Site Visit: SciTech High
I had the opportunity to go visit SciTech High in Harrisburg, PA today. SciTech High is a small magnet program started as a partnership (funny how that word comes up often these days when we talk about education, isn't it?) between the Harrisburg School District and Harrisburg University. SciTech is one of the many schools around the country that is watching what High Tech High out in San Diego is doing closely, and applying the lessons learned in their own ways.
It's always amazing to go out to visit schools and witness how similar pedagogical ideas play themselves out in different places. SciTech High has a powerful focus on science, technology integration (we call it infusion, but hey, you get the idea) and project-based learning. As it says in their mission statement:
The current curriculum is project based and the program presently being used is "without walls." Students work on extended research projects requiring the use of knowledge in mathematics, science, technology, and writing.
And they mean it.
This week, the sophomores were all involved in their "Genocide Project." The kids have spent ten weeks looking at issues related to genocide in English, History, Math and Science. And as they've been studying the various content in those classes, they've been working in groups of four, reseaching a specific act of genocide in the world, doing process logs, meeting various project benchmarks along the way, all leading up to this week where all of the kids
posted October 22nd, 2008
SciTech High dedicates reading
by JOHN LUCIEW, Of The Patriot-News
Monday March 03, 2008, 4:54 PM
Staff and students at Harrisburg's SciTech High today dedicated the Lisa Waller Independent Reading room in honor of their late director.
Waller, 40, SciTech's founding director who turned even her cancer diagnosis into a teaching moment, died last year after bravely juggling chemotherapy treatments and school assignments.
To hear her staff and students tell it, Waller always wanted to add more books to the science lab-laden SciTech, a building intentionally left without a library so that kids would do most of their reading and research online.
The result is the Waller reading room, a former supply room just off the school's busy cafeteria to ensure plenty of foot traffic and browsing.
A committee of 40 students and staff carefully stocked the shelves with titles suggested by SciTech's 350 students.
The room's 2,000 books feature all the classics, big-name contemporary best-sellers and useful biographies, memoirs and reference material. But there's also a heavy dose of urban fiction, graphic novels and sports titles that are intended to reach out and grab students.
On its first day, the reading room was doing good business over the lunch periods, as students wandered in and browsed.
"These books are for everybody," said junior Devon Shelton, 16. "Having this is really a great opportunity."
Teachers said Waller would have liked the enthusiasm with which some students plucked their se
posted October 22nd, 2008
