Program aims to engage students outside classroom

A new pilot program in Whitefish schools is hoping to get students engaged and learning outside of the classroom.

The Whitefish School Board on Dec. 13 unanimously approved the personalized projects program, which would offer class credit for internships, service projects, work-based learning and entrepreneurship opportunities to students. Eventually the school district plans to offer the program to students in fourth, eighth and 11th grade.

“The purpose of this was to create options and avenues for the actualization and realization of deeper learning,” Ryder Delaloye, director of curriculum and instruction for the district, said. “We’re hoping to create opportunities for students to engage in meaningful project-based learning experiences.”

The pilot will begin when classes resume in January and will likely extend only to current juniors and seniors for now. The program will run for up to 18 months, depending on the length of the projects.

Board chair Shawn Watts said the program is something the board is excited to hear updates on in the future.

“This is a new way of bringing to life to learning, so it’s fascinating. I would think we can’t hear enough about this as it progresses,” he said.

In the fourth grade projects, students will explore an issue affecting them and their community, working in small groups to understand the issue from different perspectives and developing an action plan to address the issue, according to the district. After following through with the action plan, students will demonstrate what they’ve learned in a public forum.

In the eighth grade projects, students can choose a community service project or a personal investigation project, an in-depth inquiry into a topic they find interesting.

Juniors will identify service learning or internship experience goal in their careers and college readiness class and construct a plan to pursue the goal with the help of mentors and community-based partners. The entrepreneurship and employment projects also allow juniors to have applied career experiences. In this project, students will develop a business plan, prototype their products and launch them through the support of a business incubator plan.

All students will be required to document and reflect on their findings when their project concludes. Students will be graded on a rubric tailored to their grade and project type.

A big priority for the pilot program is to give students beginning college applications a meaningful project they can use to demonstrate growth.

“Oftentimes students go through school and they have a lot of academic and school-based experiences, and when they’re asked to respond in their college applications to something that was meaningful, to ways that they did transform as learners, this provides that opportunity,” Delaloye said “I really believe that if a student engages in a meaningful personalized project, they’re going to grow in ways that will become evident in their pursuit of college and career. There’s going to be a really unique voice that emerges from this experience.”

The board showed concern over placing too much of an extra burden on teachers who act as mentors for students’ projects, but Delaloye said the goal is to split up mentorship responsibilities between teachers and business leaders in the community. While there is an emphasis on keeping the mentors’ workload low, Delaloye said there will be more required work from teachers in the initial pilot.

Students also wouldn’t have a dedicated class period for their projects.

Superintendent Heather Davis Schmidt said the high school’s flex schedule would likely come into play as an opportune work time for the projects, and the projects should be thought of as an extension program outside of normal classes.

A few years ago Whitefish High School implemented a hybrid block schedule involving a mix of standard and longer class periods. As part of the schedule, students have a flex academic period that some students use to take a class while others use it as a time to work on homework or on special projects.