Shortridge High School's Mission: "To educate citizens to think freely, demonstrate intellectual vitality, and address needs and realities greater than themselves"
This week ED199 traveled to Shortridge High School, the oldest public high school in Indiana. Starting out with just under 400 students and 35 teachers, Shortridge had a very close-knit community. However, with the closing of Broadripple High School and 2 other local IPS schools, Shortridge underwent a major change. They now house around 1100 students and 100 teachers, almost tripling them in size. Due to this change, Shortridge is having to adjust to an ever-changing climate in their school. Shortridge is working very hard to rebuild its school's culture that was once so dynamic. Shortridge puts an emphasis on student-teacher relationships and aspires to have a tight-knit community built up of their students and staff. Shortridge High School, similarly to the International School is an "IB World School" that puts a large focus on the International Baccalaureate Diploma, challenging its students in all aspects. In addition to this, as you can see in the image to the left, I highlighted a few of the values that Shortridge High School put at the center of their education.
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"Shortridge High School provides an education that most people cannot pay for"
As previously mentioned, this past year Shortridge High School has undergone a major change. With their school size nearly tripling, the school's new culture is currently being built. Shortridge puts a large emphasis on community. Specifically, teacher-student relationships are put at the center of education. This resonated a lot with me because it is a large piece of my future educator identity. Strong teacher-student relationships help to breed a healthy and happy learning environment for all students. Shortridge takes pride in being a public school. They feel that this allows them to have a more diverse culture which ultimately benefits the student body. In addition to the culture of Shortridge, they are transitioning to using digital tools in the classroom. Each "DP student" is provided with a laptop and the majority of their work is digital. I found this to be extremely impressive and fascinating; having a direct correlation to the studies found in our digital piece projects in 199.
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"Shortridge High School is built entirely on a student's will & want"
Shortridge High School is known as "An IB World School" meaning that they are also "IB for all." After talking to the students, they described this as the "DP program." Shortridge believes that this program allows for more freedom and integration of their student's passions in their education. They are extremely passionate about producing critical-thinkers and well-rounded students. They believe that IB allows them a CHOICE in their curriculum and sets them up for success. They are heavily focused on the "growth mindset" of their students and their will to learn; Shortridge is entirely self-motivated. We had a chance to talk to Mel who is the DP coordinator. She is a big believer in IB for all and served as a great advocate for her students. She was extremely inspiring in her testament to the importance of student-teacher relationships as well.
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Lastly, we had the opportunity to talk with Chris Speckman who gave us a look into the type of students that Shortridge is home to. Shortridge aims to produce inquirers, risk-takers and open-minded students in their high school. Chris focused a lot on the need to understand where your students are coming from and to develop empathy towards them.
Chris teaches a creative writing class who had the opportunity this past year to create their own piece of work named "Reverberations." Each of us in 199 had the opportunity to flip through this book and see the numerous compositions of student's work. It was extremely inspiring to see how talented and open the students were in their pieces. There was a mix of story-telling, poetry and song lyrics in this book. I found it to be extremely inspiring that this group of students had the chance to reflect their thoughts and emotions down on paper to later be published. This novel speaks a lot to Shortridge's culture and community aspects by allowing students the freedom to share their experiences with diversity, tragedy and joy. |