Contact School District of La Crosse
807 East Avenue South
La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601
(608) 789-7600
https://www.lacrosseschools.org/

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Thanks, Randy and his podcast and hoping you can give me your thoughts on academies. We talked about that in the past but exactly what makes an academy on a particular school district. We been working on academies mostly for grades 11 and 12. Probably her most prolific Academy. There is the health science Academy that's in its 10th year and I really started with conversations with folks at Gunderson and also with folks at mail and quickly turned into follow-up conversations with our higher end partners including UW well the turbo and Western what we did as we pulled together and experience for students in grades 11 and 12. It provides an opportunity for them to really good practical hands-on experience in the areas of the health science but we also have a construction academy and we also have an engineering Academy this year for the first times are really excited about these opportunities for students a couple of critical things that really need to happen inside of an Academy model forest. First some sort of a career focus. It's really helping our students get themselves immersed in a career or careers and help them sort out a little bit in their heads. Okay, I've experienced this enough. I don't want to do this or I love this and this is exactly what I want to do for it to be interdisciplinary is also important. We don't want them to take a class on health science just to take a class in health science we really want there to be some connections with other areas, whether it be mathematics or social studies or English language arts or science if it makes sense or physics, so we always want there to be some ways that the teachers who are involved in the program can collaborate with one another and they can provide lessons from several different perspectives of the children they go through the academies. They get all their regular classes even though they gone the Academy they still can graduate with the kids. They started kindergarten with absolutely. So what we've done is we've taken our English 11 English 12 classes to get brought right into an Academy situation. The teachers are given the opportunity that make changes to that curriculum to make it work inside of that particular Academy. So if the students are still getting their English credit there still getting a math credit and they might be getting this career in tech and credit that they're involved with, as well. Salted brings all the pieces together keeps a student on track to graduate but it brings a flavor of that work inside of it so it mathematics. For instance, think of all the mathematics you might find in a construction academy, especially in geometry, so the students are getting credit for that mathematics and while at the same time they're getting credit for understanding of the construction side of it and the safety side of it and how to build things, etc. maybe the physics out of it. There are a lot of components that all come together and students are getting multiple credit for doing this one thing inside of the Academy, which is typically two and half hours or so every morning is part of the schedule a couple of my children have gone to the construction academy at Central High School will now as a union carpenter. The other one graduates in 2020 and is interested in getting into construction as well because of the love of construction that they both learn through going to school. While this is what's really cool I think about the academies because not only is it about pulling together these content areas in math and science, and English language arts with something that's connected to a career, but it also allows some of our staff who really love these kinds of opportunities I can think of our teacher in the construction academy. I get tired. He loves this work and he loves being out at a site in working with the city to acquire this property in a build a house on this property and make this happen. P is in his element. When that happens. And even though sometimes he's got 16, 18 or 20 students walking around overexcited one time and people are using saws and power to other power tools. It's amazing what he gets done and he's in his element and he loves it so it's not just about the students having a good experience in connecting all these pieces it's about a teacher and teachers connected to this were also saying I love doing this. This is my passion. This is what I love to do regular talk about the success of these academies. We've had with school District of La Crosse. What kind of proof. Have you had that that these are working but you, especially in our health science Academy where we have most of our documented success. It's just about every single student when they graduate out of that health science Academy. They are pursuing some sort of a health related career and just about every student also receives some sort of a scholarship to help pursue that career moving forward if we use that is at least one of the litmus tests we really are burring the interest of students were helping them sort through opportunities and then helping them get on a path and bolt up the experience that they can get from the beginning to the end of a career pathway inside of that area sweetheart what engineering we talked about health science. We talked about construction academy any types of academies going forward. Really what we been doing is exploring some sort of a future teacher Academy. This is an area that we see is a challenge for us in education is having teachers ready to go, especially in some areas of licensure. Teachers are really difficult to find and so this could really make for us a chance to connect with students to tap a student on his shoulder see what kind of interest they may have when it comes to teaching and encourage those students with our own mentors to be able to have them be teachers anything amiss and I would say that another really important part when we put together academies to make sure that there are off-site learning experiences. We want to make sure that students are getting a chance to actually experience this kind of work hands-on outside of their high schools and someplace embedded inside of our community and in order to do that it brings on another part of our elements and that is to mature, that we have community business partners along the way. That's where students are getting the most hands-on experience sometimes is connecting and working with people who are doing these things for a living on a day in day out basis