After assessing the situation at South Division High School, we began with the knowledge that we were all competent, caring teachers. And we wanted students to learn OUR subject matter. Now we needed to want students to learn ALL subject matter. Why was this so difficult? We had different areas of expertise but not different agendas.
This integration of subject areas, this inclusion of AAI into everyone's neat, clean, little curriculum is painful. This expansion of traditional curriculum across the hallway is undefined. Opening the outside doors of a school to industry is frightening. What do any of us know about the other? Nothing. And that was what WAS wrong.
This is the story of a group of teachers at South Division High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the group's journey as it traveled along the path of educational reform. It is a road that integrates a vocational program called Hospitality Management with the academics and the meshing of AAI into the curriculum.
We would like to share our work walk with you. We would like to share our successes, as well as tell you about the roadblocks we have stumbled upon along our path. We would like to share how we became a team of teachers who respected one another's curriculum and shared a common purpose.
Our journey begins at South Division High School, a large, urban high school located on the near the south side of Milwaukee. Milwaukee, with a population of a little more than 600,000, has fifteen high schools all dealing with the same challenges of many urban high schools.
South Division is a school with a considerable history. In 1993, the school and alumni celebrated its centennial. And while the school is 100 years old, the recent facility was built in 1977. The school is big, bright, and a community showcase. One hundred years ago the community surrounding South Division was newly settled with Polish immigrants. Today the area is home to much of Milwaukee's Hispanic community, Southeast Asians, and many new immigrants to the United States. Poverty, crime, gangs, and teen pregnancy are a sad reality for many of our students.
Since the christening of the new building, we have seen many changes, reforms, and initiatives. Just prior to moving into the new school, Milwaukee, along with other urban school districts, was dealing with the issue of desegregation. Milwaukee's superintendent, Lee McMurrin, proposed an idea entitled "High Schools Unlimited," in which each senior high school, in addition to providing a basic program, would serve as a magnet to draw students from across the city as well as from other school districts. This specialty or magnet school concept was used as a tool for integration in the first phase of compliance for desegregation. In addition, it also laid the early groundwork for our integrated curriculum efforts and industry-focused programs. Desegregation gave us some deep roots. We planted a lot of seeds before it was the "thing to do."
To determine what specialties would be offered, a task force was established to determine where the jobs would be in the 1980s and 1990s. One area the task force felt strongly about in Wisconsin was in the area of recreation, tourism, and food service. These three specialties were put under an umbrella called "The Leisure Time Occupations" (now called Hospitality Management). Although there was opposition from members of South Division's community regarding the subservient image of the specialties, they opened with the new high school in 1977.
The tourism curriculum is designed to prepare students for careers in the expanding travel and tourism industries. The program is housed in a facility called the Hospitality Center. As one enters the facility, one sees a front-desk area that was designed by the Wisconsin Innkeepers. The front desk is adjoined by a mock hotel lobby and a simulated guest room. The lobby area is next to a restaurant dining room which adjoins a state-of-the-art kitchen that has equipment to allow for the development of skills in the fast food, institutional, and commercial operations. The Recreation Specialty which prepares students for careers in sports, parks, and recreation is housed in a large field house.
South Division, with a student population of 1,800, is the most culturally diverse school in Wisconsin. Three percent of the population are Native American, 24% African American, 5% Asian, 52% Hispanic, and 16% white. The attendance rate is 75% and a typical grade point average is 1.43.
In an effort to address the problems and lack of achievement of many students, South Division has seen many changes and many reforms since the new school opened. Seventeen years and seven principals later, the three specialties are still an active force within the school. However, we have changed with the years, and there have been many influences on what and how we teach today and the road we have traveled.
There are many forces driving our curriculum along its path. In 1988, there was concern among the community that we were training our students for skilled jobs and not for higher-level managerial positions. (All Aspects of the Industry [AAI], where were you then?) Our answer was to strengthen the postsecondary options available to our students. Articulation agreements with Milwaukee Area Technical College and formal partnerships with the Universities of Wisconsin at Stout and LaCrosse have had a positive impact on our curriculum, programs, and the successes of our graduates.
The three hospitality vocational programs at South, while all under the same umbrella, were in separate departments and were offered as separate programs. Because of our articulation partnership, more and more of our students went on to postsecondary education. What we found in postsecondary education curriculum, as well as in the industries of recreation, tourism, and food service was that they were not separate industries but a combined package. Consequently, in trying to meet the needs of postsecondary education, industry, our students, and our graduates, we began the first steps of our integration by combining all three programs at the freshman and sophomore levels and calling them Hospitality Management. At the junior and senior levels, we could give students the opportunity to specialize.
Different initiatives have opened new pathways along our road to reform. The Ford Foundation funded a program called Cardinal Academic Pride that worked with students on self-esteem; this was our first attempt at crosscurricular instruction. Outcome-Based Education came and went, yet this also taught us about alternative forms of assessment. The South Division vision brought technology into the school, a computer in every classroom, and eight student labs. In addition, the K-12 curriculum, a district initiative establishing goals and outcomes for all Milwaukee Public Schools, marked the beginning of school-to work district initiatives. Each of these reforms laid groundwork for the Hospitality Management Program, but none have had a greater impact than the pendulum swinging to Tech Prep.
In the 1992 school year, the Hospitality Management Program, along with a manufacturing program at South, began the first steps of an integrated program called School to Work Integrated Studies (SWIS). We started our integration efforts at the freshman level and integrated geography, English, and hospitality management. One geography teacher, two English teachers, and a hospitality management teacher comprised the team, and common planning was the key to the team's success the first year. Thematic units were created as a way to integrate the curriculum.
We expanded the program the next year, and we saw exciting things happening at the district level as well. The school board formally adopted the school-to-work concept in the fall of 1993 for all students K-12. The fall of 1993 also saw the continuation of a freshman SWIS team and the addition of a sophomore team. The sophomore team continued to integrate hospitality management, English, and social studies. The freshman team added two math teachers to the team.
Integrating AAI at South Division
AAI has offered a rich soil in which our curriculum can grow. The inclusion of the components of AAI into the Perkins Act has validated the integration of our vocational and academic curricula.
In 1993, after one year of integration under our belt, we were introduced to AAI. It was not a new concept. After all, we had always taught entrepreneurship, types of business organization, finance, labor relations, and so on, mostly in vocational classes. In addition, these aspects were taught in different subject areas, at different grade levels, and at different times during the year; thus, AAI was something that was woven in and out of our curriculum in a somewhat fragmented and implicit fashion. Our year working with the other schools in these case studies around AAI allowed us to broaden our curriculum. It gave us a whole new focus, as we moved from skill-specific to industry-wide transferable skills. Transferability was mutually desirable by vocational and academic teachers. The academic teachers wanted to make sure the knowledge and content of their areas was something that students saw as relevant. The vocational teacher needed the students to know math, English, and so on, to be successful. By integrating around AAI, students could better see why they had to know math, English, and so on.
The hospitality industry is a broad industry. By teaching AAI, we felt our students would be better prepared for career change within the hospitality industry. While we would like to think all of our graduates would continue with careers in hospitality, we knew this would not happen. The "meat" of AAI was in all industries. What our students understood about finance in the hospitality industry, they would be able to transfer to other careers. (Remember: We change careers five to eight times in a lifetime.)
We were also aware that many of the jobs our students would have were not even in existence today. The AAI platform, along with the integrated academics, allowed students to leave high school with broad skills in all aspects of an industry and to be prepared for the 21st century. Furthermore, we believed that AAI could be a platform for higher academics because we had increased expectations of what industry would demand. The inclusion of rigorous academic standards and AAI has prepared our students to move beyond entry-level jobs.
AAI gave a lot of substance to "our" old vocational program. Vocational programs have always had the stigma of being the dumping ground for the underachieving students. AAI creates respect between subject-area staff and students. It also creates a framework with which to work to merge vocational and academic instruction. AAI allows us to change with industry, where in the past we were three steps behind what the industry needed. AAI allows for transferability of skills and has moved us from a job-specific to an industry-wide focus.
AAI forced us to look at the internship sites where our senior-level students were placed. We needed to find training sites that offered students an opportunity to experience all aspects of an industry. Training plans needed to fall on the AAI format. AAI reinforced the need for shadowing opportunities for our students. Shadowing experiences needed to be directed towards management as opposed to specific entry-level occupations (i.e., the manager as opposed to the front office clerk).
Since the conception of our program, we have battled the negative image of our industry. AAI is a wonderful tool to change that perception. With AAI, we not only train our students for entry-level jobs, we broaden their horizons by allowing them to look at an entire industry. The issue is how to market that to the community.
When we taught AAI in isolation (prior to the NCRVE AAI project), our students had difficulty seeing the connection of AAI to the real world of industry. We found it was much easier to teach students AAI through a project. It was not always that way. We used to lecture with overheads as we individually dissected the parts of entrepreneurship, business, and so on. Yet, curriculum becomes more meaningful and applicable when taught through projects and woven in and out of a curriculum. Projects provide a way to connect AAI and to integrate it with the academics. As we looked at AAI and looked at the issues facing an industry, it became easy to teach issues using social studies, math, English, and so on.
While we feel that AAI is an excellent model of what every industry does, we learned that one crucial area was missing--the aspect that deals with human development. Human development encompasses goal setting, self-esteem, quality of work, ethics, responsibility, initiative, dependability, being a team player, and attitude. Since human development skills are essential to personal and industry successes, we feel obligated to teach and expect them from our students.
The Evolution of Project Orientation
AAI has also provided rich soil in which to integrate academics with vocational content. It gave a much broader focus to our curriculum and consequently gave us a lot more "meat" to teach with. Themes and units of study were so easy to pull from when using projects and integration in an AAI format. Project ideas were generated from input of industry advisory boards, student interest, vocational service organizations, school needs and requests, and local and state curriculum initiatives.
Before discussing the various projects that teachers have developed over the years, it is important for readers to understand the evolution and rational for becoming project oriented:
We found it was hard for students to relate to an industry. Projects provided hands-on experience that helped students better relate to a broad industry. In addition, projects gave a group of integrated teachers a focus. It gave teachers support as they merged vocational and academics into projects that imitated the real world.
In the next section, we explain our initial team project for better utilizing AAI in our program. Within this section, we discuss our goals and planning, why our project did not work, how the original project changed, and next year's project.