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Raising Sights by Integrating Work and School

Type: Example from Schools Author(s): Kathleen Cushman Source: Performance. Vol. 9. June 1994.

Fenway Middle College High School
Bunker Hill Community College
250 Rutherford Avenue
Boston, MA 02129
617-635-9911

Co-Directors: Larry Myatt and Linda Nathan
200 students 9-12, 12 faculty
79% minority students
Alternative public high school

The future starts in high school for these students, who mingle with college kids in their building and with professionals in their workplace collaboratives.

THIS PLACE DOESN'T FEEL LIKE a high school?not in the building, where students busy themselves, without bells to prompt them, in labs and library and lounge, and not in the classes, where teachers and students converse with ease and respect. Watching kids take off for their hospital internships or day-care pick-ups, you'd think you were in a college?and you'd be right.

Fenway Middle College High School has staked its future on the conviction that some students will perform better out of the confines of traditional settings and closer to the world of work and college. With the cooperation of Bunker Hill Commu-nity College, this Boston alternative high school has built a program others across the nation are watching closely for its innovative approach to educating young adults at risk of dropping out of the system.

A "middle college" situates high school students on a college campus, giving them more independence and academic resources while coaching them through a secondary school curriculum. An early member of the Coalition of Essential Schools, Fenway evolved to this approach over a patchy ten-year course. It began in 1983 as a program for at-risk students within Boston English High School and weathered two moves and several policy shifts before finding an autonomous home at Bunker Hill's hulking concrete campus. The latest plans call for an even more independent status in 1995, as Fenway negotiates new freedom from district regulations.

But the continual administrative setbacks of its first decade only underline the remarkable staying power of this school's determination to see its goals to fruition. After a decade Fenway is not only thriving at the high school level but expanding its program downwards to sixth grade. "It's hard to help kids turn their lives around if you only have a year or two to work with them," says Larry Myatt, who with Linda Nathan led Fenway through its early years. "We need to start them younger."

And the school's program has evolved into an extraordinary partnership with area institutions, which is directed at raising the academic sights of minority students, especially in the area of science.

Keeping Kids in the System

Today, the school serves students from all of Boston's neighborhoods. Though many Fenway students are over-age for their class, in most other ways?race, ethnicity, academic achievement, socioeconomic status?they match the typical Boston Public Schools high school student profile. Many enter Fenway with academic skills two or more years below grade level and with little previous expectation of graduating, much less entering on a lifetime of successful learning. Others have better- developed skills, but chafe at the lock-step nature of traditional schooling. Attracted by Fenway's reputation as a personal environment with high academic expectations, most are giving school its last chance.

By the time they leave, the record shows, Fenway will more than likely have won the gamble. Despite the disruption of site changes, dropout rates here are 20 to 30 points lower than for comparison groups from other Boston city schools. Students here come to school more regularly. And they are far more apt to go on to college or a professional training program.

Fenway has worked toward this success using two approaches: engaging students in active, inquiry-based interdisciplinary coursework, and forging a link between real-world experience and student learning and motivation. "Our humanities course, for example, has made kids readers again and enabled them to find relevance and connections in classic literature," says Myatt. "Our integrated math curriculum builds on authentic work and a project orientation." Making academic work accessible and meaningful again to students who had lost their way in other settings, he argues, may be Fenway's most important mission.

In addition to classwork, every student belongs to one of several workplace collaboratives?spon-sored by Children's Hospital, by the Boston Museum of Science, and by CVS stores with the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and North- eastern University. Starting in ninth grade, kids' academic work ties in with problems from the workplace. They might follow the medical progress of a particular patient, for example, exploring the ethical dilemmas that arise in treatment decisions. They might chart the development of a new medicine from lab to pharmacy shelf. Or they might design a plan for a new CVS store in a particular neighborhood, researching demographic and regulatory information that affects site decisions and stock.

Juniors leave school an hour and a half early from midyear on, to rotate through a variety of positions at their work site; a summer job there also awaits them. Seniors spend part of every day on the job; during the last semester before graduation they step into a full-time five-week internship and complete a research paper on a related topic. Mentors from each institution not only supervise students on site, but often volunteer to tutor them in academic work.

The intent is to make a meaningful context for students' academic work across the disciplines, to create a culture where their work matters, and to supply the structure and opportunity for making fruitful decisions about future career choices, with a particular emphasis on math and science. The payoff in confidence and maturity is also evident, note Fenway's workplace partners. "I have watched students develop from nervous teen-agers to responsible professionals," says Mary Ellen Harrison, who manages laboratory services for Children's Hospital and who has hired numbers of Fenway students upon graduation.

Fenway has taken pains to document its progress toward the goals set by staff, parents, and students. An evaluation completed in 1994 by the Boston firm Technical Development Corporation provided rich comparative data by charting student academic performance, postgraduate plans and realities, and the impressions of teachers, students, and parents. (See left.) The results portray a school with "important successes in motivating and engaging a diverse group of at-risk inner city students" and better academic performance than most Boston public schools.

Fenway does not regard keeping kids in school as its only mission, however. In the next years the school plans to extend its reach to younger students, to refine its curriculum and assess student work in new ways, to enhance opportunities to study at a college level, and to deepen its institutional partnerships. In looking for new approaches to its essential task?to raise students' expectations as they move from school to work to school?Fenway has set itself even greater challenges as it begins its second decade.

This resource last updated: May 14, 2002

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