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April/May 2023 GRANITELIFE.ONLINE Page 5 Community
Franklin Team Goes to California to Learn How
With generous support from the Barr Foundation, eleven members of the Franklin school community went on a site visit to Mission Vista High School in Vista, California accompanied by facilitator, Carisa Corrow from Educating for Good. The trip coordinated by Next Generation Learning Challenge (NGLC) brought eight school teams from New England together to learn how Mission Vista uses project based learning as the vehicle for instruction and assessment.
Visiting team members in- cluded Superintendent Dan Le- Gallo, Principal David Levesque, School Board Chair Tim Dow,
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books and jumped right in.” The high schoolers took their volun- teer time very seriously as they made the whole experience inter- active and fun for the little ones. “I saw a high school student read- ing a Frog and Toad book to one young student and was asking the younger student questions about their best friend so they could relate it to the book,” Mazze informed me. Undoubtedly, the older students knew how to ap- proach a fun-filled time of read- ing by involving the little ones as much as they could. “It was cool to watch those connections being formed,” Mazze said.
The event took place over 1-2 hours, and both the high school and Paul Smith students got to choose a book. Kids gathered in small groups, as there was about one high school student to three elementary students. Then, ev- eryone was just gathered on the
Others Do School Differently
School Board Member Liz Cote, City Counselor Olivia Zink, community member Karen Dar- ling, local business owner Joel Nylander, parent Belinda Lums- den and three Franklin youth, Aila Lumsden, Rhys Nylander and Ellie Zink. The seven other visiting teams from Berkshire Hills Regional, Holyoke, Lam- oille South, VT, Lowell, Mil- ford, MA, Southern Berkshire Regional and Springfield, MA also had varied teams of parents, school board members, and ed- ucators. In all twenty students attended the visit.
Mission Vista is a dual-magnet high school in the Vista Unified
floor, reading and listening and just taking in the stories while their imaginations ran wild. “It was nice because we got to listen to the quiet hum of reading,” Mazze said.
“These kids got to share the love of reading,” the Assistant Principal said. “The older stu- dents were encouraging the little ones to love reading. They truly connected over the joy of read- ing.” These high schoolers went above and beyond for the Paul Smith kids, as they had no trou- ble taking on that leadership role.
The whole experience was one for the books. Overall, the positive event highlighted the high schoolers who showed in- credible leadership skills by en- couraging younger kids to love reading. There were even some students asking when they could come back and do it all again! And now, there is an elementary school full of kids who love and celebrate reading as they find their new favorite book.
School District with a current student population of 1,693. The school runs on a 4x4 block, which means students take four classes each semester for 90 min- utes each day. While demograph- ics, school size and location are all much different than Franklin, the purpose of the trip was not to compare, but to discover what might be useful to bring back.
The trip also allowed the team to connect with other high schools in New England who are thinking deeply about how to do high school differently in order to improve student outcomes to ensure each student is set up for post-secondary success.
“Having the opportunity to watch the student-led project based learning was enlightening and a worthwhile experience for me. My number one goal in at- tending was to see this in action, and I saw it and can’t wait to see how we do it in Franklin.” Tim Dow, Franklin School Board Chair
“It felt like the school was a community college. People were there because they wanted to be, students were engaged, teachers were engaged. There was a lot of pride.” Karen Darling
“Seeing student choice and personalization operationalized at a school was really rewarding
and fulfilling as we aspire to have choice and personalization for our students. They are living it.” Dan LeGallo, Superintendent SAU 18
“The type of people we took with us was important. Parents, students, community members. This was different than going with just educators. We got to hear feedback from them about how school could be done.” David Levesque, Principal Frank- lin High School
“The connection between stu- dents and teachers was apparent, and important to the school cul-
FRANKLIN TEAM
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