Comment on Tacoma's 1st charter high school has students feeling free

By DEBBIE CAFAZZO, Tacoma News-Tribune, San Antonio Express-News: World
Sun, 08/30/2015 - 3:54am

Tacoma's 1st charter high school has students feeling free

[...] what kids at Tacoma's first charter high school seem to like most is the self-determination they're given at Summit Olympus High School, which opened last Monday with 125 ninth-graders inside an old pickle-packing plant on Puyallup Avenue. Classmate Lillian Thompson, a University Place student who attended Curtis Junior High last year, said her new high school's self-paced learning "will teach us independence." Math teacher David Dolata moved through his classroom helping students sign in to the correct assignment on their laptop computers. "Close your computer at half-mast (with the lid partly open) when you've got it," he tells the class, creating an instant visual that tells him which students are ready to proceed and who needs an extra assist. "Nowhere does it say 'Take notes for 45 minutes on the quadratic equation,'" Dolata tells students. For the first week, as an orientation to the Summit way of learning, students were asked to interview fellow students and solicit ideas on how to improve their school environment. [...] ideas have ranged from collecting board games to play on rainy-day lunch breaks, to soliciting donations of used couches to fill in blank spots in their newly remodeled building. Diane Tavenner, CEO of the Summit charter management organization based in Redwood City, California, said project-based learning is designed to provide that real-world tie.

 

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