Introduction
Dan Hoesing
Welcome! We’re glad to have our high school students together again for the second time this year. Today you’ll be working differently. We’ll show you what we’re about and the reasons you’re here. Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8
Our focus used to be on high school diplomas, but that won’t get you out of poverty now. We know with our economy today that it’s not enough, not even college graduation means as much today. Our focus now is how to help you be more ready to be a successful adult.
The changes we’ve made over the last 2 years with InnovationLabs hasn’t had much of your input except through surveys. Now we want you to be involved. You’re going to have a fun afternoon along with results of helping you become more aware of how to create better schools.
I want to show you another video about the vision of K-12 students today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8
We want to give you the opportunity to be creative. We have to cut half a million dollars from our budget, so how do we do that without making ourselves worse? We know our systems are not perfect. We have to be more creative with less dollars. There are not enough kids to create their own junior high sports teams so we’ve joined groups together to create teams to be on the other side of the net. We have to look at the elementary students who are coming into this system and be sure we have siimilar opportunities for them.
We need to have innovative schools. Our schools were just spotlighted in a national publication. For us to have that kind of impact on the country is amazing. Bill Gates has created his schools with amazing technology but they’re not doing some of the innovative things that we’re doing. We need to become more effective. We need to our Boards of Education to work together better and to buy-in to what we’re doing. We need to have each community have its own school.
The future of our schools will depend heavily on the decisions we make with you today and tomorrow. I encourage you to have fun and to help us make better schools.
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Michael Kaufman
Thanks for taking time out of your afternoon to do some creative work with us today. How many of you have ever been to a workshop before?
(a couple of hands raised)
What is a workshop? Do any of you have a workshop in your home, your garage, your barn? (several hands raised) Okay, I guess it’s a complicated question. We’re going to take the idea of having a space to make things and apply it to the group of people we have assembled here.
There will be four groups that we will work with in the next couple of days. We’re going to ask each group to give input and recommendations for the board to consider. You have three activities to do today. The first is to make a poster. You will be in groups.
In one of the activities you’re going to build a model and you will be video taped telling the story of what you created. Be creative and then share your work with others.
Find a breakout area in the back of the room. Go to one with people you don’t know. The assignment is waiting for you there.
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Scribing
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