The feeling at Carnegie’s opening ceremony two Saturdays ago was the library program offers lots of upsides for all segments of the school community. The high school gets to shift some of its 2,400 students from its overloaded halls, revamp and revitalize a historic structure vacant for almost 30 years and offers students opportunities to get “out of the box.” Students, who enter the program voluntarily, learn and study biographies, and do interviews and service work rather than take quizzes and textbook tests. Teachers learn innovative ways to reach students.
Redesigning education
Hundreds of curious minds streamed through the doors of Carnegie at the Oct. 1 ceremony to tour the library, learn about the program, meet the teachers and spend a day listening to students perform music ranging from classical to jazz to the lively Percussion Orchestra of Kingston (POOK).
Rondout Valley Middle School teacher MaryJane Nusbaum is the morning program’s lead art teacher and is enthused over the program’s possibilities. She is teaching Eco-Art and Art in the Community in which she described the students will work on community beautification projects “so kids learn that art is everywhere, not just in a classroom.” She has plans for students to visit an animal sanctuary and farms and create art-based projects on their visits so that the kids can “connect with the community” as well as learn where their food comes from.
Sierra Williams, 14, and Eliot Marzano, 15, hung out in the downstairs media classrooms working together on a global project during the grand opening. Sierra is not old enough to enter the new school program — the program is open to sophomores and up — but has every intention of doing so after hearing all good stuff from Eliot, who likened the vibe to that of a college campus. “It’s really laid back,” said Eliot, who is enrolled in the morning program’s global studies class. “There are no hall monitors everywhere. Teachers give us more responsibility and expect more from us — in a good way. They don’t treat us like criminals.” Eliot said that he was most appreciative of the respect he feels the program has for its students, and actually enjoys being more deeply challenged intellectually and creatively. “They don’t make useless rules here, like at the high school. It’s way more interesting too. There’s little projects that we do that give you such a big picture.”
Sheber said that his background of working with the KHS’s radio and broadcast program and helping to expand it to all Time Warner cable viewers was how he got hooked into the project, as KHS-TV did many programs on Carnegie Library, he said. Sheber said that he is looking to expand the district’s media broadcast program into Carnegie, and take it into the future. Sheber explained that as the program development and collaborations went on, he found that the out-of-the-box students and faculty naturally gravitated toward one another into the program. “We questioned, ‘How can we re-design education?’ We questioned how we want to learn.” Sheber said that he continues to supervise the English department and that Carnegie’s programming still involves curriculum mapping with core curriculum. Sheber said that the programming is inclusive of lower-level learners as well kids learning at the highest levels and added that they are currently working with several colleges to ultimately be able to offer college credit in the program as well, and for it to be a growth and maturing experience in which they are intrinsic and active. “I want to empower the kids to feel like this is their building, and to take a role in their own learning. It shouldn’t be about sticks and carrots; it should be about building it from within.”
A tectonic shift
Rondout Valley social studies teacher Stephen Gilman also serves as CCE’s education director, and intertwined the school and CCE. “We’re looking at a tectonic shift in education in 2011,” explained Gilman. “The old model of schooling, created during the reign of the industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie who built this library, was ‘chalk and talk’ lecture where teacher control and student compliance were most important. That century-old model — designed to assimilate new immigrants and ready lifelong assembly-line workers — is not cutting it today. Our improvisational economy rewards an entirely new set of skills and goals. Educators, parents and community leaders are re-aligning on this new approach to learning. When you think about it, it’s not rocket science: If you give teachers a little more autonomy and flexibility in creating and implementing their program, and — this is key — a challenge to innovate and improve, they will deliver something extraordinary: classrooms where critical thinking, student collaboration, highly developed reflection, interpersonal communication skills, and creative problem-solving are increasingly the norms.”
Gilman said CCE is working with gifted teachers during the day “to bring more project and inquiry-based experiential learning to Kingston High students.” And extends that into the afternoon, evening and weekends for the community at large. “Innovative, student-centered, results-oriented education is not easy but it’s what our kids want and need. Kingston Schools and the Center for Creative Education are committed to making it happen for them,” said an emphatic Gilman.
