The Piedmont Highlander

The Student News Site of Piedmont High School

The Piedmont Highlander

The Piedmont Highlander

The School Next Door

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Live and Learn: the mhs classroom experience

For a few MHS English students, picking apart Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan from “The Great Gatsby” in discussions wasn’t much harder than it was for them to candidly give each other advice: both came quite easily, their teacher Elise Marks said.

As soon as they put their pen to paper, however, the flow of thought ran dry. So instead of requiring that they analyze the characters in conventional essay format, Marks asked that each student use textual evidence in a letter to one of the characters. The objective? To tell the character what the student thought of him or her — just as the students would so readily do with each other.

Sure enough, tweaking the assignment allowed Marks’s students to express through writing the rich and thoughtful analysis they had, she said.

“Students at Millennium are less willing to jump through hoops just because a teacher tells them to,” Marks said. “They’re more willing to tell their teacher that they find something boring.”

The flexibility Marks had in tailoring her assignment to the specific learning styles of her students is just one way the philosophy of alternative education at MHS manifests itself. And MHS is just one of the tens of thousands of alternative schools that exist across across the U.S., said Jerry Mintz, director of the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO).

For their assignments, MHS students get credits, not letter grades. For example, a PHS student who only did three out of five assigned papers would probably fail, Marks said. At MHS, a student in the same situation could earn three out of five credits and make up the other two later.

“It’s more of a flexible, humane approach to learning at Millennium,” Marks said. “There’s much more awareness of the whole child.”

Each student has an Independent Learning Plan that consists of goals that students sets for themselves with the guidance of a teacher.

Since MHS is credit based, MHS senior Cassie Fox-Mount said this allows for students to learn at their own pace rather than rushing through concepts they do not truly understand. This self pacing, especially in math, has taught Fox-Mount discipline.

Classes at MHS are a little messier, noisier and more upbeat, said MHS junior Barak Albert, who transferred from PHS at the beginning of his sophomore year. MHS students get more hands-on experiences, Albert said, like when he and his science class grew sunflowers and corn during their botany unit with his teacher Sati Shah, who now is in his first year as MHS principal.

“When I first came [to MHS], I was really bad at science and I had really low self-esteem,” Albert said. “Mr. Shah really represented the factor of alternative learning and really made that apparent to me. He took the time to understand each kid and structured the class in a way that you couldn’t really fall behind.”

MHS teachers can have such personalized interactions with students because of the small class sizes, numbering 15 students on average according to the 2013 WASC/CDE Self-Study Report.

On the other hand, the close and relatively casual interactions with teachers can lead to disrespect, MHS math teacher Auban Willats said.

“There’s a more casual relationship between students and adults at Millennium and that can then lead to an assumption of familiarity that maybe isn’t appropriate, but it’s also fostered there,” Willats said. “It’s a trade-off that I think students and teachers are willing to make.”

The size of MHS also allows individual students to voice their opinions about the school, which they do in Falcon Meetings, Shah said. In these monthly discussions, students and staff can “shout-out” others for their accomplishments. Or, they can do a “call-out” to acknowledge something they wish they themselves had done differently, Shah said.

After a student took the opportunity to apologize to a teacher for disrupting class during one of these meetings, Shah spoke to that very teacher.

“To know that her students are really thinking about how they affect their class and how to make their class a place they wanted to be was really meaningful for her,” Shah said. “This is why our school works for the students we have: because we can all have those connections with each other.”

MHS senior NaNa Jackson said that while MHS students are welcoming within the classroom, they still divide into cliques and stay within them.

“If you’re new, basically you just have to get in where you fit in,” Jackson said.

These social groups form around different personality types and interests, but not around race, Jackson said.

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A look back: the roots of alternative education

The educational philosophies of MHS can be traced to the 1961 publication of the book Summerhill, a volume about a school in England that made its decisions democratically — with students included as constituents, AERO director Mintz said. The book inspired the establishment of around 1500 alternative, learner-centered schools across the U.S. and the rest of the world during the 1970s, Mintz said.

“The old paradigm was that kids are naturally lazy and need to be forced to learn,” Mintz said. “The new paradigm is kids are natural learners and the job of the teacher is simply to help provide the resources for them.”

The former, what Mintz called the traditional educational model, originated in factories in the mid to late-1800s to prepare children to become workers, he said.

“This is why they have bells in the schools still, this is why they sit in rows, this is why they’re supposed to just not speak unless they have permission,” Mintz said. “Spontaneity is not encouraged, entrepreneurship is not encouraged. They’re working for external motivation, getting grades and so on, rather than because of their own interest.”

AERO has 10,000 to 12,000 alternative schools within its database, but even those numbers cannot precisely indicate how many such schools exist because of how much each individual school varies from the next, Mintz said.

True alternative schools may exist outside of the mainstream, but they can also prepare students for their futures by allowing students independence of thought, Mintz said.

“Colleges are falling all over themselves to get kids from alternative and homeschool backgrounds,” Mintz said. “The reason is they’ve discovered that these kids still love learning, that these kids are good natural learners and that they haven’t lost their ability to learn.”

One key difference between the philosophies of Mintz and MHS is their approach to Common Core and government educational standards. Mintz does not support Common Core, whereas MHS classes are based on Common Core standards, Shah said.

Shah said he supports Common Core for MHS and other schools because it prioritizes student-centered learning, daily assessment of student development and individualized education, concepts pivotal to alternative education.

“Philosophies of teaching and learning that have in the past been sort of the realm of alternative education are spreading into the mainstream,” Shah said.

PHS has also begun implementing Common Core standards, but Fox-Mount feels that the atmosphere at PHS is still overly focused on competition and getting into Ivy League schools rather than individualized education. During her freshman year at Piedmont High, she felt overwhelmed by the amount of work she was assigned.

“I like learning, and I never had a problem with challenging classes,” Fox-Mount said. “But it seems ridiculous to me that you can be at school for seven hours and then go home and have four hours of homework.”

Studiousness is expected at Piedmont High, said PHS senior Samuel Cheng, who takes five AP classes.

“There are a lot of people who do try very hard and are serious overachievers,” Cheng said. “I think people really care about what they score on essays — really any assignment.”

While high school grades are an important step in students’ plans beyond graduation, the skills that students acquire over their academic experience are much more meaningful, PHS English teacher Jody Weverka said.

“More school is not the only goal of school,” Weverka said. “But not doing well in school is often a symptom of not engaging — teachers want students to engage in the world around them.”

Cheng enjoys his classes and said that he does not think the workload is that bad.

“While focus on grades is big for some people, I think a lot of the big pressure is this overall idea of being complete,” he said.

To Cheng, “completeness” encompasses academic performance as well as image, popularity and athleticism.

Cheng said that since Piedmont is such a wealthy community, most residents are well-educated and accomplished in their careers, which he thinks contributes to a high-pressure culture.

“Even if the parents aren’t affirmatively pressuring [their kids], their achievements speak for themselves,” he said.

Other factors contributing to the stress that people tend to associate with Piedmont’s culture of emphasizing achievement are the natural changes that come with adolescence, including biological changes, social changes, and changes in family dynamics, said clinical psychologist and PHS parent Jacquie Ward.

Ward said that high school is a time when students must develop their identity, and she thinks that being admitted to a prestigious college often plays heavily into a kid’s perception of his or her identity and self-worth.

“It’s kind of this perfect storm,” she said. “I think a lot of it is the kids. Not to blame the kids — they are the product of their environment — but by senior year, there’s something they’ve internalized about wanting to be recognized as smart or accomplished by college admissions.”

Weverka said that year after year, PHS students come back from college and feel more prepared than their peers. Although it is necessary for students to feel comfortable in their school situation, it is also important for students to be pushed in the right direction, she said.

Students should not use MHS as a less academically rigorous environment to boost their GPA, Weverka said. Rather, MHS can positively influence PHS by modeling community learning.

“The connections and relationships we make at school contribute significantly to our ability to learn,” Weverka said.

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A falcon on the highland: how phs and mhs interact

People have questioned Albert about the rigor of MHS, telling him that it is not a school and that he must not get homework, he said. In response to these misconceptions, Albert said how much challenge students experience depends on how much they want to excel, but slackers at MHS do exist, as they do in PHS

“Of course there are people like that at every school,” Albert said. “They’re just more apparent when it’s small.”

Similarly, junior Fifi Hodgkinson said that PHS students tend to think that MHS is a school for people who are not smart, but she feels that this stereotype is untrue.

“From what I’d heard, it’s like the ‘ghetto school’ in Piedmont or where not-so-smart people go,” Hodgkinson said.

Among MHS students exists a feeling that PHS students find themselves better than them and that more Caucasians attend PHS because they are smarter, Jackson said.

“I just feel like how things are approached is very crazy, because things shouldn’t be about race or how smart you are. It’s just two different communities,” Jackson said.

Of MHS’s 70 students, 31 live in-district and 39 transfer from other school districts, MHS counselor Stefanie Manalo-LeClair said.

Both Fox-Mount and Albert said that they appreciate Millennium’s diversity because it exposes them to variety of different opinions.

“I wish it didn’t have the stigma of being the Oakland school in Piedmont,” Fox-Mount said.

Fox-Mount has heard freshman girls say that they are afraid to walk to their computers class, which is located in the MHS building.

“Frankly, Piedmont has a diversity problem,” Fox-Mount said. “We don’t have that many African-American kids [in Piedmont] and a lot of them go to Millennium.”

Fox-Mount thinks that the lack of racial diversity at PHS contributes to stereotypes about MHS students.

“[It’s] not racism per se, but the rich kids at Piedmont don’t necessarily interact that much with the kids from Richmond or from Oakland,” Fox-Mount said.

Jackson, who has taken Math Analysis and Computer Applications with PHS students, said that her interactions with them have mostly felt awkward, like they were hesitant to answer her questions.

“I socialize with everybody, but when I come to Piedmont, they don’t really socialize with me a lot,” Jackson said.

Sports teams with students of both schools have allowed relationships to form that would not have otherwise, athletic director Craig Best said.

“There are [social] differences that present themselves when mixing student athletes from both high schools,” Best said. “The socioeconomic mix of students from MHS is different from that of PHS. This, in my opinion, is a good thing.”

MHS senior Will Gustke competes on the varsity men’s lacrosse team.

“When you’re on a team it doesn’t matter where you come from or what school you go to,” Gustke said. “You are all working toward a common goal.”

As member of the varsity women’s basketball team, Jackson said that she wishes the two schools had more activities together.

“How are we going to get to know Piedmont kids if we don’t converse and do things together?” Jackson said. “For Camp Augusta, we went on the trip together as a school. But if it was mixing up Millennium kids with Piedmont, it would be much better so we can know each other when we’re walking around campus.”

Because the two schools are both in Piedmont, they should not forget how connected they are, Jackson said.

“We’re all one community,” Jackson said

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Transfer-mation tuesday: moving to millenium

When she came to Piedmont Middle School in eighth grade, Fox-Mount often wondered about the building nestled next door at 760 Magnolia Avenue. Her dad thought it was a trade school, but the banner read “Millennium High School” which did not lend Fox-Mount much clarification — at least, not yet.

During her freshman year, Fox-Mount frequently found herself in the Wellness Center, and it was there that she learned of Millennium, the alternative high school located just a few paces from PHS.

“I looked up Millennium on the Internet instead of walking in, just because I’d never been there,” Fox-Mount said.

With encouragement and information from the Wellness Center staff, especially former MHS principal Ting Hsu Engleman, Fox-Mount decided to transfer to MHS for the beginning of her sophomore year, following the roughly 60 students who made the switch from PHS between 2009 and  2013, according to  MHS’s 2013 WASC/CDE Self-Study Report.

With around 70-80 total students each year, according to the WASC report, MHS primarily attracts students to transfer because of how small it is, Manalo-LeClair said.

“We really work to support every individual student, and that’s really impossible at a school of 800 kids,” Manalo-LeClair said. “We’re going to make the box fit around you.”

Albert said that a MHS education could complement any learning style. While Shah believes that individualized learning can benefit anyone regardless of their strengths and weaknesses, he said that students must arrive at MHS with a distinct mindset.

“It’s less about the type of student you are and more about being open to a way of interacting at school and learning that might be different,” Shah said.

For out-of-district students, transferring involves completing an interview, teacher recommendations and a writing supplement. Piemont students who are considering the transfer simply initiate the transfer process by talking to their Piedmont counselor, Manalo-LeClair said.

“I’ve seen kids get more confident [since transferring from Piedmont to Millennium],” Manalo-LeClair said. “That transformation is my favorite.”

If a student feels that their school is too stressful or too big, it is likely not a good fit, Ward said. The style of classes and their relationship to the learning style of an individual student also determines fit, as do learning disabilities like processing disorders, which can make Piedmont’s style of book and lecture learning more challenging, Ward said.

Ward said that transferring makes sense if a student ends up in a school that is a better social, academic or emotional fit.

“Change is hard,” Ward said. “It takes a lot of courage to decide to transfer.”

Ward said that students who could benefit from alternative education include those who hold a deep interest in a particular subject, have learning differences or are very self-motivated. She advises any students considering a transfer to talk about it with the people who are important in their life, especially parents and teachers.

Although Hodgkinson initially resisted transferring to Millennium, she has become much happier since transferring at the beginning of this year.

“I have so much more free time to focus on things I want to do in college, like art,” Hodgkinson said.

Hodgkinson also said that since transferring to MHS, she has become much more comfortable asking her teachers for help.

MHS freshman Jazzy Huggins does not feel as much enthusiasm for her classroom experience. Huggins said her classes are “very easy” and sometimes a little strange.

“They don’t ever turn on their lights, so on dark days it’s dark in there,” Huggins said.

Into the next millennium: a look forward

Huggins said she wants more girls in her classes. Albert said that he wants fewer students in his classes overall. Marks said that she wants to strengthen the writing program. While these are all changes that take time, MHS can make decisions much quicker than PHS can because their faculty is smaller by about 40 teachers, according to both school websites.

“Millennium is a small, agile ship,” Marks said. “In staff meetings, there are the ten of us making decisions together, and when there’s a problem, we can come up with a new plan on the spot and make changes starting at 8 a.m. the next morning.”

Shah said that he intends to define a more unified and intentional approach to working with students.

“We invite people to come check us out and see what we’re doing,” Shah said. “I know that the Millennium community feels like we’re doing really good things for all of our members, and we want to share that.”

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