Bulletin E-Edition:
Education at its own pace
New Redmond charter school will be based on a proficiency model
By Patrick Cliff / The Bulletin
Published: July 25. 2009 4:00AM PST
more photos | order photo
The Redmond Proficiency Academy, which will be housed in this building in downtown Redmond, will be using a range of technology to help students engage in learning. Podcasts, iMovies and iChat are all meant to help students learn in and out of the classroom.
Photos by Dave Martinez / The Bulletin
advertisement:
Max Miller didn’t let up. Over the last school year, the 15-year-old Redmond High School freshman patiently convinced his parents that the Redmond Proficiency Academy was best for him.
Happy at Redmond High, moving to the new charter school wasn’t a matter of fleeing the large school for Max. Rather, said his mother, Liz Goodrich, Max argued the academy would better fit his learning style. He wanted the chance to study subjects in depth, an option that is rare in larger, more crowded schools.
Still, Goodrich, a former high school English teacher, worried. Students, for example, wouldn’t take all their classes at the school building.
“I was a little hesitant. To me, it sounded kind of like kids could come and go as they pleased,” Goodrich said. “The idea of a nontraditional school day was a little scary to look at.”
Max will be one of the 150 students at the academy, a charter school sponsored by the Redmond School District.
The academy is set to open in September and may be the first school in the country based fully on a proficiency model. Under that approach, students aren’t limited by class days, let alone semesters or school years. A student, instead, can take as long or as short a time as they need to prove proficiency in a subject. Students at the school will still take all the state-mandated exams.
The school, located at 631 W. Antler in downtown Redmond, will have 150 students this fall and four full-time teachers. Students will rarely, if ever, spend a full week in class at the school building.
Instead, students will take classes at the school, online, via podcasts and in one-on-one meetings with teachers, according to Academy Director Michael Bremont.
Bremont estimated 60 percent of the students are academically advanced, while the other 40 percent struggle with certain subjects.
Of the 150 students, about 130 are from the Redmond district while others come from around Central Oregon.
One student, though, comes from Albany.
“They can come from anywhere,” Bremont said. “I guess we’ll see how it works to have a student from that far away. The parents say they will get her over here at least one day a week.”
But the full-time teachers won’t be the only teachers. If a student shows an interest in a particular subject area, the academy will try to match that student with an expert in the field.
Bremont described one student who is interested in working with dogs. To help the student along, the school will try to wrap issues of dog care into her course work, Bremont said. The school will also search for a groomer, for example, who could teach the student about the career.
Bremont is also in talks with a Microsoft employee to teach video coding and with a Rutgers University professor to teach a robotics class.
But most of the outside teachers will be from the community, Bremont said. “We have a pretty good bank of people to call,” Bremont said.
Students will take core classes, too. But those won’t be like a traditional class. Academy teacher Karri Salas has spent much of her summer developing science podcasts, which students will watch before coming to, for example, physics lab. Then, Salas will work with students on individual problems.
Salas said that will allow students to move as quickly or slowly as they might need.
“We don’t put kids on a bicycle at 4 years old and say, ‘If you don’t learn by 5, sorry you’re not going to ride,’” Salas said.
Patrick Cliff can be reached at 541-633-2161 or at pcliff@bendbulletin.com.
ARTICLE ACCESS: This article is among those available to all readers. Many more articles are available only to E-Edition members. Sign up today!
blog comments powered by Disqus
