Everybody Has an Opinion About What the School Should Be with Justin Bathon Transformative Principal 389

Feb 21, 2021

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Dr. Justin Bathon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies at the University of Kentucky and serves as a Co-Director of the Center for Next Generation Leadership.

He is the Director of Innovative School Models for the College of Education. He is a co-Director of the Next Generation Leadership Academy at the College and a co-director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE). Justin works directly with schools and school leaders to reform the systems that support the learner experience in school.

STEAM Academy High School
Byproduct of Next Generation Leadership Academy. Original mission to smooth the transition to higher education.
So many involved in creating what that high school should be.
4 separate dual credit partnerships.
Paired relationship back to just Bluegrass community college.
Designing a high school from scratch is awesome.
Semester model, Canvas LMS
Lots of iterations, and still evolving,
Didn’t really want early graduation, but it started happening
In the early years, it was leader as designer.
Try an idea 3 times. If we weren’t satisfied then we would abandon it.
A lot of those ideas came from me, the ivory tower guy.
Everybody has an opinion about what the school should be!
We became gatekeepers of ideas.
That brought a lot more confusion into the space, and so we abandoned it.
There had to be something that made us feel like it could be great.
Second time, it couldn’t be worse.
Third time: Distinctly better.
That first year was pretty abysmal.
The kids didn’t mind the chaos because it was equal to what they experienced in the regular school.
Bias toward equity.
When you have a bias toward equity, you are always on the right ethical side of that choice.
Core equity practice to not do credit recovery online only.
Tina Stephenson, Chris Flores, and Eric Ridd
Can we do this model for all kids?
We abandoned the idea if it only worked for part of our kids.
We focused on models that built opportunity after opportunity for kids.
Some kids just need more time. We’re trying to buy them time.
Authentic relationships with our community.
You don’t just call yourself a PBL school, you have to learn that.
We gained trust in our community.
Our students accessed the whole of what Lexington felt like.
Things that took iteration.
Complete failure on Standards Based Grading.
How to work well with higher ed. Higher ed can be flexible.
The mentality about how they approach their perspectives is very different.
When working with Colleges on dual credit, come with a model and concept to someone at the provost level or above.
Project Moonshot - New approach to dual credit, focus on collaborative teaching.
Adding two adults to students - one from high school, and one from the University.
Only high schools that are willing to participate in the network get the dual credit in the schools.
Progressive, constructivist education.
Push is to change high school.
Help kids make the next step sooner and smoother.
Your future earning potential is deeply tied to what you accomplished after high school.
Broadly define college as a step after high school and not sole as the 4 year liberal arts degree.

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