Newer Project Based Learning schools in Camas (Seattle, Vancouver: credit, transfer)
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I am wondering if anyone here has tried the PBL schools with there kids yet or know some who have? If so, what has it been like? Do you think the school district is doing a good job implementing this approach? What might be some of the pros/cons between it and the traditional classroom? If you haven't tried it yet are you considered it?
I've read that Discovery High wanted to start with 150 freshmen and 75 sophomores this first year. While they did reach their goal for freshmen, they were unable to get sophomores to transfer into a new school. So it's only serving freshman so far. They eventually plan to accommodate up to ~500 high school students.
"Odyssey Middle School is in its second year, and interest in the project-based learning middle school doubled before this school year, Smith said, with more than 200 families applying for about 80 spots in sixth grade. The school had to select students using a lottery system." -- https://www.columbian.com/news/2018/...ased-learning/
I think it's a good program, especially for certain students who aren't necessarily comfortable or happy in a larger traditional high school. Honestly they are probably relieved that they didn't have to open with a bunch of sophomores as well because the building is still under construction from all appearances.
Our daughter is a sophomore and considered it briefly but decided it wasn't right for her because she is heavily into music and band and also taking some upper-level AP classes and zero-hour (early morning) classes that all would have been unavailable at the Discovery campus. But she is a very bright and studious type of student who likes the big school setting and wasn't looking for something different. Plus most (or all) of her friends were staying at the main campus.
Camas is basically faced with a choice regarding high schools. The growth means they are essentially outgrowing the main HS campus. They can either split the district in two and have two smaller traditional high schools, or maintain a single main campus and provide alternative or magnet school programs to siphon off enough kids. It's obvious that they have chosen the latter path. I think it is probably the correct one and given the amount of resources they are pouring into the Discovery campuses it should be a real attractive option for a lot of students who don't really want the traditional big school experience.
Bottom line? If your kid is a mainstream straight-A type of student who does lots of AP classes and clubs, sports, music, and all that kind of thing then the main campus is probably where they want to be. If your kid is more ecclectic, maybe has a singular non-academic focus like a specific non-college career path in mind, and isn't all excited about the traditional rah rah HS environment then it could be a good option.
Based on what I hear, it is definitely NOT a traditional "alternative" school for struggling students, discipline problem students and the like who are pushed out of the regular campus. But more of a place for kids who are looking for a different more collaborative and engaged style of learning. So it's not just struggling students, there are very very bright kids there too.
I think it's all positive. Students in Camas now have a very distinct and meaningful choice between two dramatically different campuses rather than a less meaningful choice between two carbon copy traditional high schools like an East Camas HS and West Camas HS.
Thanks for that POV, Texasdiver. It does sound like a good option for those looking for something different. Our relatives's kids who go/went to Hockinson High know many Camas HS kids through sports, etc... They said they've never met anyone who didn't say great things about their school. While I'm sure their are some who its not a good fit for, it does seem like many do enjoy their traditional high school experience there. It sounds like your daughter is one of them. While Hockinson is also highly rated, these girls said they do wish they had greater course selection including more AP courses like Camas HS offers. I guess being larger has its advantages. The middle daughter is now attending UW Seattle and likes all the options of a large university even though its so much different than Brush Prairie and their smaller HS. Discovery will be ~ the same size once fully completed.
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I had (2) friends leave Camas PBL this yr as they were unhappy being the first 'experiment' (it is a continuing program that is 'aging' / adding grades as the kids reach next grade level.) I'm sure it is a great program / opportunity for some.
These were very motivated kids (international) that went back into Camas Public schools, but only until they can escape to RS. FT.
3 family went to Hockinson until RS, but felt limited in music offerings, and spent a lot of time in Portland (youth orchestra / cello project and such) (all 3 are professional musicians 10 yrs out of HS). When I go to Hockinson Graduation a huge number of my STEM co-worker's families are well represented.
Several went to CAM (then on to RS).
Ours did FT RS and one insisted to also do FT HS. That was fine..." There are 24 hrs in a day, you figure it out..., just make sure you get your AA by the day you graduate HS". (as well as work 30 hrs / week (own business + a side job) and lettered in 3 sports). They survived, and were 4.0 as well as Magna 2 yrs early out college. Nothing special, school is CAKE these days (as it was for them 15 yrs ago). I went back to grad school while they were in college and we all exited 'hooded' with gold ropes'... but... school was an eye opener for me. College Students are way too 'privileged', and NPR did a great segment on that last week! College administrators and staff are very fearful and responsive to today's 'empowered' students. Programs / speakers / profs are largely controlled by 'powerful' students. Where is this headed...
Just understand what you gain and lose by going down a more unconventional school route.
You gain smaller classes with what is likely a more diverse group of students in terms of ability level compared to traditional tracked classes at a big high school where you have top students collecting in the AP and honors type classes and lower ability or lower motivation students collecting in the remedial or non honors type classes.
You gain a less traditional curriculum which can be good if the teachers nail it but can be bad if they swing and miss. A lot more rides on the teacher's ability to engage the students on productive projects and translate that into actual learning of the standards and objectives that the kids are supposed to learn. In a traditional classroom there is much more likely to be traditional curriulum materials with scope and sequence for the teachers to fall back on.
You lose a lot of the ancillary activities that occur at a large school: Sports, drama, music, clubs, etc. Yes, some of that will happen at Discovery but with a few hundred kids they aren't going to have nearly all or most of it. Yes, kids can shuttle between the two campuses for activities but as far as I know it is on the kids and families to provide transporation. I don't think the district provides free transportation between campuses but I will stand corrected if I am wrong about that. So older kids with drivers licenses and cars maybe not a big deal. Freshmen and Sophomores will likely need to rely on mom or dad to run them back and forth between campuses for activities. The campuses are about 15 minutes apart by car so doing a lot of back and forth isn't going to be practical and will really depend on the schedule. If, for example, Symphonic Band is offered 3rd period at the HS then a student at Discovery who wants to take it will need to leave class early every day to get there on time and arrive back late every day for the next class. Or it may simply not work. After school activities like sports will be easier to manage but traffic around the HS is brutal right after school so that will be a giant headache too. That 15 minute drive from Discovery to CHS for football or tennis practice might well become a 25-30 min drive at 3:45 when school lets out as you'll run into all the school buses in the neighborhoods and all the traffic bottlenecks of parents and student trying to get in an out of CHS. There is only one way to get to CHS via a narrow 2-lane bridge and you often get stuck behind elementary school buses at that time. If the campuses were next door to each other it would be easier, but they are not.
You lose a lot of choice in classes. With 100 kids per grade level there's basically going to be just one science option, one English option, one social studies option etc. Maybe a couple different levels of math. But that's it. Because there's only going to be one science teacher, one English teacher, one social studies teacher, etc. per grade level.
I think it is a great option for a lot of kids who for whatever reason aren't really comfortable or happy in a more traditional school environment. But for the typical high performing college bound kid who cruises through HS getting good grades and doing lots and lots of activities its probably not going to be the right choice.
Was a really poor choice for one of my kids. (I should have recognized that up front...)_
My friends who left Camas PBL were in the 'older' grades, thus they would have 4+ yrs of FIRST time PBL hosted that grade level. Was not a good fit for these folks. (too unpredictable).
I thrive on unpredictable, but not all consider that to be a benefit.
My son attended a PBL Gates Technology school when we lived in CA, and it was OUTSTANDING. My son was always a high-achieving, curious learner, so for him it was perfect. He was in the second entering class. It was a public school, but you had to apply to attend. The first couple years there were enough spaces for everyone who applied. By the time he was a senior, the SAT scores for that school were higher than those for the local high school, which, given that it was a university town with academically-oriented parents, were among the highest in the state to begin with, and suddenly there were more applicants than spaces and a (random) lottery to get in was used.
What I loved about the curriculum was that the group projects meant my son learned to work with a variety of other students, not just his friends; the groups wrote up contract specifying each member's responsibility so that no one was penalized if one member dropped the ball (and it never happened in his groups, because the kids took their responsibility to the group seriously); that the English literature and History classes were synced together so the literature gave a fictional insight into the time in history being taught; the presentation of projects before parent panels requiring on-the-spot critical thinking skills in response to "devil's advocate"-type questions; and learning to use and evaluate information sources.
The only issue was that some of his AP classes (Music Theory and Physics) had to be taken at the regular high school next door, because those two weren't offered at his school.
Regarding the ancillary activities another poster mentioned, in my son's case, the school was originally housed on the main high school's campus, so he was able to take all his music and PE classes easily, and some of his friends played on the sports teams. But the school moved a couple miles away after he graduated, so I'm not sure how that has affected those activities.
My son attended a PBL Gates Technology school when we lived in CA, and it was OUTSTANDING. My son was always a high-achieving, curious learner, so for him it was perfect. He was in the second entering class. It was a public school, but you had to apply to attend. The first couple years there were enough spaces for everyone who applied. By the time he was a senior, the SAT scores for that school were higher than those for the local high school, which, given that it was a university town with academically-oriented parents, were among the highest in the state to begin with, and suddenly there were more applicants than spaces and a (random) lottery to get in was used.
What I loved about the curriculum was that the group projects meant my son learned to work with a variety of other students, not just his friends; the groups wrote up contract specifying each member's responsibility so that no one was penalized if one member dropped the ball (and it never happened in his groups, because the kids took their responsibility to the group seriously); that the English literature and History classes were synced together so the literature gave a fictional insight into the time in history being taught; the presentation of projects before parent panels requiring on-the-spot critical thinking skills in response to "devil's advocate"-type questions; and learning to use and evaluate information sources.
The only issue was that some of his AP classes (Music Theory and Physics) had to be taken at the regular high school next door, because those two weren't offered at his school.
Regarding the ancillary activities another poster mentioned, in my son's case, the school was originally housed on the main high school's campus, so he was able to take all his music and PE classes easily, and some of his friends played on the sports teams. But the school moved a couple miles away after he graduated, so I'm not sure how that has affected those activities.
Judging from the cohort of kids that are entering the Camas program at the Middle School level and who are likely to stay there through HS I expect the same thing will end up happening at Camas as well. They are certainly putting the $$$ into the facility and program and the location is absolutely perfect, much better than the regular HS for convenience and access to surrounding tech companies. Our next door neighbors enrolled their 6th grade daughter in the program and she is a super bright mainstream kind of kid not some troubled loner type or anything like that.
I think it is all positive. The PBL high school will take some of the pressure of the regular HS so it isn't so overcrowded. And it will provide a real alternative to the regular HS as opposed to just building another carbon copy traditional HS and end up with a East Camas HS and West Camas HS or whatever.
Before we moved to Camas, I thought PBL would be similar to the very high caliber project based schools in California. I thought that my kids would want to attend Odyssey. I was wrong. While there are some similarities, Camas PBL is absolutely not equivalent to the California Project based schools that were in my old community. In California, PBL is a way for brighter students to escape from the one-size-fits-all regular middle schools that gear their teaching toward bringing lower performing students up to minimum standards. Brighter students are ignored and bored in regular schools in that system. So, California PBLs became the public schools that brighter students would try to attend. The PBLs were very responsive to student needs, because they wanted to keep the kids happy and motivated.
Camas PBL was created as a way to alleviate overcrowding in the current middle and high schools. The reason for being isn’t on creating an exceptional educational opportunity, as in California PBLs. The traditional middle schools (Liberty & Skyridge) are both excellent schools. They have high educational standards and the schools actively work to create great social & emotional learning experiences. Many parents and kids that I know are really happy with the current middle schools. The hi cap classes are still completely full, and have larger class sizes than the regular classes. Camas PBL does offer a great program, but the kids that are happiest attending Odyssey PBL really seem to be the kids that aren’t happy and thriving in a traditional school environment (based on the families that I know). It’s good to have options, since different kids are happy in different learning environments.
Odyssey has the challenge of managing project based groups with a full spectrum of abilities and motivation. California PBLs are full of highly motivated kids, so it is easier to manage the groups. Why? Everyone wants to do the work and succeed in California PBLs. Not all the kids at Odyssey are highly motivated. It presents a very big challenge for the administration— one that has not been figured out yet. What do you do with kids that don’t do the work? This is the biggest complaint that I have heard from friends with kids at Odyssey. Bright kids might get paired with kids that don’t do any work and the result is that the bright kid does all the work and gets frustrated, while the unmotivated kid doesn’t do the work or learn what they need to learn. Both students earn the same grade, even though one kid did all the work. Neither student in this pairing would have a positive experience, nor would either student learn to work in a collaboratively. It’s a complicated issue that needs a real solution for Camas PBL to ever become a truly exceptional school. Again, what do you do with kids that don’t want to do the work? When each of the kids in a group are highly motivated, group work can be really fun.
Odyssey is doing some great marking to try to generate “demand”. All 5th graders were bussed to Odyssey to tour the school during the school day. The kids were encouraged to apply for the PBL lottery, even if they thought they had only a slight interest in going. That gets a lot of applications for the lottery and generates a sense of excitement. My kid was over 100th place on the waiting list, and he was offered a spot because so many kids declined the offer. He decided to decline, and that was definitely the right decision for him. All kids that I know that wanted to attend Odyssey got in. There are plenty of kids that really, really want to go to Odyssey, too. I think Odyssey has a bit of work to do before the school is turning away kids that really want to attend.
I want Odyssey and Discovery to succeed and become exceptional schools. Right now, the kids and families that decide to attend probably need to be comfortable going to a school that is still learning how to operate. The families that didn’t like it were the type of families that wanted a more established program that wasn’t still working out it’s issues (this gets voiced as “ I don’t want a school that is experimenting on my kid. My kid needs to learn”)
Camas has a great school system, and Odyssey and Discovery are just going through growing pains IMHO. Camas is growing and it’s not easy to manage high growth and maintain high quality schools. I give the school district and community a lot of credit for actively planning for the growth.
I'm not directly involved or a school district insider here. But I do have kids in the Camas schools and talk to lots of people. So some of my impressions may be incorrect but I have my own thoughts on the PBL program at Camas.
Because Camas is growing the school district is faced with how to accommmodate that growth. I've been around a lot of school systems in WA, OR, and TX and there are basically 3 different ways that school districts accommodate growth. Each has different advantages and disadvantages and some kids will thrive more under one approach than the other. So there isn't really one best solution for everyone.
1. Traditional solution: Build a second comprehensive HS so you now have East Camas HS and West Camas HS with duplicate football teams, marching bands, soccer teams, theaters, etc. etc. This is pretty much the way that things have always been done around the country up until the past couple of decades. For the ordinary mainstream kids who cruise thorugh HS just fine this is perhaps the best option because they have more opportunities to be on the basketball team or theater or cheerleading squad or whatever with 2 schools instead of one. If Camas keeps growing this is probably where they will eventually end up.
2. Mid-high and Senior-high solution. This has become popular in TX. Districts expand the HS by building separate adjoining campuses so they have a mid high for 9th and 10th grade next to a senior high for 11th and 12th. Still just one football team and marching band, but by pulling all the 9th and 10th graders off to a separate campus you eliminate a lot of overcrowding in the cafeteria, library, etc. And you can devote some more attention and focus on 9th and 10th graders if you have a special campus for them and a lot of teachers who do nothing but focus on them. Camas could do this if they took the site of the old Lacamas Elementary that is only being partially used now by the IAA program and built a new 9th grade campus down there. Put in a nice new 2-story 9th grade campus there with its own cafeteria, office, library, computer labs, etc. Close enough that the 9th graders can walk up to the main campus for music, sports, advanced classes, etc. But you cut the main campus student population by 25% so most of the overcrowding for the next decade or more is gone. But at some point this becomes unsustainable if the community keeps growing and Camas eventually becomes the one monster school in the state that is larger than all the others.
3. Magnet Schools. This is the newer approach to expansion. It is what they have done in both the Vancouver and Evergreen school disricts. You build dedicated new campuses focused around a particular theme and attract students to those schools to eliminate overcrowding. The advantage to this approach is that you can provide real alternatives rather than just a second duplicate comprehensive HS and for students who aren't ideally served by a traditional school this can be a good option. Traditionally magnet schools have been focused around specific subjects. Evergreen has the Henrietta Lacks Heath and Biocience High School that is over by Peace Health Hospital which serves about 500 students: https://lswarchitects.com/case-study...e-high-school/ Vancouver school district has the iTech Prep: https://itech.vansd.org/new-itech-prep/ and the Vancouver School of the Arts an Academics: https://vansd.org/re-vancouver-schoo...and-academics/ that is currently housed in an old JR High.
Camas could have gone this same route and used their new Discovery campus site to build a subject-based magnet program. The logical choice would have been a health and biosciences campus or a tech campus (or combination of the two). I don't have any inside information as to why this path was not taken. But I suspect there were a lot of politics and vested interests involved at the main campus where they currently have a tech magnet program "school within a school" where a lot of the really bright techie oriented students already study. I'm guessing there would have been tremendous resistance among teachers, administrators, and families to relocate this program to a new campus where they wouldn't necessarily have access to all the other stuff at the main HS like music, sports, etc. and all the advanced AP classes in other subjects like English, History, Languages, that require a critical mass to be able to offer. Rumor is that the Superintendent has or had kids in the Magnet Program so this may have influenced things as well.
So rather than establish a subject-based magnet focused on Medicine and STEM fields at the Discovery HS site they chose to establish a magnet based on "learning style" with the new Project Based Learning Campus. As Yellow Buttercup notes, this has been a successful model in other parts of the country and is kind of part of a new wave in education where you try to integrate all the different subjects (math, science, english ,etc.) around thematic projects that better engage the students and generate synergistic leaning across subjects. Done well it can be extremely successful and do very well at engaging a lot of students who may be disengaged at traditional campuses. So, for example, you might pick a project (and this is off the top of my head) like restoring salmon runs to Lacamas Creek up to Lacamas Lake as your thematic project for a school year. Teams of students would then investigate and work on this project all year. Math, science, and engineering lessons would spin off the project easily as there are endless math science and engineering topics involved with salmon stream restoration. But English, social studies, and arts classes could also relate as there is a rich cultural history in the northwest related to salmon. History, cultural (especially with native Americans) endless politics to study with the Columbia River salmon. Lot of art involving salmon. You can take it in endless directions and students with a wide variety of talents and interests could engage with that sort of project. Some students thrive much more in this sort of environment than they do in a more traditional classroom setting.
As for Discovery HS today. Understand they are ramping the school up year by year. Last year was freshman only. This year I think (but I'm actually not positive) it is just 9th and 10th grade and they will continue to ramp up by bringing in new freshman classes each year until they reach full 4-year status in the fall of 2021. I think you have to allow for some growing pains. Not having upperclassmen on campus kind of changes the environment as you don't really have any older and more mature students around to set the tone and environment. Freshment are more squirmy and immature and harder to teach to begin with. So I wouldn't be in such a hurry to pull the plug on Discovery just yet. Give them a chance to get the school entirely up and running with all grades 9-12 and I think it will be a really good place.
One other thing that might be different between Camas and the school districts you are talking about in CA is that at Camas HS the bright students are already pretty well served. There are loads and loads of advanced and AP classes and the whole school culture is very academic achievement oriented. There are multiple sections of all the AP classes so like 4 or 5 sections of AP Bio, 4-5 sections of AP Chem, 4-5 sections of AP Lit, and so forth. Many many students spend pretty much all their time in nothing but advanced classes surrounded by other bright kids. So the idea that there are lots of bright but bored underserved students at the main Camas HS is probably less true than in some other districts that have different demographics. If anything there is too much pressure to load up on advanced classes to the point of burnout. For example, I recently talked to a parent who pulled his kid out of band because he was taking 5 AP classes as a junior and had too big of a study load to have time for marching band. So I don't think there is really a lot of demand within the Camas community for a really highly academic alternative to the main high school for bright but underserved kids. They are mostly happy and invested in the main high school. This is dramatically different from say Vancouver school district where you have schools like Hudson's Bay and Fort Vancouver that have a completely different demographic and are more overwhelmed with social problems, language barriers, recent immgrants, and so forth. And really bright kids may be falling through the cracks and looking for alternatives.
Last edited by texasdiver; 10-19-2019 at 02:28 PM..
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Where is this headed... 
