The Madison School District
is embarking on a new program starting next year
that allows for several hundred high school students to focus
on specific learning topics.
The Personalized Pathways program allows students to learn
about and try on certain career areas.
Next year the area is health careers.
Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham says the hope is to make high
school more relevant to students so they not only graduate but
move on to college and careers.
- Personal Pathways are a way of making sure that every one of
our children graduate from high school, but more importantly
graduate with a clear post-secondary plan.
It is a strategy to ensure that every child is learning in a
smaller, more intimate learning community.
It is a strategy to ensure that every child is learning in a
smaller, more intimate learning community.
It is a strategy that ensures that students see the relevance
of their coursework, make sure that their core courses are
linked and thematic and provide opportunities for them to
explore a theme.
And it is a way to ensure that every child has intentional
opportunities to explore college and career options.
And all of that is driven by a student's unique academic and
career plan that is created by them, with support from the
staff and their family, and continually refined as they make
their way through high school.
- So you're starting with a pilot of this program;
is that right?
- You know, I think what we like to call it is the first
phase.
It is a small cohort of 120 to 150 freshmen in each of our four
high schools.
- And what is the topic area that these high schools will be
offering?
- Yeah.
The thematic focus in the first pathway is focused on health and
that was selected based on interest.
We do these interest surveys of our students annually, as well
as the array of kind of resources in the health area
that we have in our community, right, where students can really
get connected to what's happening in the real world when
it comes to health and health equity.
- So how does that work for the 9th grader and these 100
students that might partake?
- Yeah.
So for every student who chooses to enter into this first
pathway, their core courses, English, science and history,
those three teachers would work very closely together to design
integrated units of instruction around this theme, exploring
different aspects of health and health in our community, health
in our country, health in our world.
And through that theme they'll all learn the key skills that
they need to attain to be ready for college, but they'll do so
in a way that's much more applicable to the world around
them.
- And then in addition to the core courses, there will also be
other classes that they can take more specific to health?
- Yeah.
For each year of high school, there will be at least one
half-credit elective course that would allow them to dive more
deeply into some aspect of health.
Other than that everything else that they take, their arts,
their language, those courses and elective options exist
outside of the pathway and are very similar to what students
experience now.
- And what are the other opportunities that are included
in this kind of cohort?
I mean, I understood that there might be internships or
shadowing, that kind of thing?
- Yeah.
So a key component of the pathways model in addition to
the coursework that they're taking and this more technical
elective course is the experiential learning
opportunities that they have.
So that the freshman year might include some simpler things like
having guest speakers come to the classroom and talk to them
about aspects of health in this particular theme.
In future years, as they near their senior year, for example,
it could include something like an internship.
- Is this career-oriented?
- You know, I think-- I've heard that a lot, and it's
really about the theme.
But each theme is tied to a viable career cluster.
And that's important to us, because we want students to have
opportunities to explore career options and the full array of
career options, because that helps them make a stronger, more
intentional post-secondary choice.
- What about the concerns on the part of some that this is
basically tracking into vocational fields?
- I know.
I've heard that a lot, and I just need people to know that's
not what this is.
That is not the intent in any way, shape or form.
This is about creating more relevance in our high schools.
It's about making sure that every student, not just the
students who are privileged to have the right connections, but
every student gets a chance to understand and explore all the
options that they have before them for life after high school.
I think that's our obligation.
- And so the smaller kind of learning groups, is that just
for the people that end up being in the Personalized Pathways
program, or is it across the board
within the entire high school?
- Yeah.
At this point, some of our high schools already have the
structure of the smaller learning community, meaning
every student may be assigned to a cohort within their school,
but we haven't been maximizing that structure, meaning teachers
haven't been working as closely as they would within the
pathways model to surround and support their students.
So I think that that aspect, the way we want to use that smaller
learning community is what's new.
- Is this unique to Madison, or are other districts doing this?
- It is not unique to Madison.
Other districts have been doing this.
And some have been doing it for some time,
with excellent outcomes.
We've done a lot of exploring over three years now to develop
our Madison-specific approach.
While other districts have been doing something like this, we're
doing in a way that fits the unique needs and the context
of Madison, which I think is important,
and we'll continue to do that.