The CHS staff met at school on October 18 to talk about education, where it could go, and what a graduate would look like.  

The result?  Ten small groups created Senior Grad Profiles, which will now be broken down by small committees which could create comprehensive changes to the school.

Mairi Scott-Aguirre, the principal at CHS, gave an in-depth explanation of how this could affect the school.

Mairi seemed very excited about this change,”This is all about where education is going, and what students need for life, whether it is the workforce, or being a mother and raising your children well, joining the armed services, or going to a four-year university.  There are many different ways students could go.”

“We want them to be able to succeed at the next level,” she said.  So when the staff got together, they came up with graphic organizers of the different traits, the knowledge, skills, and interpersonal or reflection skills.

U.S. History and Criminal Justice teacher, Robert Havrilla said, “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a goal established of what we want and expect of our grads. How it changes things isn’t up to the teachers, it’s up to how the students buy into it.”

Malik White, a student teacher for US History also commented, “It’s gonna take all students buying into it and making it happen.”

English Teacher Emma Wood said, “Basically the way we do school is a factory model, all about efficiency, and it is like making cars.”  That isn’t how it should be, she said.

“But instead of making cars, we are teaching students. The article was about how the way we do school is outdated, and we need something more globalized,¨ she said.

Piroska Balogh a Chemistry and College Biology teacher said, “It can be positive if it is really well thought out, if there is a thorough plan before anything is implemented.”

“We have a tendency to just do things halfway, not plan it out very well, and then we just plunge into it and then try to figure out all of the problems we now have because we plunged into something before we were ready. I think it’s gonna be a long process and that’s why I am a little ambivalent about it. If  it is well thought out,” Balogh said.

Ben Petersen said, “(This is) positive, we will actually have a school wide plan, because right now we just kinda throw classes at you, and hope you can figure it out. But the grad profiles allow us to have a vision or help you have a vision,” 

“Students would then be given classes to fit around what they want to do. It kind of forces us to think about what is important to you, for example right now we say everyone needs three years of math and 4 years of English but that’s a very traditional way of school. It’s gonna shake everything up,” he said.

“If after junior year you change what you wanna do, we then have to shift everything to change your classes that match. A 15 or 16-year-old shouldn’t have to choose what they want to do for the rest of their life,” he said.