The Boston Globe recently had a super uplifting article about Alafia Spencer, a high-school student who pushed her school system to start a specialized high school that focuses on engineering:
As a 10th grader [Spencer] sat through biology and geometry lectures about subjects she had long ago mastered. Bored, the aspiring aerospace engineer worried that the school wasn’t challenging enough for her or her classmates.
So last spring, when Boston school Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant sought ideas from students, teachers, and principals for themed high schools, the teenager raised her hand. The only student to do so, Spencer suggested an engineering school that would offer advanced classes in physics, chemistry, and computer science and let students take classes at nearby universities.
The idea sounds like a no-brainer, especially given how dismal a job many public high schools seem to do in preparing students for careers in science and math. But teachers tried to talk Spencer out of proposing her engineering high school at a meeting with the superintendent of schools.
But on the day Spencer had to present the idea for the engineering school to the superintendent, she still had not persuaded any Hyde Park teachers to support her proposal. Many of them had already committed to other teams led by colleagues, who wanted schools that focused on such subjects as social justice, business, and health. Several discouraged Spencer, advising her to join their teams because hers would not make the cut. One told her that teachers, not students, should be driving the proposals because teachers would be affected most by the changes.
Spencer’s response — that the teachers already had their degrees, and she wanted to know what they were going to do to help the students go to college — was awesome. She asked the would-be headmasters how they planned to raise MCAS scores and attendance, and reduce suspensions. In the end, she got her engineering school, with 350 students.
What a wonderful story! Thanks for bringing this to my attention—it is so neat to see a real teenaged girl who can be so unabashedly open about her enthusiasm for engineering and technical subjects that she helped make a whole school happen!
The teachers that tried to hold Miss Spencer back (Yes, I wrote “Miss” an there’s not a damn thing wrong with it either.) should be fired. I cannot understand how teachers so motivated by self interest should be allowed in a classroom. They are there for the students and not simply to secure a paycheck. The latter, the paycheck, comes as a result, rather, SHOULD come as a result of doing whatever possible to help a student learn, secure their future, and find there place with the talents in the human struggle.
Bravo to Miss Spencer. Here drive is inspiring. We need more young people like Miss Spencer in the world.
I don’t think the teachers should be fired. I do think it’s bizarre that they think the consumers of education shouldn’t be able to have input into the product, though.
Wow! That certainly is an inspiring story.