Teaching Independence

 

THINK. QUESTION. CREATE.

Changing the world is more than theoretical at Marin Academy (MA) in San Rafael, California. Consider these examples: Robyn Allen ’03 pioneered “bike- to-school” days at Marin Academy and then went on to found the Vehicle Design Summit at MIT, where she is class of ’07. Other students felt the need for a broad discussion of equity and identity, so their teachers helped them develop a seminar titled “Uncensored: Conversations We’re Not Having,” which students from 25 other area schools attended. In 2004 MA formed an Eco-Council to bring students, faculty, and parents together to address MA’s environmental impact, resulting in a student-driven request to the Board to implement solar-energy improvements, and a program realigning the school’s kitchen and garden around a major composting effort.

Rigorously college preparatory, Marin Academy is an independent, co-educational high school with 400 day students and 56 faculty from the greater San Francisco area.  The school has a two-year arts requirement and an ambitious outdoor education program. Critical thinking is at the school’s core.

In 2006, Marin Academy earned a Leading Edge Award from the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) for its Conference on Democracy, making it one of only three schools in the nation so distinguished for promoting equity and social justice.

Brad Lakritz has been a member of the faculty at Marin Academy for 10 years. He offered, “As director of educational technology, I am mindful of the ways in which we integrate technology into the school. There are many examples, but let’s look at our annual Conference on Democracy, which we instituted in 2004. The Conference provides many wonderful opportunities. Students introduce the speakers, dignitaries such as Angela Davis or Poet Laureate Robert Hass, and of course we all benefit from their presence on campus. Technology enters in when students record the presentations and create podcasts.

“It’s an amazing thing: through podcasts, people everywhere can experience these powerful events. It is significant that I can experience these moments again. Even though the event is over I can go back and listen.”  [Directory of podcasts and web pages]

Capturing an event or preserving one’s work for the future presents a technology puzzle. Lakritz raises questions about the consequences of the rapid change of technology. He asks students and faculty to consider how best to preserve their work.

“I remember returning home after attending a conference in 1990, having heard the keynote speech that projected the advancement of technology. I drove along long streets lined with homes. There were postal carriers using two-wheel buckets. I thought, ‘That’s going to be gone someday.’

“In San Francisco, one radio station runs advertising for a particular storage device; the promise is it will ‘save my digital lifestyle.’ It won’t. Media changes. Technology changes. The device that reads the document you’re recording today will no longer exist in the future. I can’t predict what the future of technology is, but I do encourage students to think about whether they will need to access their projects in the future: What are you saving it for? Is it something you will want to maintain? Should you keep migrating this file into the never-ending ‘next generation’ of technology?”

Big-picture puzzles drive change to the functionality of MA’s iR databases as well. Lakritz is at ease with customization. He cites three examples of adaptations that add productivity at Marin Academy:

Customization 1: COURSE SELECTION RECOMMENDATIONS
Lakritz cites a huge improvement to this system since creating a customized recommendations database and integrating it into KEYSTONE.

“Early in the second semester we prepare to do the scheduling for the following year. Our faculty begin the process by recommending course options for each student.

“Before this customization, we had an excel spreadsheet listing every student on the faculty server. Every teacher would find each of her students in the spreadsheet and type in the name of the course or courses recommended for that student for the following year. Only one faculty member could have access to the spreadsheet at any given time. It would be up to the registrar to compile the data from the completed spreadsheet.

“With this customization, multiple faculty can enter the live database, view their students’ complete academic records, and select recommendations from a pull-down list of courses being offered in a particular department the following year. Faculty can enter a non-printing note explaining the recommendation (“needs more practice writing”) that can be seen by other faculty members, but not by the student.

“Once the faculty have completed their recommendations, the registrar easily prints and distributes to each student a personalized plan that pulls all necessary data from KEYSTONE, including a list of courses that student has already completed, courses recommended by the faculty, all electives offered in each department for that grade level, and extra-curricular options. It is this comprehensive, individualized report that the student reviews with his advisor, parents, and college counselor.

“It’s a powerful little tool, so much more efficient,” explained Lakritz. “The time savings for the registrar is unbelievable. The teachers do the data entry, and all the registrar has to do is print out the student forms and distribute them. The advisor, class dean, parent, and academic office all have to sign off on the student’s choices, so when the registrar gets the forms back she can enter the requests and build the schedule.”

Customization 2: CUSTOMIZED SCHEDULES for Visitors
Lakritz uses KEYSTONE for managing Grandparents Day and Special Friends Day and Back to School Night: “For each of these events, we produce a customized student schedule and a customized map of the school for each visitor. We are on a block schedule, in which the classes run in a different order on different days. To make sure visitors don’t feel confused, the schedule we provide has to be in the right order. Since room designations or the details of the event may change from year to year, I create a new layout each time.”

Customization 3: SCHOOL PHOTOS integrated into Student Record
“We have created a number of customizations over the years that have been integrated into the iR modules. We track photos. The photo database is integrated with the student records. A faculty member can go into KEYSTONE and, on the overview page of a student’s record, see the student I.D. photos from the last three years. It’s fun to see how the kids have changed.”

Lakritz also trains and supports the staff members who use the PORTAL/PORTAL WEB SERVICES and KEYSTONE. Always an educator first, he encourages his colleagues to develop independence.

“Teachers and some administrators like to do certain things themselves. They will ask me, ‘How do I find this group of students?’ or ‘How do we find every student who does not have a D block class?’ We figure it out together. It’s on-the-job training for general FileMaker skills. We also like to send people to inRESONANCE University (iRU) for training; I have been twice. Faculty and staff are generally savvy, and iR databases are pretty simple and powerful to use. The iR solutions are intuitive.”

Occasionally, Lakritz requires support himself.

“Support from iR has really improved with the use of picture talk; Charlie Bailey (iR’s executive vice president for product development) can log in to my screen while we work together on a problem. I can ask him any question, and in the course of discussing it, he gives me ideas of things to try. I am adventurous, especially when iR has told me what to expect. So I am very independent.”

Learn more about Marin Academy.