West Junior High's National Endowment for the Humanities Schools for a New Millennium Implementation Grant evolved from collaborative planning and projects initiated by participants in the NEH Planning Grant. That planning phase leveraged a process for accessing some primary resources electronically which were previously not available within the walls of West Junior High. Our team representing local museums, educational institutions, technology centers, and the print media continues to produce a Web site containing local historical materials. The growing database provides information to the public and serves as the focus of student projects. Access to authentic information, professional collaboration and training, and support for student leadership in the area of technology continually impacts lesson design and instruction quality. As the Community Connections project reaches more students, it increases enthusiasm for humanities studies and enhances academic achievement. We have establish a prototype for best practices in humanities education through the integration of technology into the core academic curriculum.
The underpinnings of projects supported
by this implementation grant and the planning grant which preceded it were:
1) professional collaboration, 2) project-based instruction in an integrated
humanities curriculum, 3) integration of technology in humanities instruction,
4) professional development, and 5) development of student leadership in technology.
West's faculty has worked diligently to change from being a departmentalized
organization, to one that is team driven and collaborative with a focus on meeting
individual needs of students. We attempt to bring teachers out of isolation
into collaborative efforts to improve student motivation and achievement scores.
We encourage core teams (Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Math) to
develop at least one project-based integrated unit per semester. We also encouraged
other humanities and non-humanities classes to find common goals and standards
around which units could be organized or could parallel one another. Curriculum
mapping was used at the beginning of this effort. Task force groups organized
around our building Quality Performance Accreditation Goals (the Kansas process
for building accreditation prior). Organization of building-wide strategies
for teaching reading, writing, and problem-solving skills provided discourse
on integrated units and made each teacher accountable for student achievement.
The broad intent of WJH's technology plan was to support the mission of the
school by infusing instructional and communication technologies throughout the
curriculum; this grant especially focused that plan on the humanities. Coinciding
with the first year of this grant was the district's priority plan to place
a networked computer on every junior high teacher's desk. Student and teacher
'accounts' were established on a district-wide network. Professional development
and collaboration have allowed our staff to retrain, and to share new skills
with each other to maximize the advantages of these technological improvements.
Technology is integrated into an ever-increasing array of instructional routines
at West Junior High. Lesson plans integrate the use of computers, a wide variety
of word processing, PowerPoint, and other software, on-line catalogues and internet
research to such a degree that they will soon be taken for granted across the
curriculum.
One intervention strategy for students considered at-risk is the opportunity
to participate in WJH's student technology leadership program. Although these
programs are offered to all students, at-risk and female students are specifically
recruited to insure a cross-representation of the student body. Technohawks
and Computer Club have merged. Their goal is to establish and maintain content-rich
student Web pages. They develop some web pages themselves, but also work with
specific teachers to start their content-related web pages.
Focus points selected during a vision-building activity in January 2001 in our
transition from the planning grant to the implementation grant were: 1) to develop
the Web site database of community resources, 2) to develop teacher Web pages,
3) to develop collaborative projects, and 4) to increase individual teachers'
technology skills.
The Web site database of community resources involved collaboration among West
Junior High, the Lawrence Journal-World on-line service, Watkins Community Museum
of the Douglas County Historical Society, and Spencer Research Library at the
University of Kansas. West teachers created a 'wish list' of local resources
that might be made available on a web site. The Lawrence Journal-World on-line
service designed a Web site containing a searchable database titled "Lawrence
Community Connections" published at history.lawrence.com. Watkins Community
Museum and Spencer Research Library made their resources as accessible as possible.
A part-time assistant was employed at Watkins Museum to prepare items for publication
on the Web site. Spencer Research Library provided guidelines in clearing copyright
for materials to be published and provided digitized materials requested from
their archives.
Of the many new uses of technology in the classroom, one of the most beneficial
concerns the use of teacher Web pages. Developing them became a second focus
of the project, and much collaborative energy was invested into the pages produced
for and by individual teachers.
Collaboration: The core teachers
in interdisciplinary teams, foreign languages, fine arts, communications, yearbook,
newspaper, photography, literature and reading, family and consumer sciences,
keyboarding, technology and special education teachers, as well as the counseling
staff have participated in and benefited from collaborative aspects of this
project. This represents about 75% of the entire faculty during the 2nd and
3rd years of the grant. (Appendix 1)
Lawrence history website: We have created a site, "Lawrence Community Connections"
(http://history.lawrence.com), through which learners can access primary documents,
and to which student researchers, writers, and photographers can contribute
information. Parts of this project are modeled after NEH's My History is America's
History millennium project.
Teacher Web pages: As a result of the planning grant, two teachers (Austin-Janousek
and Farrar) developed web pages that could serve as prototypes. Those pages
continue to evolve. In the intervening three years, 24 other teachers and counselors,
through intensive effort, have followed. (http://schools.usd497.org/wjhs/teachers)
Some teacher's pages were originated by students, from a prototype created by
students, but teachers soon took over responsibility for both content and design
of their own pages. Content varies. Some teachers chose a simple format such
as "schoolnotes.com" with little more than homework calendars. Other
web pages are much more extensive, created in html or authoring software (Dreamweaver).
The most extensive content includes complete instructions for student projects
as well as publication of student samples. Those teachers publishing student
work are following a protocol requiring parental permission to publish. All
teacher pages meet and exceed the Lawrence USD 497 guidelines for web page publication.
Our first pages were published on the server provided through the Lawrence Journal
World (history.lawrence.com), but more recently space for web pages has been
assigned on a district server (staff.usd497.org) and teachers are publishing
web pages there. All have proven useful, with more than one teacher commenting
that they can not imagine teaching without relying on their web page as the
basic resource for their class. As students and parents learn to depend on accessing
class information through web pages, teams on the staff have begun discussing
the creation of team web pages, to link all their pages together. At least two
are already being created. (Appendix 2)
PowerPoint is a popular choice for presentations. It is required for specific
assignments in 7th grade English, 8th grade Communitions, German 1, Spanish
1 and several other courses at all three grade levels. It is commonly included
on a list of options for presentation modes of student projects. Teachers who
have never used it before are experimenting with it in the classroom as well
as for conference presentations. Recently adopted textbooks provide on-line
resources. Teachers have altered their instructional routines in order to take
full advantage of these and other on-line resources. This includes foreign language,
science, and math classes.
Two computer labs, which have been available during both the planning and implementation
grant stages, have seen an increase in quantity as well as quality of time spent
there. It has always been true that anyone planning on using technology for
class instruction needed to be prepared with an alternative. That would have
usually been due to problems occurring with hardware or software. Although one
of the labs was basically non-functional for the first half of this year, that
problem was solved. Now, lack of lab time is more likely a problem of scheduling.
As we become more efficient, more proficient, quicker at solving small problems
ourselves, more teachers wish to use the technology available and issues involving
a fair share of time for each class had to be resolved. This spring we developed
a new scheduling system to implement for the coming year. (Appendix 3)
The original 8 laptops assigned to teachers have been rounded up and reorganized
as a lab-on-a-cart. Any teacher who can organize a task for small groups has
the option of taking one or all of the computers on the cart to their room to
set up on a temporary basis. While somewhat cumbersome, this routine is being
incorporated in several classrooms.
Project-based Instruction in an
Integrated Humanities Curriculum:
Most units now taught in the humanities curriculum at West Junior High involve
student projects. Teachers report using more projects, structuring them for
better quality, and increased integration with other curriculum areas. A social
studies teacher comments, "We have always done projects, but the quality
is much better now." Student-centered projects developed by current staff
and refined over the past three years include range from activities occurring
in one class period to year-long projects. (See Grant Products.)
Units were developed on a volunteer basis. Collaboration time, scheduled team
planning time, and well as the atmosphere of collaboration fostered in our school
facilitate their development. In addition, the required skills targeted by the
state QPA process, reading, writing, and problem solving have been integrated
into school culture.
The faculty and students at WJHS
comprise the main audience for grant projects. West includes 631 students, grades
seven through nine, served by 58 certified faculty and 25 classified staff.
The school profile shows 19% on free or reduced lunch, 51% female and 49% male.
Special education students account for 15% of the student body while 13% are
identified as gifted. Our ethnicity can be identified as 81% white, 8% African
American or Black, 3% American Indian or Alaska Native, 3% Asian, 2% Hispanic,
and 3% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. School-wide awareness of grant
projects increased each year of the grant. Students tended to be more involved
with integrated projects as 9th graders, than as 7th or 8th graders and were
less aware of the project until their third year at West. Many students make
use of the various web sites without understanding their relationship to grant
projects.
Teacher awareness has spread from the eight original participants to the entire
faculty. Grant goals are integrated into lesson planning, from the core teams
to special education classes. New teachers have been oriented to grant goals,
and sometimes bring strengths previously lacking. Several new teachers facilitated
the accomplishment of grant goals and enthusiastically embraced the culture
of collaboration.
The greater Lawrence community is another significant audience, especially for
the database of history resources on the "Community Connections" web
site. Lawrence is a city of approximately 80,000. Its ethnicity can be described
as 80% Caucasian, 5% African American, 4% Asian, 3% Native American, 3% Hispanic
3% of two or more groups, and 1% others. It is home to the University of Kansas,
which serves approximately 25,000 students on a campus located about a mile
east of WJHS and Haskell Indian Nations University, which serves approximately
1000 students from at least 152 federally recognized native American tribes
on a campus across town to the east.
A summary report was prepared in PowerPoint and presented to various community
groups, with slight alternations for each audience. (Appendix 4) It was presented
at the following meetings and venues.
· USD 497 Social Studies Cadre (audience of 5), January 4, 2003, 4 p.m.
· USD 497 School Board Meeting (audience of approx. 100 on site and additional
broadcast audience), February 10, 2003, 7 p.m.
· Black Women's Oral History Group (audience of 12) February 20, 2003,
3 p.m.
· Douglas County Historical Society board meeting (audience of 25) Thursday,
February 27,2003, 3 p.m.
· Bleeding Kansas Territorial Heritage Area working group (audience of
25) April 10, 2003, in Garnett, Kansas.
The web site has increased in community visibility. At least two other Lawrence
community sites are linked to "Community Connections" in their history
sections. Watkins Community Museum now has a home page, http://www.dchsks.org,
to which we are linked and with which we hope to be more closely integrated
in the future.
Several hundred business card promoting the "Community Connections"
site and address have been distributed in the community. (Appendix 5)
At the end of the implementation grant, teachers evaluated their participation
in two ways. Each teacher completed a one-page evaluation. During a meeting,
they also participated in group discussions and completed a group report. (Appendix
6)
To track growth of basic computer skills of staff, a web-based tool called Profiler
was used (http:www.hprtec.org/profiler). Profiler was developed by our HPRTEC(High
Plains Regional Technology in Education Consortium), collaborators during the
planning grant phase. It was designed not only to assess the skill level of
participants, but to provide a shared leadership model with graphical representations
of expertise in the building. The WJH Profiler included all teaching and most
non-teaching staff who completed individual profiles at least twice. West recorded
an overall skill level of 39% in 1999. By the Spring of 2003, our overall skill
level had risen to 58.4%. (Appendix 7)
An especially telling comment was made by an English teacher who joined the
staff in the third year of the grant. Coming from a school that did not have
a collaborative culture which nurtured professional development, he felt it
had taken him far to long to 'get it', to take advantage of grant projects that
could improve his teaching and student learning.
Continued maintenance of our "Lawrence
Community Connections" Website might be problematic, given that school
staffing is not typically funded for this type of job. The project director
will be returning to full time teaching. However, we believe we have a creative
solution. The 4-member Web team involved to this point will now function on
a volunteer basis as administrators of the site. This team includes former part-time
assistants John Jewell (Watkins Community Museum) and Brandon Weber (technical
assistant on the Projects side) Kevin Dixon, (former employee of the Lawrence
Journal World, liaison and technical assistant for the database), and Phyllis
Farrar (grant project director).
The Web team will be aided by the formation of a board of directors. The Website
project has created a certain synergy around the development of local resources.
Community organizations are asking to join this collaborative effort to publish
primary resources and we are asking each of them to provide one person to serve
on the board of directors. Recognizing that our collection to this point represents
limited time periods and social/economic/ethnic groups, we hope to expand it
to include all decades of Lawrence history and greater ethnic diversity. The
board will initially include the following participants, but will be encouraged
to determine its own membership in the future.
· Judy Billings, co-chair of Territorial Kansas Heritage Area and director,
Lawrence Convention & Visitors Bureau
· Ann Bruemmer, director of arts and humanities, Lawrence Public Schools
· Carolyn Derusseau, WJHS 9th grade Social Studies Teacher, participant
in both the planning and implementation grants
· Maryemma Graham, Ph.D, University of Kansas English Department, Oral
History Project
· John Jewell, Lawrence Sesquicentennial Education Committee, 3rd grade
Curriculum Project
· Rebecca Phipps, Director, Watkins Community Museum
· Bobbi Rahder, Haskell Cultural Center and Museum
· Barbara Watkins, Ph.D. University of Kansas Continuing Education
Teacher web pages and projects will
continue. Efforts most closely tied to grant goals and resources should be mentioned:
· Michelle Andersen, 7th grade English teacher, who is developing the
"Heroes and Leaders" unit continues her research concerning local
personalities in the archives of Spencer Research Library and the Lawrence Journal-World.
(Appendix 8)
· Carolyn Derusseau, 9th grade Social Studies, will continue to develop
a collaborative project with schools in communities who were active in the Underground
Railroad. (Appendix 9)
· Phyllis Farrar, 7-9th grade German teacher, serves on a curriculum
writing team for the Kinder Lernen Deutsch committee of the American Association
of Teachers of German. This group will be using "Germans in Lawrence"
as a prototype to develop a unit about German Americans for middle school beginning
German which AATG plans to publish in 2005 or 2006.
Collaboration and professional
development. A strong sense of camaraderie is seen in the team meetings of core
teachers and departments, in the use of early release time once a week for collaborative
planning, in the use of e-mail and shared electronic files, in committee and
task force work, and problem solving in general.
In all cases of using technology for instruction, emphasis is on student learning,
more than on the technology itself. Standardization of procedures from class
to class and teacher to teacher is improving. This includes everything from
how a report should look (using the standard introduced in the keyboarding class)
to how references should be cited, to what to do about plagiarism off the internet.
A handbook for computer lab use is available to all teachers through the media
center. Consequently, routines are taking effect and student attention can be
focus on quality of content.
Technology is integrated into an ever-widening circle personnel and their instructional
routines. Because a computer was installed at every teacher's work station in
the first year of the implementation grant, the ability to support instruction
with computers has changed drastically. Lesson planning integrates use of computers,
digital photography and video, a wide variety of word processing, PowerPoint,
and other software, on-line catalogues and internet research to such a degree
that it is now taken for granted across the curriculum. Significant developments
include
· Improved use of the computer labs
· Improved us of the internet for research
· Use of the websites and e-mail for instruction and communication with
students and their parents
· Use of technology for presentation and publication by teachers and
students
· Use of technology to support accreditation goals (Kansas Quality Performance
Accreditation which is being transformed into Adequate Yearly Progress)
Collaborating with community institutions at the level necessary for creating the web site required new working relationships and adjustments. It was not as easy as we had hoped. To quote one of the partners, "While all partners in this collaboration embraced the goal of providing electronic access to primary sources and enriching the classroom experience of young researchers, attaining this goal, even taking the first steps, proved more challenging than anyone suspected". . . "In the end, the project expectation issues were resolved successfully - the institutional boundaries did indeed dissolve." This new working relationship will benefit all in the future. (Appendix 10)
Our Lawrence Community Connections
site where learners access and contribute information is now fully functional.
It is hosted by the Lawrence Journal World server (http://history.lawrence.com).
Site design and organization are complete. The Home page was 'personalized'
with a photo of student council officers in the first year of the grant, and
icons made from student photos for a history project. The site is organized
into four sections divided into "Topics" and "Projects."
Topics contains a database of approximately 400 items, cataloged in 15 categories,
and searchable with key words. These items were collected from Watkins Community
Museum, Spencer Research Library, and private citizens. Additional items are
the result of student projects. Procedures for requesting and finding materials,
verifying copyright, digitizing, crediting, editing, and publishing, are being
followed. While we continue to locate 'new' items, attention toward the end
of the grant was given to consistency in labeling, improving the quality of
information, and improving key words to assist searching the site. As the database
grew, it threatened to be somewhat overwhelming and unmanageable, but reviews
each spring by teachers and students helped determine changes needed.
The Projects sections of the Web site include "Student ," "Special
Interest Collections," "Teacher," and an information section
called "About Us." Maintenance of the site evolved into a routine
requiring a "team" meeting about once every six months, rather than
the monthly meetings needed during the development stage. Projects from various
classes comprise the Student page. Some works listed there are also integrated
into the database.
The Special Interest Collections include database items that benefit from grouping,
relevant links, and resources from other sources. They specifically relate to
units being taught in our curriculum. The current collections are:
· Underground Railroad Sites in Douglas County and Lawrence, Kansas
· Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence in 1863 (beginnings of the Civil War)
· African-American Heritage in Lawrence
· German Heritage in Douglas County
· Native American Heritage in NE Kansas
· Oregon Trail
· Arts, Entertainment, and Culture
· Leaders
· Business and Transportation
· Social Changes over Time
"Students" contains the best results of student projects. So far,
this includes photographs and histories of local landmarks, interview of World
War II or Korean or Vietnam war era community members, imaginary diaries of
territorial Kansas, and transcriptions of German documents related to Lawrence.
Some works listed there are also integrated in the "Topics" database.
The "Teachers" section contains lesson plans directly related to community
resource projects. It also now provides a link back to all teachers at West.
"About Us" contains an account of the growth of this project, including
a copy of each interim report to NEH. (Appendix 11)
Another product of the grant are the many project-based instructional units
now in use at WJHS. Units of study are predominantly organized as student-centered
projects. Six of the ten social studies and English teachers reported that essentially
all the units they teach are now organized as such; this is also true of Communications
and the Media classes. Those reporting at least one large project or a project
that incorporates some form of technology are foreign languages (French, German,
and Spanish), 7th grade geography, and reading. Refinements, variations and
improvements continue. One teacher commented that she has not created any completely
new projects, that that all projects are greatly improved. At least a dozen
projects involve the collaboration of two or more teachers concerning two or
more curriculum areas. One of the most unique collaborative units, "School-to-Career"
involves the humanities, family and consumer sciences and the counselors.
Student-centered projects in a single curriculum:
· Concerned Constituent letter, 9th grade Social Studies, by both Carolyn
Derusseau and Angela Adams.
· Mock trial, 9th grade Social Studies, Carolyn Derusseau and Angela
Adams.
· President Presentations, 9th grade Social Studies, by both Carolyn
Derusseau and Angela Adams.
· Pick a County, comparative government presentations, 9th grade Social
Studies, Carolyn Derusseau.
· Pick a City, biography of a city in Kansas presentations, 9th grade
Social Studies, Angela Adams.
· Dream Trip of Kansas, 9th grade Social Studies, Carolyn Derusseau.
· Native American Project, 9th grade Social Studies, Carolyn Derusseau.
· Territorial - Statehood Diaries, 9th grade Social Studies, Carolyn
Derusseau.
· Living History (oral interviews), 8th grade History, Angela Adams.
· Urban Legends, 8th grade English, Karen Cochran and Jeff Plinsky.
· Poetry, 8th grade English, K. Cochran and J. Plinsky.
· Lawrence Leaders and Heroes, 7th grade English, Michelle Andersen
· Mystery Radio Play, 7th grade English, M. Andersen
· Introductory newpapers project, 7th grade English, M. Andersen
· Historic Places of Lawrence, Photography 2, Phyllis Farrar and Karen
Musacchio (http://history.lawrence.com/project/student/historicbuildings.htm).
(Appendix 4).
· Written and Illustrated, Gifted, Lynn Burlingham.
· Publication of topical web pages, Gifted, Joan Parr.
· Poetry from Roy de Carava pictures, Gifted, L. Burlingham.
· "Biography" book, German 1, Phyllis Farrar.
· "Biography" PowerPoint, Spanish, Pat Wittry.
· Fans for the Soccer Season, German 1 & 2, Phyllis Farrar.
· Germans in Lawrence, German 2, Phyllis Farrar.
Student-centered projects involving
collaboration of two or more teachers concerning two or more curriculum areas
are:
· School - to - Careers; 7th grade FACS, 8th grade Communications, and
9th grade Social Studies, and counselors; Janet Fike, Brandi Wegner, A. Adams,
C. Derusseau, Teresa Clough, and Sandi Liechti.
· Decades Celebration; 9th grade English and Social Studies; K. Cochran
and A. Adams, Keri Austin-Janousek and C. Derusseau.
· Civil War; 8th grade English and History; K. Cochran and A. Adams.
· WWII, 8th grade English and History; K. Cochran and A. Adams.
· Across 5 Aprils, 8th grade English and History, J. Plinsky and Jeff
Harkin
· Essay Elements, 8th grade English and History, J. Plinsky and J. Harkin
· Tolerance / Prejudice, 8th grade English, History, and Science, J.
Plinsky, J. Harkin, and Lucinda Crenshaw.
· History Day Projects; 8th grade English, History, and Media Center;
J. Plinsky, J. Harkin, and Leigh Geis.
· Imaginary Trip to Paris / Mexico City / Berlin, 7th grade Introduction
to Foreign Languages, Nicole Rice, P. Farrar, and Pat Wittry.
· Written and Illustrated, 7th grade English, L. Burlingham and Tracy
Baden.
· English Extensions, 7-9th grade English, L. Burlingham and English
teachers.
· Langston Hughes Unit, 7th grade English, L. Burlingham, Michelle Andersen,
& Sue Lewis
· Community Service and Random Acts of Kindness, all eight 7th grade
core team teachers.
Student Web page: Whereas the first
West web page created by students received and award, we found it somewhat surprising
and frustrating that annual updates were slow and likely to eliminate files
from the previous years' work. Continuity has been challenging, but the transition
from one year to the next has improved. Students have four pages up, (http://schools.usd497.org/wjhs),
are updating regularly, and are making progress on additional pages. It is now
linked from the school district home page at http://usd497.org. (Appendix 12)
Students with advanced technology skills continue to provide leadership in such
classes as newspaper, yearbook, media, and independent studies or extensions.
The newspaper classes are showing great improvement in quality and quantity
of writing, as well as visual presentation of the student newspaper. We are
studying the possibility of publishing parts of the newspapers on the student
Web site. The 2002-2003 yearbook has been recommended for submission to juried
competition, because of its quality. (Appendix 13)
Successes with grant goals continue
to accumulate. The creation of a Web site database of community historical resources
has been accomplished and the process it takes to maintain and enlarge it is
well understood. The database continues to improve, in organization, in quality
of items, as well as quantity, and lends itself to a variety of student projects.
The collaboration of West Junior High Staff and community members is increasingly
rewarding. Mutual goals and reciprocal support epitomize the meaning of the
"Community Connections" grant title.
Integration of technology into the fabric of staff collaboration and into instruction
is almost seamless. Skill levels of all staff have so greatly improved that
technological problems are solved quickly and with minimal disruption of instruction.
More teachers are bringing more classes to the computer lab and library, time
on task is more productive, and problems arising from these activities are solved
more collaboratively and creatively.
As we settle into a schedule using longer blocks of instructional time our staff
practices all innovative methods of instruction fostered by this grant. The
successful implementation of Quality Performance Accreditation strategies in
reading, writing, and problem solving results from a collaborative attitude
of all staff and the sincere belief that our curriculum must be fully integrated
in order to effectively reach students. The faculty feels revitalized and eager
to continue our efforts in teaching; students realize the excitement of learning
and correlation between their education and their community.
Report filed 10/31/03 at NEH.
Phyllis Farrar, Project Director, West Junior High. Back to About Us. Back to Comminity Connections home page.