Developing Passion and Purpose
[Sponsored Article]
A popular quip across The Harbour School’s campuses is that being a student at THS is a bit like being a regular at Cheers - everybody knows your name. This reality is not only a product of being a small community with low student to teacher ratios, it is also indicative of the organization’s belief that the best educational programs engage students on an individual level.
In a world where information is so readily accessible, the value proposition of brick and mortar schools must extend beyond knowledge transfer to generating educational experiences that help students access and leverage their talents and interests toward future goals. The call is to do more than inform or instruct. But how can one facilitate individualized programs in settings traditionally set up to mass produce experiences?
Plenty of emphasis is given in workplace literature to the value of engaging in work that is personally meaningful, yet very little about traditional schooling models concerns itself with generating experiences that tap into what motivates students - that is, what genuine purpose does or could drive them to examine a topic or field of study in a genuine, in-depth way and make them want to take ownership. At THS, heavy emphasis is put on understanding what passions motivate students and tapping into those to produce an educational experience that is both memorable and relevant to their lives right now and those they hope to lead.
When designing courses, teachers at the high school collect tangible data around students’ topical preferences to embed in the class design. Believing that individuals learn more when their interests and sense of purpose are engaged, the staff surveys their target audience. In a recent survey, for example, students expressed interest in courses related to cooking, psychology, engineering, and European history. The subsequent course catalog included classes entitled Food Chemistry, Adolescent Psychology, Physics and Engineering, and The Defense Disappears - a class on the history of Europe during World War II.
The modularized, integrated curriculum at THS lends itself to developing courses which leverage students interests - ones often derived from the careers and studies they hope to pursue. It is an environment that seeks to know students at an individual level and adapt even core functions like curriculum planning to the specific needs of the students who are actually there - not the average population. The underlying assumption being that individuals who are more engaged in and take greater ownership of their learning will be more successful at it.
In addition to generating classroom content that taps into community interests, all high school students are required to complete an Independent Study Module (ISM) each academic year. Their ISMs amount to a self-designed course around a topic of specific interest to them. They are asked in the first term to conduct in-depth, scaffolded research on an area that they are interested in at either the academic, career, or hobby level.