We had hoped that since Industries and Humanities were new, it would be easier to build in AAI from the start. We were going to have to develop curriculum for the year, anyway. There were definitely advantages to that, but there was also a disadvantage--goal overload. As the year went on, our idea of what we would be able to do in that school year grew progressively smaller. When we first met in October, we thought that we would do a big AAI project in the second quarter--maybe an oral history. As it became later in the fall and winter, we planned for the third quarter, then the final term. We finally agreed to just continue to experiment throughout the year. That proved useful because it took the pressure off us and gave us the freedom to make mistakes. What we learned through our research and experiments shaped the new Pathways course, as well as the Humanities curriculum.
We found that it was unrealistic to expect someone teaching full-time to find the time to do research, especially research that requires making calls or going to libraries during Monday-Friday working hours. For example, we would like to look at microenterprise in other countries, bringing in issues of how to stimulate and direct economic development, the roles of banks, and so on. It is a neat idea, but we have not been able to follow up on it yet. One option we found to alleviate the time problem was to involve one of our student teachers in the development effort. She helped us put some other ideas into action by finding readings and other information for us. For other teachers, it might be a good idea to have a college or graduate student who could play such research roles.
Throughout our team's work, we kept coming back to the question of when we, the core design team, should involve the other teachers. We did not want to develop something and then hand it to them because we would not get buy-in. On the other hand, we knew that if we brought the ideas to others too early, they might reject the whole effort as too vague, not feasible. Our general approach was to go to the other teachers with a preliminary plan and let them punch holes in it, then revise the plan. We all agreed that you cannot do the nuts-and-bolts work as a group. It is better to use a group to brainstorm ideas.
The importance of our physical settings has become more evident as we have tried different programs. In the programs that have involved vocational teachers staying in their shops (such as the Electric Vehicle Project and Industries), vocational teachers have found themselves slipping into old habits, doing what they have always done. That tendency works against new efforts to integrate subject areas and to increase emphasis on the nontechnical aspects of the industry (such as finance). Part of the success of Pathways is that it is based in a different space. Students visit the shop areas to work for specific projects, but then return to the Pathways room. During 1995-1996, Rindge is converting half of the carpentry shop into a "tech lab" for the Introductions to Technology class. Ideally, all of the shops would be transformed into centers of technology designed for multidisciplinary projects. The difficulty, of course, is the expense.
Our work on AAI and vocational and academic integration brought to the forefront some issues that usually stay under the table. If we were going to do in-depth integration, we needed to agree on the expected outcomes. Teachers do not usually do that--especially across disciplines. We were used to making our own decisions for the classes we teach. Now, we find ourselves struggling to balance coverage of material with depth of understanding.
Offering academic subjects in a vocational context presents teachers and administrators with a number of interesting choices. The first choice is whether to teach academic courses "in-house" at all. This decision must be made before any decisions about course style or content can be made. Socioeconomic factors are a major consideration. Vocational students tend to be socioeconomically disadvantaged when compared to most other school populations at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS), the general high school with which Rindge is affiliated. As Rindge has grown and changed, it has attracted a more diverse student population; however, the school still enrolls a higher percentage of at-risk students than any other CRLS program, and the socioeconomic status of the parents remains the best statistical predictor of who will enroll in Rindge.
The argument made by opponents of in-house academics is that these classes can concentrate on students with behavioral and academic problems and may be perceived as an educational ghetto removed from the high school mainstream. The argument made by proponents of in-house academics is that in-house classes build solidarity and community, can be more specifically tailored to the needs of the students, and most important of all, offer at least the potential for integration with vocational studies. One additional benefit of in-house classes is that they allow students to avoid having their classroom experiences dominated by the stereotyping of vocational students that sometimes takes place (or so students report) in classes taught outside the house. Rindge students who receive academic instruction in other houses are almost unanimous in saying that they are stereotyped in the rest of the school. Little is expected of them, and they are often made to feel like second-class citizens. As discussed above, Rindge has been moving towards an "in-house" model for academic teaching.
One issue that is too central to completely ignore, but also too large to discuss at any length in this context, is the tracking that occurs within schools and the reality that, in many schools, vocational education continues to function as an academic "dumping ground." Many factors are involved, most notably socioeconomic discrimination, racial discrimination, deindustrialization, socioeconomic decline, and the tendency of Americans to denigrate even the most highly skilled manual labor.
We see at least two negative consequences of tracking. One is that some students have less access to challenging educational, particularly academic, opportunities. The other is segregation. In Cambridge, where a desegregation order requires that all of the houses in the high school have roughly the same racial composition, the groupings tend to be by family income.
Tracking thrives on a lack of access to rigorous academics. Access is not just offering the course but offering the subject matter in a way that all students can learn it. Our hope at Rindge is that by bringing academics in-house and using experiential methods (via vocational-academic integration), we can make strong academics more accessible.
We also want to directly counter the idea that some students should be prepared to go to college and to white-collar jobs, and others should be trained to go directly into blue-collar employment. We are trying to educate all of our students so that they are prepared for both routes. Because it crosses white- and blue-collar lines and blurs the distinction between vocational and academic learning, an AAI approach improves our ability to do that.
For additional information, contact
Jim DeLena, Mannuel Goncalves, or Mark McDonough
The Rindge School of Technical Arts
459 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 349-6598 or 6751