NEWS (April 16): Students at learning center set own pace

By Emma Bowen Meyer

April 16, 2008 11:04 pm

— “Alternative school” used to be synonymous with “the place kids go when they’ve been kicked out of regular school.”
Not in Pendleton. Mark Thompson, teacher at the Carnegie Learning Center, is very selective as to which students are allowed in this alternative school. Students are required to fill out application forms, interview with Thompson, have a parent or guardian interview with Thompson and sometimes even enlist teachers to recommend them.
“I am looking for students who are self-motivated to come in and do the work necessary to get the classes done,” said Thompson. “It’s all about motivation.”
Students get behind in credits for a variety of reasons, not the least of them being a move from one school to another before course work is complete. Once they are behind, it can be very difficult to catch back up.
“I moved to South Carolina and the curriculum there was different. I was behind,” said Jordan Reynolds, senior, noting they attend school year round in that state. “When I moved back here I was behind again. So far I’ve been to four different high schools. There were too many credits to be made up for me to graduate on time. I can earn credits a lot faster here.”
He can earn credits faster at the Carnegie Learning Center because the students work at their own pace. Their courses are available on computer software. After logging into the system in the morning, they select which class they want to work on. Reading material, practice tests, and mastery tests are available as they progress through the course.
“They can go to whatever class they want to work on,” Thompson said. “If they want to work on English or math or whatever, that’s their choice. I just require them to keep busy and continue working for the time that we’re in class.”
Each student may be working on a different subject at the same time. Thompson doesn’t teach in the traditional sense, he is more of a facilitator. He encourages the students to continue working, grades assignments that the computer cannot (such as essays), and records grades.
Some students come to the Carnegie Learning Center for just an hour or two a day to work on a couple of classes, and some stay all day. Only 15 computers have the proper license for the software program, so the number of students allowed to attend the center is very limited.
“I needed more credits and this seemed like a good option where I could work at my own pace,” said Hayleigh Ell, sophomore. “It’s a lot easier to do it by myself. I’ve learned to use independent study skills. I moved in the middle of my freshman year and got behind because the new school wouldn’t accept my credits.”
Reynolds also mentioned that the program teaches personal responsibility. If a student doesn’t complete the course work, there is no one else to blame. Other students chimed in that sometimes they don’t perform well in classes because they have a personality clash with the teacher of the subject.
“You feel like they don’t care about you so you don’t want to do any work for them,” said one of the students. “In the long run you’re really hurting yourself, but still.”
Since the computers don’t have a personality to clash with, the students find it easier to focus on the material.
Another benefit to the Carnegie Learning Center is the lack of distractions, mentioned by several students.
“There’s not as much drama over here,” said Justin Griffin, junior, who admitted he got in trouble at his school in Indianapolis before moving here. “It’s nice not to worry about the drama.”
“And we don’t have to worry about being late to class,” added Kamden Creek, senior. “And we get to go outside.”
Around the table the students agreed that their daily walks after lunch are a bright spot in their days. Thompson takes them on a one-mile stretch, no matter how cold, as long as it isn’t raining.
“The kids really look forward to it. When it’s cold they complain a little bit, but they look forward to that time,” said Thompson. “When you see kids coming in and sitting for the entire time they are here, you realize that they need to get up and move around and have more interaction. The walk lets them have interaction with each other and some exercise instead of just sitting there the entire day.”
Another benefit the students all agree on: no homework.
Since the work must be completed on the licensed software downloaded on the school’s computer, the work cannot be taken home. Essays and novel reading are almost the only exceptions, and the students are grateful.
Despite all these benefits, some of the students had a difficult time adjusting to being separated from the rest of the student body — including most of their friends.
“The isolation was the hardest part,” said Reynolds. “But then you get used to it and it’s not so bad.”
“I left behind all my friends to graduate on time,” said Creek.
Other students said they didn’t mind leaving their classmates behind. Some didn’t get along well with the student body in the first place – and some of their distractions came from the other students. One student said she gets along better with her new friends at the Carnegie Learning Center than she did the kids at the high school.
Along with the interaction of the daily walks, the students interact as they clean the building. The newly remodeled building is spic and span, thanks to the students who occupy it.
“I have them clean so they will have some ownership, that’s the only reason,” said Thompson. “I try to give them a little ownership with the place so that they take better care of it. We don’t have people tearing anything up because they know they are going to have to fix it. They do all of the cleaning except for the bathrooms and the kitchen floor. Sweeping, dusting, cleaning windows, all that stuff is done by the students.”
Currently they clean two or three times a week. During the bad weather months, when they were tracking in salt from the streets, they cleaned every day.
Sometimes they even do special projects together, separate from their course work. At Christmastime they baked cookies in their kitchen and took them to the nursing home.
“That was really good for the kids,” said Thompson. “They aren’t often around the elderly and it really made an impact on them.”
This is Thompson’s fourth year at the Carnegie Learning Center. Before that he worked with the resource department at the high school for three years. That was after 27 years on the Madison County Sheriff’s Department. But his career began with six years of teaching.
That’s a grand total of 40 years of public service.
He chose the Carnegie Learning Center as his most recent service because he is interested in reaching those students who have fallen behind but are willing to put forth some extra effort to catch back up.
He strives to make a connection with each one of the students so that they understand he cares for them – and so that he is able to push them forward when they need an extra dose of motivation.
“I had an interest in working with the kind of kids we have here,” said Thompson. “Sometimes you can make a difference just by the interaction that you have and the way you approach things. We’ve had quite a bit of success.”

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.