We spoke with Tom Brodnitzki from Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) about his organization’s design process, which will result in the launch of Impact Academy this fall. As design lead, Tom is passionate about building opportunities for students to engage in rich learning experiences outside of school. He spoke with us about how this year’s pilot program is exploring experiential opportunities, developing a competency-based system, and how student voice is driving his high school model design work.
How are students involved in the design process?
This year, we are fortunate to have eight students in a pilot program who offer real-time feedback and insights about their learning experiences at Impact. From the start, we have included students in every feedback loop and elicited their expertise and perspective in design thinking sessions, giving them ownership and a voice in the process. We are intentional about gathering this feedback because, more than anything, we want students to want to come to Impact Academy. Adults cannot just talk about what we think students need, it has to come from the students we serve.
Why are you trying to connect students to learning opportunities outside of school?
Our design team is committed to creating a school that makes learning relevant for students. When school feels like the same thing every day, students who are disengaged will become more disengaged. That sounds obvious, but it’s a driving insight as we think about how to create something that looks and feels different from traditional school structures. One way our design team makes this real is by connecting students to opportunities in their own communities as a way to create a sense of relevance and excitement. Learning can resonate doubly when taken out of a book, a classroom, or an online platform and brought into the real world. Even simply showing students that they can learn anytime and anywhere is empowering. The definition of a missed opportunity is when students don’t see learning experiences that are right in front of them. Unfortunately, this happens as a result of traditional school structures sending the message that school is the only place to learn. We have to flip that on its head.
We hear this very message from students themselves. They have told me that experiential learning opportunities are among the most enjoyable and illuminating that we offer. Making the community their classroom exposes students to new things and gets them excited about interesting opportunities they may not have otherwise considered. Students have asked for field experiences outside of Hartford as well, which aligns with the overarching goal of maximizing exposure to new opportunities.
Have you formed any community partnerships in this pilot year?
We have had initial successes connecting with local community-based organizations and are excited to keep exploring and cultivating relationships. This year, we worked with the Hartford Public Library to get into their YOUmedia program, which not only gave us access to a great local space but also helped familiarize students with the valuable resources that the library offers. Students became invested in the library and use their offerings in and outside of school projects. Another example is our work with Knox, a local community beautification organization. As part of our urban ecology class, students toured the Knox grounds and met with the organization’s executive director. This trip demonstrated how physical transformation and beautification can empower a community. The experience inspired our students to build garden beds on our school’s property as part of the class. We are working to further expand our partnership to participate in their programming and work with local urban farmers.
As we build out our school model, our curriculum will shape how we weave community partnerships into our scope and sequence as a key way to bolster student engagement. We’ve explored conversations with a number of local actors, including the Urban League of Hartford and the YMCA. I have found that initial touchpoints are good openings into larger conversations about collaboration. For example, our students toured the new UCONN campus in Hartford with the associate director—who is now a member of our design team. We’ve also worked to leverage existing partnerships the district already has, such as the Hartford Stage, who we hope can plug into our school this fall.
How are you crafting a schedule that allows for this?
Our students have been failed by traditional schools which means that a traditional schedule—40-minute classes for 180 days, or 80-minute block classes for 90 days—has not worked for them. We know that and we cannot recreate that structure here. Our schedule must be flexible to student needs and has to facilitate relevant and engaging project-based work. Finding a schedule that works for our students will be a learning process. For the upcoming year, we have developed a schedule that provides students with the opportunity to earn half credits through 6-week courses, which will all include field experiences.
An intentionally and flexibly designed schedule can protect time for immersive experiences that root our school in the community and enhance student learning. The opportunities are limitless; we can host programming off-site each morning for a week, or design college and career readiness around college partnerships, or give students the space to leave the school for credit-bearing internships.
What’s another innovative system/structure you are excited about?
We are building out a competency-based system in which our core competencies align to three buckets: social, personal, intellectual. These categories are informed by habits of success that we culled from literature on positive youth development, social-emotional learning, and national best practices. Our students and design team members have helped shape these competencies. Our Engage New England network friends also weighed in during Springpoint’s recent Denver Learning Tour, which provided robust working time for us to test out and further refine several design ideas. I look forward to leveraging these competencies to help students re-engage in learning, find academic success, and discover their passions.
I am also excited about kicking off the school year with a three-week, credit-bearing Introduction to Impact for students where we define the expectations of the school community with the students, begin to build school culture in partnership alongside students, and familiarize them with the school model. I envision it as a “disorientation” where we break down the notions and structures of traditional school that have failed our students. Disorientation will cultivate trusting relationships between all members of the school community and illustrate for students that Impact Academy is a unique and innovative learning environment. As our Springpoint coach said, a credit-bearing disorientation session gives students “an early win” where they earn credit, feel accomplished, and get used to the feeling of success.
Finally, as we conceptualize our scope and sequence, our design team sees personalized projects as a major part of our work to tie together our competency framework, relevant curriculum, and embedded community learning. For example, students might design a walking tour of their city that looks at the strengths of the community. They could highlight what is important to them, and think about the experience of their audience, designing the tour around personal, social, and intellectual competencies.