It’s all about the long game. Setting the course for the future is what’s important.

It’s all about the long game. Setting the course for the future is what’s important. Talking about shade coverings or marquees can be decided by the administration. Setting the course to cutting our taxes, and re-prioritizing our facility plans towards the direct needs of the kids, is way more important for a board. The primary issues we, as a board and the community, need to address is our schools overall security; the rebuild of the Lowery Freshman Center; and the possibility of developing a Magnate school as an outlying campus to the main High School.

When it comes to security we need to think more along the lines of road-mapping an all-encompassing corporate security solution that combines our investment into learning for the students as well as protecting them. As an example: ideas around video recording, streaming and classroom knowledge transfers must be included when we talk about video. Monitoring a hallway is not the endgame. We need to incorporate our entire video solution to include lecture cameras to record classroom teachings so that students can re-visit historical classroom topics. When I say “all-inclusive video” I mean “all”. Why not utilize our investment in security as a combined solution of classroom instruction? Those same classroom-recording tools for learning also act as an emergency video feed if something goes wrong. It also enables us to keep record of any typical misbehaving of the student body. When everyone knows cameras are present incidents reports will fall. Let go of the notion that video is intrusive, in fact, it’s pervasive and there is nothing anyone can do about it. What better way to take charge of a Facebook post or Youtube video upload from the student body. 

When a lot of people hear security and video in the same sentence they instantly start thinking about George Orwell and 1984, but in reality they couldn’t be further from the truth. Our kids weren’t even born in 1984, so trying to force our “out-of-touch” reality on them will only make things worse later on. The truth is our kids utilize video, audio and instant access to information way more than you or I did. I sit with my 11^th grader doing Pre-Calculus and remain amazed at the amount of great video content on the web that illustrates examples that far outpace what she is getting from just one individual in a classroom (I’m just excited that I can understand Calculus better than I did when I was a kid… I wish I had those tools when I was in high school).  If we don’t start incorporating our own-recorded video solutions of classroom lectures, then the kids will get it from somewhere else. When they exit our ISD and go into the collegiate environment they will be faced with a plethora of these tools; my fear is that we aren’t preparing them for that change. Don’t fight the change in how things are being taught, grab hold of it, explore it, be creative and own it. Being a technologist you will be amazed at what can be accomplished, especially when we spark curiosity.

The Lowery Freshmen Center is a great opportunity to truly push our learning models into the future. Why not think out of the box and take the classroom way beyond sitting at a desk and listening to one teacher.  Lets incorporate a real architecture of advanced learning that the rest of the nation will want to model their strategies on; I’m talking about group structures of learning that incorporate all the latest of technology tools that can immerse the students into the topics that concern them. Literally design the new Freshmen Center as corporate framework of technology introductions, immersed classroom instruction and advanced laboratory learning. Work with the City to provide tax incentives for the largest corporations to fund our initiatives, build new labs, and augment student, teacher and real-time experts.  Which leads me to the final topic about a Magnate School.

In order to alleviate some of the overcrowding at the high school -- and I don’t really care if you think it’s at capacity or not -- a roadmap to off-load capacity can only help our kids. By not strategizing a downward track of classroom sizes, or hallway crowding, we are doing our kids a disservice. One of the topics I covered in an earlier article was about building a Magnate School; such a Magnate School could be academic oriented by including such things as all AP, IB or any advancement placement curriculum. The school could also house the arts, to include band, as way to better accommodate the space required. These are just ideas of course, my ideas, I have many more but as one gentlemen recently told me, “I see you are in it for the long game”. Indeed I am. All I can do is concentrate on the long game, because we have plenty who want to be involved in the day-to-day activities of awnings and sun coverings.

Dr. Michael Myers

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