VWCS get info on New Tech program

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Local stakeholders in Van Wert City Schools got a peek Thursday at a road map they hope will lead the district to a new level of educational excellence, as well as a different way of educating that keeps both students and teachers more engaged in the process.

The stakeholders — including school board members, community leaders, school administration, media, teachers and a steering committee formed to develop the local New Tech program — heard an overview of the program from Paul Buck, assistant director of planning for New Tech Network, but he first sought some input from those attending concerning what they already knew about New Tech.

Gary Clay of Van Wert Federal Savings Bank, who toured a Huntington (Ind.) New Tech program and called the students there “very, very impressive.

“Their leadership skills are better than anything I’ve seen in a long time,” Clay said of the New Tech students, adding that he also saw unusually good student interaction within the program.

VWCS Superintendent Ken Amstutz also talked about what first interested local educators in the New Tech program after they first heard about it during a Race to the Top conference on innovative programs in Columbus.

Amstutz said the first New Tech visit, to Garrett-Morgan High School in Cleveland, was an eye-opener, particularly since the program was in a 70-80-year-old building in an urban setting and was held in the basement of the school.

“One of the things we did find there was how engaged those kids were and also how committed the teachers were,” Amstutz said, adding that teachers at all the New Tech schools say they “worked harder, longer hours and had a lot more work they put into this, but would never go back.”

“We have found that everywhere we have gone,” he noted.

VWHS Principal Bill Clifton told those attending Thursday of talking to a junior at Wayne High School and asked her “what’s the learning like for you?”

“If I don’t get it done, I’m here two hours after school,” he said the girl said. “I want to get my projects done, I’m motivated to learn. We don’t always hear that in the traditional setting.”

Clifton also stressed that New Tech is not just for the “highly motivated” students.

“This is for all kids, not just the highly motivated,” Clifton said, although he added that there is a learning curve in implementing New Tech, which is an entirely way for local teachers to teach and for students to learn.

Like Clay, local school officials have also visited the New Tech program in Huntington, as well as one at Wayne High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., with all three of the programs visited being “schools within a school (programs that don’t include all students),” Amstutz said.

He added that, while local school officials haven’t yet visited a New Tech school that includes all its students in the program, that’s remains the plan Van Wert will seek to implement, starting hopefully in 2012 with the incoming freshman class and adding a class a year until all four classes are involved.

The superintendent also invited those attending Thursday’s sessions to go on a tour of the Viking New Tech program in Huntington planned for November 4.

Although the New Tech program requires extensive technology support, unlike the Cleveland school, VWCS school officials say they will have little trouble creating an educational infrastructure for the New Tech program in the Van Wert High School building, which was opened in 2006.

New Tech Network, a subsidiary of Knowledge Works Foundation, currently provides New Tech support to 87 schools in 16 states, with the hope of adding about 25 additional schools in 2012, including several in Ohio, Buck said.

The Cincinnati-based nonprofit organization, which also works with Race to the Top programs, is “in the business of helping districts and schools reimagine teaching and learning,” he said.

Buck, who lives in Indiana, said that state leads the nation in New Tech programs with 18, largely because of support from its state school superintendent and Governor Mitch Daniels.

New Tech schools usually operate under a general theme, and Van Wert has looked at the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) theme, largely because of its forays into that area with its Project Lead the Way pre-engineering and biomedical programs which like New Tech feature project-based education.

However, Amstutz said having the Niswonger Performing Arts Center of Northwest Ohio as part of the school would lend itself to a STEAM theme, which adds the arts to the STEM program. One school in eastern Ohio, Buck said, chose a STEMM theme, adding medicine to the mix because there was a big hospital in the community.

Buck said the New Tech program, which began in 1996 in Napa High School in California — where it is still based — was a product of community business leaders seeking a different type of education for local students in order to attract high-tech businesses.

The program, he added, works on the concepts of trust, respect and responsibility and fosters a culture based on a business environment.

With the readiness visit completed, school officials will continue to work out a plan for implementation of the program with New Tech Network.