Dropping out of school seemed likely for Ruby Rodriguez when she was attending middle school.
Her high school class assignments were supposed to be basic. The now 17-year-old labeled herself as dumb; taking dumb classes and hanging out with dumb people. When she transferred to Hillsdale High School her freshman year and saw the class assignment, Rodriguez thought they made a mistake.
Soon she realized that’s just the way things worked in the small learning communities at Hillsdale.
“It was like, we believe you can make it,” Rodriguez recalled for 25 observers visiting high school yesterday.
Yesterday, the high school hosted educators, administrators and parents participating in the first of three study visits planned during this school year. The California SLC study visits are possible through a partnership with the School Redesign Network through Stanford University. The program visits were developed after Hillsdale began receiving requests from others to observe the school’s setup.
Leaders come to visit not with intentions of mimicking Hillsdale, but to learn from struggles, missteps and successes, said Diane Friedlaender, School Redesign Network research coordinator.
The two-day program begins at Stanford giving visitors an overview of Hillsdale. A site visit occurs on the second day allowing visitors to observe teachers, chat with students and discuss how such ideas could be implemented on their campuses.
In 2003, Hillsdale began its redesign into three semi-autonomous smaller learning communities, called SLCs. Those groups centered work around five cornerstone values: equity, personalization, rigor, autonomy and collaboration/shared decision-making. Students often end up with teachers in core classes for two years. Each student also is assigned an advisor with whom they meet several times a week.
Part of the visitors day included asking questions to an eight-student panel, which included Rodriguez.
The changes mean a tradeoff for some of the students such as fewer electives. Junior Malini Kannan, for example, explained how the newspaper was now an after-school activity.
At the same time, the unique setup allows students to interact with students who would not normally be in the same class.
Senior Charlene Ip knew college was an expectation in life. For her, it was nice to learn about people who came from a different environment.
School leaders came for different reasons.
George Lerek, a special education teacher from Pajaro Valley High School in Watsonville, doesn’t want to learn about potential issues from a consultant. It’s easier to learn about the challenges from someone who’s involved in a similar program already, he said.
Pajaro Valley began developing small learning communities four years ago.
Branessa Kunitz is a parent of a junior attending Logan High School in Union City, which has around 4,000 students. The school broke the freshman classes into families as a step toward small learning communities. Kunitz was one of two parents at the event. What she learns will be helpful in making recommendations for changes at Logan.
For Kunitz, the passion and willingness to try something new to better all students really stood out.
