solution/innovation: For each civic leader who presents his or her work to students, every student writes a short suggestion, “Have you thought of . . .?” “Might it be helpful to . . .?” This practice is formative – engaging students in creative thinking about what makes a business or organization work better.
- Capstone project: Having met a wealth of civic leaders over their high school years, seniors contact one of those leaders and ask if they might make some sort of meaningful contribution to that organization. It might be helping with an event at the ASPCA, or assisting with a donor letter for the Fountain Fund, or participating in a research project at Thriving Cities. The possibilities are truly unlimited. In this way, there is reciprocity between the civic leaders who share their time and wisdom, and the students, who share their time, insight, and passion.
Involving Civic Leaders in our Schools
Civic leaders can learn to tell their story to our students in ways that inspire and involve:
- How does your organization create value for our community?
- Is it public or private? If private, is it for-profit or non-profit? If for-profit, is it a benefit corp (b-corp)?
- What is a problem that your business has that high school students might be interested in helping to solve?
- What are the key areas of study that you needed to master in order to do your work well?
There is also the obvious benefit that civic leaders experience high school students as our kids. They act as first-person role models.
Meaningful Shared Experiences
This course of study presents the prospect of advantaged and disadvantaged students participating shoulder-to-shoulder in meaningful learning activities that help all of us to better understand and serve our city. The purpose isn’t to get a grade, or to pad a résumé; the purpose is to learn about our city, build connections with civic leaders, and develop a vocational imagination.
Collective Impact
To take this course of study a step further, students could actively participate in Collective Impact. Collective Impact (CI) is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem, using a structured form of collaboration.
Elective, or Compulsory?
The deepest learning is almost always self-chosen and self-directed. For that reason, the design of an interesting, attractive, low-stakes elective course of study is probably the best choice. I think it has the potential to become the signature of the high school – a compelling reason for families moving to Charlottesville to choose Charlottesville High School. Indeed, I think this is a course of study that would be valuable in any city.
Charlottesville High School students could get to know our city, how it works, and its many civic leaders across sectors. This could assist them to find meaningful employment directly after high school; to explore areas of interest through volunteering or internship; to discover local higher-ed opportunities at PVCC and UVA; and to provide a compelling reason (and connections) to return to Charlottesville after college elsewhere.
Reading for a Purpose
The natural anchor text to learn how a city works is The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Students who read Jacobs’ classic in high school – in conjunction with meeting civic leaders in their own city – will have eyes to see and appreciate how cities work.