Noble High School serves 1,177 students from three towns in rural Maine. Their Multiple Pathways Program (MPP) currently serves approximately 35 students who have demonstrated the need for a more personalized and supportive approach to learning. The district partnered with Springpoint as part of the Barr Foundation’s Engage New England initiative to support the MPP’s design work, which will include an expansion of the program.
Noble High School has always worked to reach all of its students. Five years ago, the school decided to re-evaluate their alternative education program and make key changes to address problems they heard from students including a feeling of disconnection and a lack of community. An intake process for admission was instituted and more resources were allocated, such as vans for field trips and real world learning experiences. Following concrete changes and a few philosophical ones, “magic happened,” according to Jen England, the Program Director of the MPP and a key design team member.
“Students started to feel like they had a community,” Jen continued. “They made decisions together and took more ownership over their education. Our work in the Engage New England initiative is exciting because we are set to not only expand our services further to reach more students, but to better serve the students we are working with who are some of the most vulnerable populations in this region of rural Maine.”
Starting by Understanding Students
Since June 2017, a design team from Noble High School has been working closely with Springpoint on a thoughtful and deliberate design process, starting with a thorough Understand phase to get a sense of students’ assets, needs, and aspirations. The design team conducted focus groups, surveys, and other research activities to generate a composite student portrait, which has served as a foundational document, guiding designers as they create a set of experiences that will support students to graduation and beyond.
The student portrait also drove the development of the program’s “design foundation documents”, which includes a mission, instructional vision, and set of core values. These documents are tied to the wider Noble High School’s philosophies but infused with additional priorities and values based on what the team heard from their student population. According to Assistant Principal Alison Kearney, “the Multiple Pathways Program shares the same high standards of Noble High School, with a unique layer of personalization to help students achieve their goals and graduate in a way that works best for them. [This means that] the standards and checkpoints have a lot in common but the way that students get there is different.”
Partnering with Students to Design
When the team transitioned from the Understand phase to the Design phase, they made sure student voices and ideas continued to be represented. Students are key members of the design team and have valuable insights. They feel like true partners to the adults, and vice versa. “Input from kids has made it exciting for me,” said Jen. “They are part of these big changes—they don’t feel like adults are doing these changes to them. They are engaging in risk-taking, which is a skill we are always looking to cultivate.”
In discussing what makes student participation and engagement authentic, Jen said: “when kids are at the table in an authentic way it’s more than just checking a box. The conversions continue beyond designated design meetings. Kids are excited and they constantly have fresh ideas and fresh questions that they regularly email me and talk to me about. It’s not ‘one and done’—design work is part of our relationship now.”
Students also have an interest in cultivating community and having more of a voice in key decisions at the school, like input on the hiring process. They already have a big say in some decisions, like electing students of the month, which is done entirely by students for the MPP department, unlike the process for the rest of Noble High School’s departments where teachers pick.
Creating Aligned Milestones to Support Students
As a key step in the Design phase, the team is working to craft milestones aligned to the composite portrait and driven by the design foundation documents. Milestones, which are meant to articulate more than graduation requirements, will emphasize flexible, personalized pathways tailored to student needs and talents. For example, students may have the option to earn credits in an order that makes the most sense for them and can earn those credits in innovative ways, like the two students who wrote original albums to earn English credits. An interest in the arts was found to be widespread, in fact, but students struggled to find a place to express their artistic interests in valuable ways at school. The new model will have more performing arts options and musical instruments, a recording studio, and partnerships with professional artists, like local poets and musicians.
The design team married this finding about the arts with the insight that students “feel like their best selves when they are helping others,” according to Nancy Simard, a guidance counselor in the MPP. This led to innovative design features like credit-earning opportunities to mentor younger students in art at the elementary school. Students work closely with the teacher, earning credits in a nontraditional way that connects them to the community. “Often, students come to the program without much self-confidence,” said Nancy. “This mentorship structure makes them feel good about helping others, which builds that confidence.”
Living in a rural area can present a multitude of challenges, including with transportation. For students, there is a sense of freedom and autonomy to getting their licenses so the design team is exploring how to support students to do so—like certifying a teacher to lead Driver’s Ed or assisting with driving time—which could manifest as an optional milestone.
Self-reflection is another theme carried over from the Understand phase. Student-led conferences, an electronic portfolio, and a capstone project provide opportunities for not only self-reflection but community collaboration, and voice and choice too. One student’s capstone, for instance, focuses on the challenges that transgender students face in poor communities. The student did research on the resources that are available in the community, reached out and interviewed advocated and therapists who specialize in this area, and brought their learnings to the wider community to help students who face commons issues in the transgender community.