Taking risks, showing vision

In the public charter high school imagined by a team of Lehigh education leadership students, the arts would be infused into all core academic courses, school would be year-round, and students would help grow lettuce, zucchini and other vegetables in a rooftop, hydroponic greenhouse.

There, at the C.R.O.P Academy for Science and Business, the school day would run from 8 a.m. to 4:20 p.m., though there would be a late start to classes on Mondays. And with an emphasis on parental and community involvement, four integrated pathways to learning would be offered: business and entrepreneurship, nutrition and food services, environmental and agricultural sciences, and engineering.

The eight-member team who imagined the school—master’s degree students in U*PAL, the Urban Principal’s Academy @ Lehigh—presented their proposal with a flourish on Friday to a “community board” gathered in the Wood Dining Hall on the Mountaintop campus. It was one of three, team-based capstone projects brought to life, as U*PAL and the Allentown Principal Leadership Initiative (APLI) wrapped up their summer sessions.

Team members were charged with creating new schools for the fictitious Cosmopolis Department of Education that would change how students were taught and how students demonstrated their understanding of academic, social and emotional skills. The hope was that they would create learning laboratories that would transform modern-day schools and promote creativity among both teachers and students.

“They want to become transformational leaders,” said Jon Drescher, director of U*PAL and professor of practice in the Center for Developing Urban Educational Leaders (CDUEL), at the start of the presentations. “Their charge was—get visionary, take a risk.”

They did.

First up was the team who proposed C.R.O.P., an acronym for “Cultivating Resourcefulness, Originality and Purpose.” They distributed strawberry-shaped totes, as well as packets of wildflower seeds that carried an inspirational quote from poet David Whyte: “What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky?”

“Our students are at risk, now more than ever,” said one of the team members. “How might we solve this problem?” After a “student” bemoaned that he was not being challenged in his school, the team member said, “We believe all students deserve better.”

The team unfolded its proposal by having audience members circulate among seven tables set up around the perimeter of the dining hall. Each team member detailed a different aspect of the proposal, including the revenue plan, physical structure and greenhouse, time allotted for professional development, and community involvement. To demonstrate how the arts would be infused into courses and how that could make a difference in learning (including making learning more fun), audience members beat on make-shift drums as another read aloud Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven.

Bridging 21

A second team—part of the Allentown Principal Leadership Initiative at Lehigh—was charged with imagining a middle school that would feed into the Allentown School District’s newest high school, the career-focused Building 21, set to open in Fall 2015. Drescher said that ASD officials were interested in reviewing what the team had developed as the district considers its future potential.

That team chose the name Bridging 21 for its school, and it would be a place where project-based learning would allow students to learn by doing. Students would be encouraged to work collaboratively with their peers as they acquired and applied core knowledge and critical thinking skills with the guidance of teachers and field experts, including farmers, nutritionists and software developers. In learning math and science skills, for example, the students might build a fire alarm system for a movie theater.

“We are about positive change in our community,” one team member said.

The second team’s presentation was infused with video interviews of students expressing their ideas for an ideal school, including that it would be a place to learn job-based skills. With Bridging 21 explained, one student who appeared on video said, “It’s not about test scores anymore. It’s about me and how I’m growing.”

The Einstein-Ailey Academy

A third team, part of U*PAL’s graduating Cohort II, developed the Einstein-Ailey Academy, named for theoretical physicist Albert Einstein and choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey.

“Our goal is to teach students so that they also may be contributors to society, much like these two great men,” the team wrote in a brochure distributed at the Capstone presentations. “We seek to not only encourage our students to pursue excellence in content, like Einstein, but also consider art and culture and the ramifications of their lives in the world, much like Ailey.”

The school would provide a STEAM education, allowing for the arts to be integrated with science, technology, engineering and math programs. Students would learn by collaborating with other students, teachers and local and global communities. Projects would be designed to foster creativity and to help solve real-world problems.

To illustrate the creativity that the school would foster, the team unveiled its proposal by creating its own version of the TV talk show Live! With Kelly and Michael, complete with interviews with “celebrities,” a cooking segment and live acts. “Authors” were interviewed about the school. The “principal” rode into the room on a unicycle to highlight the school’s offering of circus artistry training. A conga line broke out when the team unveiled its school song. A “cook” tossed together the ingredients that would make the Einstein-Ailey Academy an amazing school, including collaboration and creativity.

Drescher said the U*PAL and APLI programs are designed to develop future school leaders who will think and act in new ways and disrupt the mediocrity that often exists in schools across the country.

“Leadership is a state of mind,” Drescher said. “We’re trying to develop a different state of mind.”

U*PAL's Cohort III was among those in the audience. It’s Cohort IV will begin next summer.

To see video clips of the presentations, go to U*PAL’s Facebook page.