Building a Workforce for the Digital Age

January 9, 2019 ~ Sarah Powley ~ Leave a comment

21st Century skills: What are they? How can we prepare our students for the workplace of the future? Guest blogger Nathan Hartman, the Dauch Family Professor of Advanced Manufacturing and Head of the Computer Graphics Technology Department at Purdue Polytechnic Institute, gives us some insight on the path of manufacturing education from the Industrial Revolution to the present day and shares his assessment of the tools students will need for the future.

Full disclosure: Nathan Hartman is one of my former students. Working with him on this blog post has been a distinct pleasure. Welcome back to my American Classroom, Nathan!

According to several studies, somewhere around the year 2025, the typical U.S. worker will have around 20% of the information they need to do their job created and delivered to them by a machine, likely some type of computer. Near that same time period, the world will experience over 35 billion connections to the Internet. Living in such a connected world will no doubt have an influence on how people work, as well as how they are prepared for such work. A very good example of this playing out before our eyes today is in the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Nathan Hartman and his Purdue Polytechnic student, teaching and learning for the future

According to many of those same studies, by 2025, the U.S. will have likely experienced the creation of roughly 3 million manufacturing jobs that do not exist today and will still have roughly 2 million unfilled jobs that have been digitally transformed to require a new skill set. This scenario will create even more strain on an already burdened labor market in manufacturing. Couple that strain with new models of working, such as a borderless workforce and non-hierarchical organizations and the design and manufacture of wearable products and continuously connected devices, and one can see that an entirely new ecosystem of work is developing. One for which our current education systems and methods have but minimal preparation. Current life expectancies in developed countries point to a person born today living to be nearly 100 years old. How do we educate a person born today to exist in a world where they not only change jobs multiple times but potentially change careers multiple times?

By most accounts these days, the manufacturing sector in the U.S. is doing well, even with the recent downturn in the automotive industry. However, it is difficult to pick up a newspaper without reading something about the challenge companies are facing in hiring. According to numerous recent studies by the likes of Gartner, Deloitte, McKinsey, and others, the current manufacturing output is high, but the future looks a bit bleak. Not necessarily due to competition with low-labor-cost countries or some governmental policy per se, but to a lack of a skilled workforce coupled with rapid technological change. Most authorities peg the shortage between 2 million and 3 million manufacturing workers by 2027. Regardless of the cause, even if the worker shortage is “fixed,” it will not likely address a more fundamental trend in the U.S. – people choosing other career fields over manufacturing. But before diving into a discussion about education and workforce development, let’s look briefly at the technological transformation at the heart of this predicament.

Most of us grew up learning about the Industrial Revolution – the mechanization of work to ease the load on human beings and to increase their efficiency. However, what many people may not be aware of is that we have had several industrial revolutions over the last two hundred years. Industry 1.0 began with the mechanization of work, which led to the electrification of work during Industry 2.0 in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the early 1960s with the rise of personal and industrial computing, electrification of work gave way to the automation of work to create Industry 3.0. And as those technologies became commonplace and we saw the uses of data expand, we have arrived in the 2010s at Industry 4.0 – the digitalization of information to support the automation and computing backbones that already have been built. Not only are we on our fourth industrial revolution, but the elapsed time between the revolutions has been substantially decreasing.

In parallel with the technological gains in efficiency, accuracy, and sustainability that it is experiencing today, the manufacturing sector is struggling to transform its workforce. For every industrial revolution the world has seen, there has been an accompanying educational revolution. In the U.S. and Europe, those transformations came in the movement away from the master/apprentice model (Education 1.0) to the movement around Manual Arts and Industrial Arts (Education 2.0), which focused on basic job skills for the growing mass production economy. Over the 20^th century, we saw the move towards Technology Education, with its focus on domain-specific content areas and a systemic view of technology as a discipline in and of itself (Education 3.0). The current education transformation relative to manufacturing is now focused on design thinking and a ‘system of systems’ view (Education 4.0) of developing and implementing technology and using digital data to assess, diagnose, and implement solutions to problems.

Yet, if we have had parallel revolutions between industry and education, why does the manufacturing sector find itself with such a shortage of skilled workers, and how might we begin to address this shortage? How we can adapt our Education 4.0 revolution to better address the needs of the manufacturing sector of our economy? The dawning of technologies such as additive manufacturing, high-performance computing and data analytics, generative design, and artificial intelligence means that humans will no longer have the cognitive playing field to themselves. Machines will be able to process more quickly, more cheaply and with fewer errors than their human counterpart, at least in some activities. That could make the hollowing-out of human tasks, now cognitive as well as manual, far greater than ever before. So what do humans have left? What should we prepare our students for?

Project-based Learning offers students opportunities for critical thinking, creative problem-solving, communication, and collaboration: all, 21st Century skills. This picture is from the Purdue D-Bait project at McCutcheon High School, reported in a previous blog post, **It’s Not about the Lure**

Demand for skills of the head (cognitive) have dominated those of the hands (technical) and to a lesser extent, those of the heart (social) over the past 300 years. In the future, a tighter coupling will need to exist between a person’s cognitive knowledge and their technical and affective knowledge. During the first three Industrial Revolutions, the skills workers needed to keep ahead of the machines were largely cognitive. Machines were doing manual tasks and cognitive tasks were the exclusive domain of humans. However, with the rise of social networks, artificial intelligence, and the digitalization of information, Industry 4.0 threatens to change the balance of power in what had been exclusively the human’s cognitive domain. Students must be exposed to and become proficient in multiple modes of problem-solving; that is, they will need an education that prepares them to perform cognitive tasks requiring creativity and intuition. They will need to solve problems whose solutions require great (but logical) leaps of imagination. There will remain a demand for skills to program, test and oversee machines. Personalized design and manufacturing will become more common as the information needed to customize products for individuals is more readily available. A student’s ability to use social skills to execute, and when necessary, lead initiatives that require emotional intelligence rather than cognitive intelligence alone. Preparing graduates solely for cognitive skills will not be enough for the 4th Industrial Revolution.

We must build upon the traditional literacies of reading, writing, and mathematics. Students still must be able to take in information, assimilate it with what they already know, and form a conclusion. They must still be able to understand the physical and temporal phenomena expressed by modern mathematics and science. However, we must move them past simply assimilating and synthesizing information and towards interpretation and systematic decision making based on that information synthesis. New types of literacy might include:

Data literacy: the ability to read, analyze and apply information. Advanced data gathering and analytics tools will increase the quantity and quality of information available to people, and use contextual cues to help them in understanding what is presented to them. It will be incumbent on our students to know how to apply that information to their problem and to be able to discern accurate and useful information from that which is not.
Technological literacy: coding and engineering principles. Technologies have been created and used since the beginning of humankind, which is arguably one of the things that separate humans from their ancestors. Yet this new incarnation of technological literacy will enable our students to incorporate factual and procedural, process-oriented information into the physical tools and objects they design and build, thus creating a more “intelligent” products.
Human literacy: humanities, communication and design. Our ability and willingness to connect to fellow human beings through, and in spite of, our technologies will become increasingly important. Solving complex problems will not only require the rational theorems and postulates of our mathematical techniques, but the empathy that comes from being human, as we have yet to develop a computing technology with the human capacity to assimilate, interpret, and feel.

Finally, as we develop in our students these higher-order literacies based on digital tools and information, we must also move them towards higher-order mindsets and ways of thinking about and viewing the world. We must encourage them to embrace systems thinking, not necessarily the abstract mathematical representations of it, but the Gestaltist view that yields the ability to view an enterprise, machine or subject holistically, making connections between different functions in an integrative way. Entrepreneurship will become increasingly important, although not in the economic sense per se, but in the application of creative thinking to solve problems and take risks in implementing those solutions in our social institutions. Our students must also become culturally agile as physical, geographic borders become less and less relevant in an age of global commerce and the economic viability of singular customers. And we must encourage and challenge our students to embrace ambiguity as a fact of life and to employ critical thinking as much as possible. The habits of disciplined, rational analysis and judgment will serve them well in a world that increasingly relies on digital information and the accompanying networks to disseminate it.

The manufacturing sector and the education system that supports it cannot hide from these technological changes. It would be like trying to away from a tsunami: We will eventually be overtaken. As an educational community, we must embrace these changes, engage with the manufacturing sector, and adapt our respective curricula to meet the needs of a future and a transitioning workforce. By doing so, we can provide the manufacturing sector with the workforce it needs, and we can provide the manufacturing workforce pipeline some sense of stability in an otherwise rapidly advancing future.

It’s Not About the Lure

October 19, 2018 ~ Sarah Powley ~ 2 Comments

ELECTROFishing

Aquarium net
Transparent plastic containers
Plastic buckets
Golf balls
Magnifying glass
Ice cube tray
Parametric software
3-D printers

and

Students in Honors 9 Biology, AP Biology, and Principles of Engineering

Put them all together and what do you get?

Fishing lures!

Except, it wasn’t about the lures.

Teacher Zach McKeever supervises as students float golf balls in tin foil boats to understand buoyancy

Teams of students from these three classes at McCutcheon High School joined forces to learn about the fish that swim in Wea Creek, the insects that attract them, and the design process engineers use to create any new product. The standards addressed by this bioengineering module pulled from biology, physics, math, technology literacy, and environmental systems. The students spent time at the creek in waders, capturing and identifying fish through electrofishing techniques guest instructors from Purdue University showed them. They identified aquatic insects–also caught in the creek that runs behind our school–and preserved them in transparent containers to learn about biomimicry. Using a decision matrix to guide their design choices, the student teams created fishing lures that looked and moved like the insects they’d observed. They floated golf balls in tin foil “boats” and used their math skills to determine the buoyancy of their designs. Ultimately, the students used Inventor, a parametric modeling software program, to visualize a prototype. The most promising prototypes were printed using a 3-D printer.

20180911_121840 When they weren’t outdoors, the teams met together in the Media Center where large round tables and lots of space facilitated consultation and collaboration. The four teachers, whose schedules had been specifically arranged to accommodate this project-based learning endeavor, floated among the groups. The large space also improved the efficiency of the project. “It was much easier to walk between tables to answer a question than to send an email from one classroom to another,” commented engineering teacher Zach McKeever.

Finally, each team made a PowerPoint presentation of their experience, including a reflection on their performance in terms of communication, creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and computational thinking. An expert angler was present for some of the final presentations and inspected the lures close-up. The students listened intently to his critiques. One group was surprised when he told them, “You could market this if you’d make just this one little change.”

And then, on a warmish October Saturday, they tried out their lures. Total catch: a few nibbles.

20181006_093239

But that’s all right. It wasn’t about the lure.

In their wrap-up discussion, students (predictably) commented that they liked going outside and enjoyed the fishing expedition at the end. They wished they’d spent more time at the creek! They appreciated the hands-on learning and real-world application of their learning. They enjoyed the guest lecturers from Purdue who opened their eyes not only to a new way of fishing, but to the presence of specific species of fish as an indication of water cleanliness, to the connection between bioindicators and our own drinking water, and to watershed ecosystems in general.

Students test their hypotheses about the number of golf balls their vessels will hold as teacher Amanda Cox looks on

Some students did say they prefer a more traditional approach to learning: They wanted textbook learning first, then the application. However, the majority of students said they liked putting the pieces together even though they experienced some anxiety at first when they weren’t sure what was going to happen, how they would get from the assignment “Create a Lure” to the final product without the familiar front-loaded vocabulary lessons, textbook assignments, and the quizzes and tests that usually accompany traditional classroom instruction.

Other students had suggestions for their teachers for improving the unit’s design. The project had been set up to differentiate for experience (Honors 9 Bio and AP Bio) and course credit (Engineering vs. Biology). The AP Bio students, for instance, experienced the electrofishing and were responsible for conveying that information to the rest of their team. The engineering students used Inventor–and explained it to the others. The Honors 9 students did the insect study and relayed what they learned to the rest of their team. That structure led to some problems of communication, so the students suggested ways to ensure better communication and more accountability for each team member.

Many students commented at length on the communication and collaboration skills they had needed to develop in order to be successful. Some teams reported, quite frankly, that they hadn’t started out working together well–but they overcame those obstacles because they had to. That admission–and the ultimate resolution of the problem–brought smiles to the faces of the teachers because, of course, learning to work together as a team was one of their goals.

The principles of design apply across the board and collaborative problem-solving among individuals with different areas of expertise and different perspectives will always be the case. For example, Mr. McKeever explained, civil engineers may be commissioned to create a dam. That will certainly disrupt the ecology of a river, so the goal will be to design a structure that minimizes impact but still does the job of holding back the water. Chemical engineers may develop vaccines and the packing materials for those medications. They’ll need to take the impact of chemical emissions, waste, and the product itself into account as they develop the product.

“The biggest takeaway for me,” Mr. McKeever continued, “was the relevancy. The biology part helped the students create lures for a specific fish in a specific environment, making the whole project much more authentic. Without the biology component, the assignment would have been ‘Design a lure you think will catch a fish’.” Not nearly so relevant and not nearly as challenging.

For students who have never experienced project-based learning, the first venture into this way of learning can be intimidating. But in the end, biology teacher Abi Bymaster asserts, “This project forced students to feel uncomfortable, to ‘not know the answer,’ and they couldn’t just look the answers up on Google. However, it is because of this discomfort that they learn; this is what I love about PBL.”

“Learning ‘this way’ made the learning real,” many biology students said in summary. They liked the independence, the taking charge of their own learning, the creativity expected and allowed. The students clearly saw that while the biomimicry and the buoyancy achieved by the unique anatomy of fish were concepts important to understanding predator/prey relationships, understanding the whole ecological system–and the ability to generalize that to other systems–was the greater lesson.

Teacher Mike McKee watches as his student tries out a lure

No one misunderstood the real learning goals of this endeavor. It wasn’t about the fishing lures. It was about the interdisciplinary nature of learning and the teamwork needed to pull a project together, hallmarks of project-based learning: authentic experiences that reflect real-life problem-solving and decision-making.

This project-based learning experience has a formal name: Designing Bugs and Innovative Technology (D-Bait). It is one unit in the TRAILS curriculum designed by Jeffrey Holland, Todd R. Kelley, Euisuk Sung, and Nathaniel W. Cool at Purdue University and supported with funding from a National Science Foundation grant. The project was new this year to two of the four collaborating McCutcheon teachers, all of whom were trained during previous summers. All four of the high school teachers are looking forward to doing the project again next year–and implementing lesson design modifications suggested by their students, the bioengineers.

The Unsung Heroes Project

August 29, 2016December 17, 2016 ~ Sarah Powley ~ 4 Comments

So many young people today are without real heroes. Their knowledge of individuals who have made a difference in the world usually extends only as far as celebrities and sports stars, perhaps to someone in politics. Worthy as some of these people may be, students are generally unaware of the range of actions that can be considered heroic and, even more importantly, of the people in their own community who have made a difference by standing up for, rescuing, or serving another person, cause, idea, or the community itself.

The last three years that I was in the classroom, my 9^th grade Honors English students and I undertook a project that expanded their understanding of what it means to be a hero. This was the Unsung Hero Project, inspired and supported by the Lowell Milken Center in Fort Scott, Kansas. I’ve blogged about this project before (Great Expectations: The Unsung Hero Project and Unsung Heroes, Reprise), but I’ve never outlined exactly what my students did. Recently I was asked to do that, so I’m sharing my description here along with some pictures of students at work on the project.

This classroom undertaking is an example of project-based learning. Through their work on this project, students developed skills in research, collaboration, writing, and the use of technology. And, as important (if not more so) than anything else they learned, they were inspired by real live heroes in our own community.

Semester One

Students received intensive writing instruction the first semester, especially regarding formal writing conventions and organization of ideas. I spent time on sentence combining techniques (compound, complex, compound-complex sentences, introductory modifiers, appositives) before as well as during the time the students wrote their essays (February and March), and I hit topics such as pronoun antecedents pretty hard. Other grammatical topics I covered on an “as needed” basis. I also “unpacked” the skills required for a research paper, teaching basic bibliography skills, outlining, and internet search techniques in the first semester in preparation for the more complex research the students conducted during the second.

Collaboration is a vital component of this project, so I employed a variety of strategies for developing collaborative skills from the very beginning of the year. My goal was for students to be comfortable working together so that when they began the Unsung Heroes project in the second semester, they could work together efficiently, productively, and equitably.

The first step in the project itself was to define, through class discussion, what exactly we meant by the word “hero.” Here’s what the students came up with one year: A hero is a person who, with no expectation or recognition or reward, has made a difference by standing up for, rescuing, or serving another person, cause, idea, or the community itself.

We had a few models, too: Atticus Finch served as the fictional model for a community hero (we read To Kill a Mockingbird in the fall) and the non-fiction model was Irena Sendler. The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler is available on DVD from Hallmark; the book Life in a Jar is available through Amazon. Other models were individuals profiled in the Christian Science Monitor’s series “People Making a Difference” (available online at the Monitor website). We read a number of these essays and practiced defining a hero by breaking down the stories and aligning them with the students’ definition.

Semester Two

Students formed groups of three, self-selecting their partners, and established an account on google.docs, an online tool for writing collaboratively, simultaneously, in real time (a new technology tool eight years ago when I first began this work!).

Then students selected a hero/heroine from a list I provided for them of people in our community who had been in some way heroic. Some of the individuals came to my/our attention because they had received a very small local award for their efforts. Some were suggested by friends in the community, the faculty at my school, and (by the second and third year) various individuals who had read the first volumes of the book. Once the students selected a cause/person, I contacted that individual, soliciting their involvement. No one ever turned us down, by the way, and I would have been surprised if they had.

The next step was the research paper, probably the most complex instructional piece. The students worked collaboratively to research the cause their hero had championed. Thus, when they met the hero and interviewed him/her, they were already “experts” on the topic. The hero didn’t have to start from scratch to educate the students. The research paper included an outline, an annotated bibliography, internal documentation, and a Works Cited page in MLA format.

Most students established email contact with their hero right away and were able to ask him/her for advice and recommendations for resources as they researched the topic. The heroes were usually glad to steer the students to appropriate resources and helped them narrow their topic appropriately.

Once the research paper was underway, the students set up an interview with their hero. We tried to conduct all the interviews on the same day in the school library, but of course, not everyone was available on the day we selected, and in some cases, it was inconvenient for the hero to come to school at all. I sometimes drove groups of students to on-site locations and arranged for their parents to pick them up. To be honest, when the hero was associated with a facility—such as the Boys and Girls Club and a second-hand store for impoverished families—it is helpful for the students to see the facility.

Students set up the interview by phone or by email. Although I coached them in the art of interviewing, I stayed out of the interviews myself (aside from taking photographs). Afterward, the students typed up their notes in narrative form or in Question/Answer format—and then they started in on the essay. Their essays went through several revisions. Early versions were read by their peers and by me, and these revisions dealt with structure, the balance between narration and quoted material, and the weaving of information from their research with what they had learned from their hero. Line editing came last, and both the students and I did this at various times.

One of my concerns as a teacher of writing was that “voice” would be lost in a collaborative project, and to a certain extent, it was. However, what usually happened is that one of the students emerged as the primary writer, so meshing styles and voices wasn’t as severe a problem as I had originally anticipated. They also each wrote a reflection. I was light-handed with these—I didn’t want to extinguish their individual voices—and by this time, the students were expert at line editing. People who have read the book who are not from this community and don’t know the heroes have told me that the reflections are the most interesting part of each book. That doesn’t surprise me—there students wrote from their hearts.

Students submitted their work to me as a Word document, and I did take over as the master technician on setting up the pages. Eventually, the document turned into a pdf file. The students selected the font and the layout, and they designed the front and back covers as well.

The books could have been published using an online company, but the submission deadlines for these companies did not work with the school calendar very well, so I elected to work with a local printing service. Frankly, I am glad I did. We were able to receive a galley, make final corrections, and still meet our publication deadline. Besides, the printer I worked with had a lot of good advice for us and accommodated our schedule well. He even attended our celebration at the end because he had had a hand in this production, too.

Unsung Heroes in Our Community was developed with the support of the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes (LMC) in Fort Scott, Kansas, whose mission is to “galvanize a movement to teach respect and understanding among all people regardless of race, religion or creed.” The spirit of the Center is embodied in the Hebrew expression, tikkun olam, which means “to repair the world.” The LMC accomplishes its mission of teaching respect and understanding by supporting education projects that feature Unsung Heroes—people who, like Irena Sendler, have acted to repair the world. The project was funded by grants from the Kiwanis Foundation and the Public Schools Foundation of Tippecanoe County.

Unsung Heroes in Our Community was an extensive project, and one that made me—still makes me—very proud. At the end of each year, we held a celebration to which all the heroes were invited as well as the principal and the school district administrators, the students’ parents, the press, and our donors.

At the celebration, the students introduced their heroes, a few students spoke to the audience about the process and what they had learned, and often the heroes made little speeches themselves. All this was followed by a mass book signing. The heroes were even more enthusiastic than the students about collecting signatures!

The book is now in our local public libraries, our local historical society, and in the collection at the Indiana State Historical Society in Indianapolis. Last year, two students were cited in the newspaper by our local historian for information they discovered about the Underground Railroad in our town. Volume I of Unsung Heroes in Our Community was enthusiastically reviewed on the radio last summer and the book was also featured on local television. Some of our heroes, in fact, later became subjects for a local TV program, “Heroes Among Us.”

This project is well worth the time, energy, and effort it takes to orchestrate. Project-based learning is meaningful to students because it is “real” (as one of the students told me). At the same time, a project like this directly addresses state academic standards and district curriculum expectations. For the teacher, bringing a project such as this to fruition necessitates a thorough understanding of the standards and curriculum, of course, but beyond that, it is a matter of organization and planning and, above all, faith in the students. Their gain in research and composition skills, in comfort with technology, and in the ability to work collaboratively is extraordinary.

The book made an impact on the students beyond the skills they gained and the recognition they garnered. Their definition of a hero expanded from the vision of a super-powered individual in a cape and Spandex to someone who serves others. My students were inspired by the person whose life and work they researched. Someday, when they themselves confront an injustice, meet with a challenge, or perceive a community need (as they undoubtedly will), I am confident that they will recall the courage, selflessness, and determination of these local heroes to “repair the world.” I believe that from these individuals’ examples, my students will draw the strength to act heroically themselves.

Preserving the Past: A Cemetery Restoration Project

May 17, 2016 ~ Sarah Powley ~ 1 Comment

Pierce Cemetery is, in the words of high school social studies teacher Ashley Greeley, “in embarrassing shape.” It is a true pioneer cemetery—that is, original settlers in this area of Indiana are buried there—but the grounds of the cemetery have been neglected for decades. Monuments have toppled, slabs have cracked, stones have sunk deep into the ground. But last week, members of Ms. Greeley’s AP US History class (APUSH, as it’s called) began putting the place to rights—and learning some local history along the way.

Students began with research about their own families, learning their way around online genealogical resources with a subject that was somewhat familiar. Then, Ms. Greeley assigned teams of students the name of someone who is buried in Pierce Cemetery.

To ensure some success in the research, students were assigned individuals for whom at least some information is known. Ms. Greeley had help in selecting the names from Lou Ann Clough (“LA”), archivist at the Tippecanoe County Historical Society, and Shane Weist, another local historian who was recently honored—one of 73 people in the country—by the Daughters of the American Revolution for his work in historical preservation. Previously, LA received this same Historical Preservation Recognition Award from the DAR, so the students were in good hands with LA, Shane, and Ms. Greeley as their guides to local history.

Ashley Greeley met Shane Weist and LA Clough last fall on Veterans Day when she and a handful of students showed up to help with the clean-up of Greenbush Cemetery, one of Lafayette’s oldest burial grounds. The students had enjoyed the restoration work and that got Ms. Greeley to thinking about the cemetery that is literally in Harrison High School’s own back yard.

Cleaning up Pierce Cemetery would be a way for her to highlight local history—this is, after all, Indiana’s bicentennial year—and at the same time underscore the APUSH goal of applying historical thinking skills. Ms. Clough was a guest speaker in the class. She explained the resources available to students online and at the Tippecanoe County Historical Society. At her invitation, seven students made an after school trip downtown to the Historical Society to use the Alameda McCollough Research Library. There they looked at actual documents relating to their person or family.

Permission to proceed with the work in the cemetery itself was secured from the Tippecanoe Township trustee, and then, on several May afternoons, Mr. Weist met the students on the cemetery grounds. He explained cemetery etiquette and cleaning procedures and directed the students as they cleaned the markers belonging to “their” people and their people’s relatives.

The students cleaned the stones with water—gently sprayed with a hose connected to a hand-held, hand-pumped container—and Revive, a professional masonry cleaner. “Never power wash a gravestone,” Weist told the students. “You’ll degrade the stone.” Similarly, he cautioned that bleach should never be used as a cleaning agent. Softly sprayed water and a mild solution of Revive was miraculous itself: Names appeared, dates became readable, carved symbols emerged like magic. “This is so satisfying!’ remarked one student, as information about a woman she’d had trouble researching began to reveal itself.

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Weist, who is certified by the state of Indiana to do cemetery restoration, helped one team of students restore a monument that had fallen years ago. After the boys had cleaned the fallen obelisk, they washed the two stones that it had once rested upon. A “stack” compound (a mix of cement and lime) the consistency of peanut butter was spread on an area of the base of the first stone. When the mortar had dried sufficiently, the boys placed the second stone on top of the first. A joint compound—caulking—was worked around the seam to guard against moisture penetrating the joint—and then the process was repeated to ready the spot on the second stone where the obelisk would stand. Of course, it would be impossible to know which side of the obelisk originally faced forward, towards the entrance to the cemetery, but since there was carving on three sides, the team’s guess was pretty good. The stone no longer lies neglected at an angle on the ground. The obelisk stands tall, the family name facing forward now.

The students took pride in cleaning and restoring the graves. They began to see connections among members of the families buried there—a woman in one location, buried with her spouse, belonged to a family on the other side of the cemetery. A first wife was buried with her parents—she’d died young—but her husband had remarried and was buried with his second wife and their children just behind her. Children aged only a few days had been lovingly laid to rest, joined years later by their parents. In one case, a modest marker for a 4-year old was side-by-side with a replacement stone, a grander marker shared by the little boy and his older brother, who died years later at age 26.

A Revolutionary War soldier is buried at Pierce and several Civil War soldiers as well. Veterans of other wars, too, have found their final resting place in Pierce, and the students marked the graves with fresh American flags.

A group of boys, thrilled with the results of their elbow grease—the obelisk they had worked on restored to nearly its original white—smiled for the camera. Said one boy in their group, “We’re having so much fun we don’t need to be asked to smile.”

To fund the project, Ms. Greeley applied for and won our school district’s competitive Anne de Camp Award for Creative Teaching. She used the money for the cleaning supplies, for gravestone rubbing paper and special wax crayons, and for a Shutterfly book she and the students will create to document their project.

Work remains for the APUSH classes in years to come, but several students asked Shane Weist if they could help him with other cemetery restoration projects. The boy who didn’t need to smile for the camera is thinking about tying his Eagle Scout project to the restoration of Pierce.

Cemeteries like Pierce are “excepted” pieces of real estate. That is, the grounds surrounding the cemetery are privately owned (in this case, by the school district), but the cemetery itself is not part of the school property. It belongs to the township. Neglected for many decades and unused for burials in recent history, Pierce Cemetery had fallen, quite naturally, into disrepair. “I’ve been waiting for you,” LA Clough said to Ms. Greeley when the teacher first called her. Clough has been mapping cemeteries all over Tippecanoe County, but restoration work is laborious. It calls for a group effort.

Because of the students’ industry, Pierce Cemetery already looks remarkably better than it did last fall when Ms. Greeley first conceived of the project. Soon she and her students will be able to say, “Pierce Cemetery was in embarrassing shape—but now it’s not.”

Engineers Ourselves

May 26, 2015May 27, 2015 ~ Sarah Powley ~ 1 Comment

Problem: The spare tire installation process on the assembly line at Subaru takes too long. How can we cut the time?

Solution: Put the high school students from the Engineering Design and Development class on the problem.

The students from McCutcheon High School watched the team at Subaru struggle with the tool they were using to bolt the spare tire to its housing in cars coming off the line. The wrench twisted, making the lock insecure and the process unreliable. The boys thought they had the answer: Redesign the tool.

They created a prototype of polymer plastic with metal pins that clamped the bolt securely and cut the time it was taking to install the spare tire in half. The problem was solved and the tool was fabricated and put into testing.

The two young men who solved the spare tire installation problem were at Subaru under the auspices of their Engineering Design and Development (EDD) course, the last in the STEM/Project Lead the Way (PLTW) sequence offered at our high school. The class is a 2-hour block class offered to seniors who have completed the prerequisite PLTW courses. The students travel to one of two major manufacturing companies in Lafayette, Caterpillar and Subaru, two-three afternoons a week. There, they are assigned to a project engineer who guides them through the process of solving real problems that confront the company—on the assembly line or on the floor, even in quality control.

Nineteen students participated in the EDD program this year. Last week, singly or in pairs

Madison holds the prototype of a manifold caliper she created on the job at Caterpillar.

or trios, they presented a summary of their activities—the problems they dealt with and the solutions they found—to an assembly of project engineers and executives from Caterpillar and Subaru; their teacher, Mr. Gary Werner; and other school personnel, including Central Office personnel and the Career and Technical Education coordinator.

“We liked seeing the real-world process,” the boys who redesigned the wrench said at the conclusion of their presentation. “We became engineers ourselves.”

It wasn’t the only problem these and other students worked on during their semester at Subaru. Nine students in all worked on In Process Control (IPC) issues with uniformity of paint color, reliability of welds, pacesetting for processes on the line, and safety monitoring. The daily routine for Logan was to investigate a problem and assign it to an area that could resolve the issue. Loose or missing parts. A rear gate that wouldn’t close properly. A defective air flow sensor. “It was detective work,” he said, “and it gave me practice in auditing, investigation, and problem-solving—skills I’ll use all my life.”

John shows us the Engineering Notebook he was required to keep while at Caterpillar--a preview of what will be expected in college classes and in the field. — John shows us the Engineering Notebook he was required to keep while at Caterpillar–a preview of what will be expected in college classes and in the field.

Another ten students were assigned to project engineers at Caterpillar. This is Caterpillar’s 6th year working with students from McCutcheon. This year’s crop worked on a variety of problems, including:

Creating a level to make sure that the turbo air tubes are all uniform in degree
Designing a suitable cover for the engine block so that stray items don’t drop through during assembly
Creating a lever that applies pressure evenly to the air manifold on the engine
Redesigning the layout of the line desk
Designing a fixture to hold a water block
Designing a dowel that will prevent people from hammering their fingers
Creating a shadow board to keep tools orderly and easily accessible
Redesigning the employees’ entrance
Redesigning the system for tagging items at lock out/tag out points

Notice the verbs I’ve used to list these projects: as every educator will recognize, they’re words used to designate upper level thinking skills. Students applied ingenuity and expertise to real world problems, developing in the process solutions that are in active play at Caterpillar and Subaru today.

The skills they learned involve math, computer applications, and presentation. Critical thinking. Problem-solving. They learned to work in teams and to follow company protocols. To take direction, but to think independently to resolve issues.

“We learned a lot,” said James and CJ at the conclusion of their talk. “We learned responsibility. Other employees depended upon us. And creativity. We learned how important that is in problem-solving.”

This school year was the first time Subaru had teamed with the high school. The engineers liked the program, liked working with the students. “It’s a pipeline for us,” they said, and indeed it will be, judging by the newly announced college interns at Caterpillar. Two of those interns, from Purdue University, are graduates of McCutcheon’s Project Lead the Way program who did their EDD work at Caterpillar.

If you’ve followed my blog for long, you’ll recall the piece I wrote about the middle school STEM class, Anything but Random. That was the exploratory STEM class. EDD is the culminating course. It’s a path worth following for students with an interest in engineering, for students who value hands-on learning, for creative and critical thinkers who want to solve real-world problems.

My colleague Gary Werner had the idea seven years ago to approach Caterpillar and arrange these min-internships for the EDD class. A year of planning and curriculum writing followed. The partnership with Caterpillar that my colleague forged goes beyond the national EDD curriculum by putting kids in a real-world situation where they can “see it, feel it, touch it, breath it,” or as Mr. Werner loves to say, in a “hands-on, minds-on experience.” The course has been a success all around, and compliments were extended by the students to their project engineers as well as to their teacher. In their presentation, seniors John, Michael, and Adrian thanked their Caterpillar mentors and commented that “School only goes so far.” It’s been good, they said, “to see their projects in use.”

Indeed, thanks to this STEM program that has partnered successfully with local industry, nineteen more students became engineers themselves this year.

Dining In at School

April 21, 2015April 21, 2015 ~ Sarah Powley ~ Leave a comment

The busboy: “I can feel it in my back.”

The plater: “My feet hurt! Our teacher told us to wear comfortable shoes.”

The restaurant manager: “I’ve been under high stress all day…”

On-the-scene remarks from students in Mrs. Laura Cole’s Advanced Nutrition and Wellness class, spoken by students who had just finished serving full course meals to 70 people in the space of two hours in a restaurant they’d created from scratch. Another class would repeat the experience two days later—this group preparing meals for 65. Teachers, secretaries, principals, aides–all building staff and even district office personnel receive the menus in advance, make reservations, and on the days of the restaurant, enjoy a thirty-minute lunch period in a setting very different from the usual brown bag, microwave, and cafeteria tray ambience.

McCutcheon teachers enjoy lunch prepared and served by students.

These student-operated restaurant days have been a tradition at McCutcheon High School for at least thirty years. The program has spread to Harrison High School, too, and the staff at both high schools have the chance each semester to enjoy a relaxing lunch with colleagues and observe proud, though nervous, students in a completely different setting. For the students, it’s an opportunity to discover the many challenging aspects of operating a restaurant and to apply the culinary skills they’ve learned in class.

Mrs. Jami Mosley and teachers at Harrison High School enjoy lunch served by students.

I’ve enjoyed these lunches for years and I’ve often wondered how my colleagues, Mrs. Laura Cole at McCutcheon and Mrs. Jami Mosley at Harrison High School, do it. How do they take students from objectives projected on the whiteboard to a full service restaurant?

To find out, I asked to be a fly on the wall during the instructional phase of Mrs. Cole’s class and then take pictures in the kitchen on the days the restaurant was in operation.

Students folded construction paper to make these floral centerpieces.

When Mrs. Cole introduced the project, I learned along with the students that they would find recipes online, propose a menu, cost out the meals, and then make final choices based on selections that could be prepared economically and in volume in a short amount of time, meals whose artful arrangement on the plate and utter deliciousness would be irresistible. Mrs. Cole explained that the students would select a theme for the restaurant and transform a classroom area in the FACS department into a welcoming space with soft lighting and themed wall and table decorations. They’d learn to work as a team and see the absolute necessity for each person to responsibly carry out his or her role: managers, servers, expediters, platers, bussers, and dishwashers.

My colleague showed the students sample menus that went back thirty years—I remembered some of those earlier lunches—and opened her closets to reveal centerpieces, vases, and decorative objects that could be used again if students were interested. She talked about some of the problems and successes of the past, warning students of the necessity to plan ahead and think large-scale–larger than they’re used to anyway.

On the day of the restaurant, she continued, everyone would be involved in food preparation from 7:30 until 10:30. Then they’d diversify, each student carrying out the responsibilities of the role to which they’d been assigned. The students told me, when I interviewed them on the day the restaurant was open, that they had had some choice in this: They indicated their top three preferences and then Mrs. Cole took it from there. One of the students, the busboy, confided, “I’m the only one who wanted to do this job, so I got it.”

In the meantime, they watched an episode of Top Chef, viewed a video called Restaurant Nightmares, looked up restaurants online to get ideas, and did the math for a number of different menus.

I was there the day of the Great Dessert Cook-off. Working in teams, the students chose a dessert, prepared it, plated a sample, and shared the remainder with the rest of the class. Afterwards, students evaluated the desserts on cost, appearance on the plate, taste, and ease of preparation in high volume in a small amount of time. One of the best desserts, Crème Brulee, didn’t make the cut—not a practical offering on a large-scale basis. In the end, two of the many chocolate desserts won out: Peanut Butter Brownie Trifle and Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball with Graham Crackers.

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I was struck, on the day of the restaurant, by the efficiency and calm in the kitchen. The atmosphere was harmonious and focused. No hanging out, no hanging back, and certainly not any hanging on. Everyone was concentrated on making the teachers’ dining experience perfect in every way, but no one seemed frantic, even the manager, who did confess to being stressed. He told me that he has a job in a carry-out pizza establishment. “They don’t have a dining room,” he explained. “I’m used to the back-of-the-house, but this front-of-the-house part is stressful!”

The entrée was chicken quesadillas. At one station, a team of cooks prepared them on an array of electric griddles. The cooks even asked to try an innovation they’d seen in a cooking show: melting cheese on the griddle so it formed a tasty crust on the outside of the tortilla. Delicious!

Another girl— a tiny girl who wants to be a professional chef, the one whose feet hurt—wielded the chef’s knife, cutting each quesadilla into perfect triangles.

The others at her station added Spanish rice and chips and salsa to the plate, and then the expediter delivered the plates to a side table where the servers picked them up. The manager hovered over them all, taking his job very seriously:

“A little more lettuce there!”

“Don’t forget the chips on that plate!”

“Watch the sour cream!” Someone appeared with a wet paper towel to wipe a smear on the side of a plate.

Servers rushed into the kitchen: “We need five more desserts!” Instantly, the platers went to work, the expediter picked up the desserts and passed them to the servers, and the waitresses were out the door.

The second day—with her second section of Advanced Nutrition and Wellness—Mrs. Cole repeated the process. This time the menu was loaded potato soup, garden salad, a cheddar bay biscuit, and for dessert, that Peanut Butter Brownie Trifle.

For teachers, restaurant day has always been an event to look forward to, especially during the gloomy days of winter. It’s a chance to see the students shine and a chance for them to impress us. But there’s always a cost: The food is so delicious we leave nothing on the plate…and that means extra walks in the days ahead to burn the calories away. That’s okay. These lunches are worth every bite.

At the end of her meal, one of the teachers asked her waitress: “Is the manager coming out?” In the “back of the house,” I witnessed just a moment of panic when the message was relayed. The manager stepped into the dining room to discover not a disgruntled customer, but one who wanted, of course, to compliment the chefs and all the other restaurant workers, too.

Mrs. Cole directs the student restaurant project at McCutcheon.

Mrs. Cole has been orchestrating this project-based learning experience for several years. The restaurant project means hours of grocery shopping for her and a great deal of planning, but it’s worth the extra time, she says. “While the restaurant project can be stressful, it is very rewarding. Students work hard to plan their restaurant and menus. Since students have so much freedom of creativity, they really take ownership of this project. It is amazing how well they come together to be an effective team to carry out their vision. While most are exhausted by the end of the day, they are also very proud.”

Indeed, the whole production is a recipe for success for her students: an impressive blend of content knowledge and culinary skill mixed together with math, literacy and problem-solving, flavored with creativity, and topped off with teamwork. Five stars!

Auto Shop: Way More than Grease Monkeys

March 20, 2015March 30, 2015 ~ Sarah Powley ~ 2 Comments

“We do our homework in the garage.” That’s the tag line on my colleague’s business card.

He’s an Automotive Service Instructor, of course, and an ASE Master Technician.

The course Rob Jakes teaches—Automotive Service Technology–is the second in a two-year program that can culminate for high school seniors in acceptance into a vocational college or an immediate job in the local work force. “I have students in the automotive repair departments of dealerships all over town,” Mr. Jakes told me, “and some students are already at Subaru-Isuzu.” Many of his students attend Lincoln Tech, the University of Northwestern Ohio, and Ivy Tech, to name a few post-secondary schools near our community.

The day I visited his class, Mr. Jakes’ students were working on the wheel assembly on a faculty member’s car. I watched and took pictures, tried to follow the language when I couldn’t get close enough to the action: ball joint, brake pad, piston, fuel injector, torque wrench, axle. The students handled the language and the machinery with ease.

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“They learn the language in the first year course,” my colleague explained. “No room for not knowing it here.” In that first year course, there’s so much vocabulary that the teacher uses Quizlet to help the students learn. They take an engine apart in much the same way they’d dissect a frog in biology to learn anatomy and physiology. The Automotive Service Technician program is a sequenced learning program with an academic as well as mechanical focus.

In their second year, the students work on actual vehicles. One of our local industries, Subaru-Isuzu Automotive (SIA), donates “dead cars” to Mr. Jakes’ program. The students bring them back to life. Once a week, the students work on faculty vehicles, and on Fridays, they can bring in their own cars and work on problems that can be resolved in a two-hour class period.

While 70% of the time students are engaged in hands-on work with vehicles, this class is nothing like the “auto shop” stereotype of twenty-five years ago when Mr. Jakes first began teaching. In the first place, the students use an online textbook. “In the day,” Mr. Jakes told me, “there were no textbooks. A student would once in a while look in a service manual to figure out what was wrong with a vehicle and how to fix it.”

Because cars today operate on computers, service technicians must have sharp reading skills and advanced technology skills to diagnose and repair the vehicles that come into a shop. Repairing cars is no longer a trial and error business, and a laptop computer is a standard part of a service technician’s toolbox.

When a car comes into the auto shop at McCutcheon High School with a problem, the first thing the students will do is check their own laptops for a TSB—Technical Service Bulletin—on the vehicle. If there’s no TSB, they might visit a technical chat room to learn whether the problem has occurred somewhere else in the country and how another technician has dealt with it.

For example, one day recently, the outside mirror on our principal’s car was loose. It is a new car, but when he was driving down the highway, he noticed the mirror vibrating. He brought the vehicle into the shop and one of the students, Cody, went right to an online chat to find a solution for the problem. He found the fix: Toggle the button inside the car three times to tighten the mirror. Think what might have happened in a shop if the service technician hadn’t had the initiative, and the critical thinking skills, to look online for a solution. The customer might have been told he needed a new mirror. $300.

Cody, who is enrolled in Mr. Jakes’ class for an optional 3^rd year, plans to save money for college next year and then enroll in a technical-vocational program after that. Right now he works after school at a tire store where he uses a computer to diagnose problems with pressure and balance.

I asked him how long he’s known he wanted to be an automotive service technician. “Since middle school,” he said. “My initials spell CAR,” he added with a smile.

Before he finishes high school, Cody will have logged three years in the Automotive Service Technician program and received at least six hours of dual credit with our local community college. He will also have the opportunity, at the end of his senior year, to earn student certification in four areas: brakes; electrical; steering, suspension and alignment; and engines. He’ll need at least two years of work in the industry to be eligible for just one of the eight advanced exams needed to be a Master.

Thanks to his mentor, Mr. Jakes, and this challenging Career and Technical Education program, Cody is well positioned to pursue his goal of becoming an ASE Master Technician himself.

Project Runway

February 22, 2015February 22, 2015 ~ Sarah Powley ~ Leave a comment

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Betsey Johnson
Calvin Klein
Ralph Lauren
Anna Sui

Just a few of the names that top the list of celebrity fashion designers.

Fashion is a consuming interest for many high school students, and these are names that brand-conscious teenagers recognize. They’re eager to know more about the industry itself, and for most, the first step is learning to sew.

But here’s a deplorable fact: In many parts of the country, sewing is no longer taught in school.

The rationale? People don’t sew any more. The implication being, who would want to?

Yet, every year at Harrison High School in Lafayette, Indiana, teacher Michelle Coors’ students pull off a runway show that has become an event in the community. This year, the 28 students in her Fashion and Textile Careers classes took this complex project–the runway show–from an idea in their minds to a full-scale fashion production. On a mid-December evening, 137 different models paraded 159 designs on a 52-foot runway in front of parents, peers, and well-wishers. Stage lights illuminated the runway, and during the show, music and explanatory slides played in the background. This year, every seat in the house was taken and scores of attendees crowded into the little standing room that remained.

I was one of those people standing in the back. I had come to support my colleague, whose classroom I had visited many times and whose students I had photographed as they used a computer program to design wardrobes for “paper dolls”; as they cut cloth for the first time for pants, capes, and tote bags; and as they worked on their fashion merchandising research projects.

Fortunately for our school district, most of our middle school teachers still have sewing machines and incorporate the fundamentals of construction into their curriculum (License to Sew). In addition, some students learn to sew through 4-H or learn at home from their parents. But about one-third of the students who enroll in Mrs. Coors’ classes do not have prior sewing experience, so she accommodates her instruction to reach students with a range of skills. Students who have never sewn before make tote bags and basic “fancy pants” in the Textiles and Fashion Foundation course first, and then they’re ready for the Fashion and Textile Careers class, the one that puts on the runway show.

Mrs. Coors offers her advanced class students the opportunity to create a magazine, a video, a movie—but they always choose the runway show. That means designing and constructing the fashions; finding the models; planning the lights, the music, and PowerPoint backdrop; constructing the runway; creating the programs; handling the publicity; arranging for a photographer; setting up for the program and taking everything down at the end.

Effective educators are skilled at organization, multi-tasking, differentiating, and sequencing instruction so that every student learns the skill he or she needs just as having that skill becomes a necessity. In Mrs. Coors’ classes, where the comfort level with needles and thread, bobbins and the presser foot varies from student to student, one-size-fits-all lessons will not work. Mrs. Coors plans her instruction so that students are always busy and on task, not all doing the same thing, but all engaged in a construction project appropriate to his or her skill level. Some of the students’ designs are simple; others are more complex. But the students are relaxed, self-confident, and engaged—after all, they are working on a project they have designed themselves, and they meet with success regularly.

And if they aren’t in the midst of a hands-on sewing project, the students are working on their Career Snapshot binder, a research project that more than meets the standards for Literacy in Technical Subjects, another layer of learning required in every subject area across the curriculum.

Students identify a specific fashion industry career that interests them and then explore that job and the allied careers—the professionals whose job description and skills they’d need to know and rely upon to be successful at their own. I looked at some of these binders: pages of writing, including a reflective piece at the end.

Each binder includes photographs and freehand drawings that illustrate the development of the students’ final design from inspiration to croquis drawing (those sketches of models with elongated—10 heads high—legs, the industry standard) to the sewn item on an actual model.

After the runway show ended, after the stage was disassembled, after the designers had collected their clothes from the models (Some let the models keep them!), the accolades poured in. And for 10 of the young designers, a contract: A local philanthropic organization commissioned them to recreate their “line” to be featured at another runway show, this one to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

So, don’t tell Michelle Coors or her students that “no one sews anymore.” Indeed they do, and this Project-Based Learning class more than illustrates the career opportunities that are open to people with skills in garment design and construction. In fact, it’s only February, but already many of these students have been accepted into prestigious art and design schools across the country.

Not to mention this: When the audience applauds and the photographer’s flash captures the models showing off the work of these young and aspiring designers, it’s a source of genuine pride for everyone involved. For that night, Harrison High School students are the celebrity designers–and who knows what will happen in the afterglow?

Biomedical Innovations: Redesigning the ED

December 3, 2014January 18, 2015 ~ Sarah Powley ~ 3 Comments

We could see there’s a problem with too many visitors in the patients’ rooms sometimes.”

Heads nodded.

“We’ve devised a badge system that will eliminate that overcrowding problem.”

The administrators jotted down the details.

“You definitely need another door at the triage desk.”

More heads nodded.

“The nurses told us there’s a flow problem with the storage rooms. You have to go to two different ones. If you had a universal storage system—one central room with two entrances and supplies shelved identically on either end–then you’d improve efficiency.”

People took notes.

One afternoon this week, fifteen seniors from McCutcheon High School presented their plan for redesigning the Emergency Department at IU-Arnett hospital to an audience of seventeen IU-Arnett nurses, educators, technicians, and administrators. The students are members of Mrs. Abi Bymaster’s Biomedical Innovations class, the fourth and capstone course in Project Lead the Way’s Biomedical Science sequence. One purpose of Biomedical Innovations is to give students a hands-on, real world experience designing an efficient—and thus, effective—emergency room. Mrs. Bymaster challenged her students to take the assignment to the next level—to work not in the abstract, but with a real hospital with a real problem. The IU-Arnett facility is only a few years old, but already, Emergency Department demand has exceeded capacity. The hospital will soon be hiring a professional design firm to develop a blueprint, but in the meantime, these high schools students offered, in an engaging and highly polished presentation, a plan whose details clearly resonated with the experiences of their audience.

The students commanded the attention of the hospital personnel, including the Director of the Emergency Department and the Director of Facilities, for an hour. During their presentation, not one student stumbled and not one seemed even uncomfortable.

The students had been oriented to the hospital by a representative from the Human Relations Department, who had come to their class at the high school on two occasions. In advance of their actual visits to the ED, the students were required to have a flu shot, verify that they’d had a schedule of vaccinations, and sign liability and HIPAA papers. Over a period of three months, the students–recognizable in the eggplant-colored scrubs which they’d chosen to purchase—were allowed to float and watch events unfold. When they arrived, the students checked in with the charge nurse who would assign them to someone on the emergency department team—a nurse or a technician—whom they interviewed and shadowed. In the end, each student visited the Emergency Department four to five times, at different times throughout the day.

Back at the high school, the students reported their experiences to each other in class discussions, drew preliminary designs on the classroom whiteboards, and conducted online research into the operations of other hospitals in Indiana and distant cities. They worked in teams to identify innovations that could be made in four areas: structural design, storage, communication, and security.

“We think the nurses could communicate with each other and with others in the hospital if they had iPhones instead of the bulky calling devices they’re using now. Those devices are loud and intrusive.” As if on cue, a nurse’s portable phone rang—loudly. And more than once. Everyone laughed, but the point was accentuated.

The students assured hospital administrators that the iPhones could be equipped with “parental controls” so that their usage would be limited to internal communications, and they offered suggestions for a number of useful apps that would increase the functionality of the devices: Evernote—to replace the notes they had seen nurses making on random slips of paper; Epocrates—to identify medicines; Medical Spanish—a spoken medical dictionary that can ask patients questions in Spanish; and Telemed IQ—a text messaging system that is HIPAA-compliant.

Asked about those cell phones in the Q-A session at the end of the presentation, the students explained that iPhones are being used now in some big city hospitals and that the apps are secure and HIPAA-compliant. The students had done their homework and anticipated the question.

No presentation, it seems, goes without a technology hitch, and although the one these students experienced was crushing, they didn’t miss a beat or even make a face. One of the students, who had a background in civil engineering classes, had created a CAD drawing of the architectural redesign, but a software licensing glitch prevented her from showing it to the assembled hospital personnel. However, she also had produced a blueprint, and at the conclusion of the presentation, explained the changes her team had envisioned to a group crowded around a table.

It was the students’ professionalism throughout the entire presentation that set the stage for serious consideration of their ideas. They were dressed professionally, first of all, and the presentation itself reflected every speech and language skill their teachers had ever stressed and which my colleague had clearly set as a fundamental expectation: not a stammer nor a hesitation in speaking, not a single distracting movement, only carefully chosen words–precise and concise. Even when the phone interrupted her speech, the student talking about the iPhones maintained her poise, merely smiling at the comic relief the noisy ring provided and then deftly using the opportunity to underscore her message: iPhones would be less intrusive.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the Director of Facilities remarked to the students: “I’ve seen college kids who were not so good. I was impressed with your logic—how you’d thought things out.”

The Emergency Department Director had just returned from a week-long training. She commented that that she hadn’t come away from that with so many ideas as the high school students gave her. “And your demonstration was perfect!” By pretending to be nurses picking up supplies, the students on the Storage Team demonstrated in real minutes the time that would be saved if the hospital implemented their design.
“I was impressed with your presentation and your ideas—you seem to have enjoyed the process,” the Emergency Department Manager said. “You have blown me away.”

Biomedical Innovations is an example of the project-based learning approach that characterizes Project Lead the Way courses: Students have the opportunity to design solutions to real engineering problems—in this case, in the health field industry. Project-based learning integrates learning, calls for teamwork in solving problems, and prepares students for the world of work.

“My boss isn’t going to give me a worksheet and tell me to get it done,” said the young woman who had created the CAD drawing. “He or she will give me a project instead.”

The students learned so much, they told me:

The inter-relationship of technology, storage, and room arrangement
How necessary it is that the environment facilitates communication
The discovery that so many little things go into the big picture
How much time and effort the nurses give to the patients
All the work that goes into creating an efficient system

Most of the students in this class were already were thinking about a career in the medical field when they registered for the Biomedical Innovations course, but as one student said, “This program finalized that!”

At the end of the presentation, another student, a spokesperson for the group, thanked the hospital personnel for giving them so much help with this assignment. “Many of us want to go into medicine or a field related to medicine. Thank you for providing a positive experience for us.”

I began observing the students in the early stages of this project. Early on, I had asked their teacher what benefit there would be for the hospital: “Why would a hospital let a crew of teenagers shadow their nurses and interview everyone who works in the Emergency Department? That’s unheard of.”

“Well, they’ll get some free advice,” she said. Mrs. Bymaster went on to explain that she had worked closely with the hospital’s Education Outreach Department to design the assignment and establish its parameters.

Judging by all the head-nodding and note taking that went on throughout the hour, the audience heard more than just some gratuitous advice: They listened to a polished and thoughtful presentation that professional hospital designers are going to be hard-pressed to match.

More than that, the students gave current practitioners a glimpse of the future. Patients will be in good hands, whether these students ultimately become nurses, lab technicians, doctors, biomedical engineers, researchers, physician assistants or train for one of myriad other medical occupations. These future medical professionals understand the complexity of health care systems and know already that, along with compassionate care, efficient systems are critical in the mission to save lives.

Here’s the blueprint: IU Arnett 2d wc backup nov 12

Unsung Heroes, Reprise

December 9, 2012December 24, 2014 ~ Sarah Powley ~ 4 Comments

Last week I received an unexpected email from the director of the West Lafayette Public Library, Nick Schenkel. In a book talk on our local NPR station, he had reviewed the collection of essays my 9^th grade Honors English class had written and published last spring; he was writing to invite me to listen. Unsung Heroes in Our Community, Volume III was the culmination of a year of carefully planned instruction on my part and intense research, personal interviews, and many, many revisions on the part of the students. In late May, we celebrated the publication of the book with a festive reception for the heroes in our high school media center.

When you write anything, you wonder if it will find an audience and what that audience will think. Accordingly, I went right to the WBAA website to find and listen to the review. As my browser searched out the recording, I speculated about the content of the 10-minute spot. What would be the focus? Would it be on the work of the heroes or the work of the students? Which of the stories would Nick retell? Who among my students would be featured? What would the overall appraisal be?

I listened intently.

First, I was gratified that each hero was mentioned—certainly, a few were highlighted—but every person was represented. The students had worked in groups of three to research their topic and interview the hero they were honoring; thus, all of them were recognized for their work. Then I was excited: I wanted to listen to the review again, this time with my students—now 10^th graders—and watch their reaction to Nick’s comments and his praise (Yes!) for their work. Their current teacher graciously let me steal some of her time with them to do so. Sitting in a classroom again with these remarkable kids and listening to what the librarian said took us all right back to last spring when we had worked together so intensely for so long.

Nick opens his review by explaining that Unsung Heroes “spotlights local residents with big hearts and big imaginations.” The students nodded, stole looks at one another, smiled at me. The librarian goes on to say that each essay exemplifies “Hoosier can-do”—and I thought about how the students’ work itself illustrates the same thing. When we first began the project, the very idea of writing a book had seemed preposterous to them—but the students had persevered, completed the task, and now were hearing genuine, unsolicited praise for a book that Nick calls an “uplift for our spirits.” Like a detective, Nick had read the text, discerned the evolution of the final product, and in his review, he illuminates not only the content of Unsung Heroes, but the process by which it was accomplished.

In the published book, each essay is followed by the students’ personal reflections on the process. In her reflection, Alesia repeats the definition of a hero that the class had generated: Motivated by his or her values, beliefs, or compassion for others, a hero is a person who, with no expectation of recognition or reward, when confronted by a disaster, an injustice, or a need, inspires and helps others—at the risk of losing something valuable. Nick zeroes in on that definition in his review, pronouncing it “as good as any I have read.” We basked in the glow of those seven words, knowing that developing that definition had been our very first step. It had taken the students two instructional days to list all the attributes of a hero they could think of and then capture the essence of those qualities in short, precise phrases. We worked at the ENO board to put all of their ideas into one (long) grammatical sentence—not an easy feat. Can you imagine having debates about prepositional phrases and commas and dashes with 9^th graders? Well, we had them. Two days—100 minutes—to write a definition might seem extravagant, but 28 kids had to agree on every word. Just as importantly, having a clear definition was critical to the success of the project. It guided the students in selecting the heroes in the first place and later on in composing the text.

Nick mentioned the research the students did—a long and arduous process in which they investigated their hero’s cause and then wrote a traditional term paper complete with an annotated bibliography and a works cited page. Then came the interviews—when the students met their heroes face-to-face—and the follow-up: emails, phone calls, and second and third meetings in some cases. And then the drafts of the essays—and the seemingly endless revisions.

Oh yes. The revisions. I read and responded to the students’ first efforts, reading for structure and coherence. Then I read again—still for structure and coherence. The students read each other’s work—for clarity and detail. Revisions followed and the students read again—their own and each other’s essays. Sentence structure, word choice, transitions: they checked on these. Finally, finally, there was the line editing—the grammar that had to be checked, the questions about punctuation that had to answered, the intricacies of prepositional phrases and adjective clause placements that had to be determined. Revision went on—it seemed to them—forever.

One transition was particularly pesky. The students who were writing an essay about the chairperson of our local community health clinic needed to profile the clinic’s founder, a different person, first, and then transition into the discussion of the chairperson’s work. The first time I listened to Nick’s review, I nearly jumped out of my seat at his mention of that particular segue. He says it was effected “effortlessly.” When the kids heard that, they grinned broadly. The fact is, I must have sent that piece back half a dozen times because the transition was choppy; ultimately, the students got it right. That it seemed so smooth to Nick made all the red ink, the returns, the frustration, and the perseverance so worth it. The power of revision: illustrated for us right there on the radio. Could a teacher ask for more?

At one point Nick explains to the radio audience that these essays were written by teams of students “in the best tradition of committee writing.” The team approach had posed a design problem for me as a teacher. Voice is so important in writing, and I had been afraid that voice would be lost if the students worked collaboratively. Indeed, as McKaylee wrote later, in her reflection on the process, “One of the most challenging aspects of the Unsung Heroes project was to allow the paper to smoothly flow, camouflaging the fact that it was written by three authors instead of one.” When I hit upon the idea of including each student’s personal reflection in the book, the problem of voice was resolved—and the book is the better for the reflections. Though their heroes have inspired them and made permanent imprints on their lives, in the end, Nick is right: The reflections are often the most “compelling and thought-filled” pieces in the book. When he read a portion of Kory’s reflection, captured a line that Sherrie wrote, repeated Eric’s lovely tribute to the special education teacher in our own building, these three blushed, slid down in their seats, felt the hot pride of authorship that comes when a story has hit home.

“What do you think?” I asked at the end of the broadcast. “How does it feel to listen to the review?”

“It gives me goose bumps,” said Megan, who was sitting next to me. This wasn’t hyperbole. There were little bumps all over her arms.

It gave me goose bumps, too.

Thank you, Nick. Thank you for affirming me as a teacher, my students as writers, and the heroes’ stories as inspiration for us all.

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