ASKING QUESTIONS, EXPLORING OPTIONS, CHANGING THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION.

School House

Rain Or Shine.

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Quest Early College High School. Senior Exhibition Project.

Journal Entry #6. Wednesday, February 22, 2012

I am inclined to feel as through my group has had its first rainstorm in what began as a sunny group-dynamic filled with rainbows. We opened with a discussion, and addressed our group’s current dilemma. So far, though we all have selected umbrella topics, ferretting out our specific areas of concentration has been tricky. Even after two weeks of research, we were still feeling slightly adrift and without purpose.

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School House

Journal Entry # 5.

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Quest Early College High School. Senior Exhibition Project.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Missing school is like losing a contact. The small, transparent lens lost forever in the bathroom sink; you know it’s there, but you can’t see it to recover it! Missing school is similar to losing that little contact, you know it’s going on, it’s there waiting for you, but you cannot connect with it. My Monday was a lost contact; I was not at school, but instead on the beautiful Rice University Campus for Vision 2012, a preview of the university for prospective minority students. While I was away, a new Senior Exhibition assignment was doled out, and so now I have a twelve page research paper outline due next Wednesday.

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School House

Kryptonite and Social Action.

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Quest Early College High School. Senior Exhibition Project: Journal Entry # 2

Thursday, January 26, 2012.

This Thursday was one of the rare days of school that I felt I learned something profound and meaningful. Kap McWhorter stood before my class and requested each student draw a four scene children’s book about a social action project we might want to do in the future. After my class finished our drawings of hungry villages being given food and orphans being given homes, we were asked to reflect.

“Who is the hero in your story?” Mr. McWhorter wanted to know.

In our stories, the answer was clear. Most of my classmates and I had drawn ourselves as the heroes of our stories. We had envisioned ourselves as beacons of light bringing books to impoverished communities and “catalysts of justice” (to quote a classmate of mine) who brought disaster relief to Japan. We had drawn ourselves, as Mr. McWhorter pointed out, as supermen.

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School House

My Senior Exhibition Project.

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I am one of the 36 seniors in Quest Early College High School class of 2012, and we are all currently laughing in unison with our delightful guest speaker. While his topic is serious, (he is an environmental-policy expert and professor of biology speaking to us about various environmental crisis) he has managed to hilariously demand our attention by explaining the uses of bio-solids.  He is a one of a series of speakers, which are currently booked to speak to my senior class. When the series is over, our speakers will have covered such topics as women’s health issues, the state of the U.S. economy, civil liberties, global poverty, and human rights.

All of these speakers are preparing my fellow seniors and I for THE accomplishment of our high school careers, an accomplishment which comes with a public speech, research in a field of study, and finally the challenge to positively impact our community and world for generations. At Quest ECHS, this experience is known as Senior Exhibition, and completion is required to graduate.

Senior Exhibition promises to be a “roller coaster ride” according to my history teacher, Mr. Newton, and I am happy to be sharing this experience via blog! To give everyone some background on Senior Ex, I will do my best to first explain the unique class structure at Quest High School.

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Innovation

In the Spirit of Innovation

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Sputnik! For teenagers of my generation, the word Sputnik conjures images of a robot with antennae floating amongst the stars, or even the “time travel -Sputnik” episode of the 90s television show “Boy Meets World”.  In terms of education, it is the spirit of Sputnik which the EDWeek blog Sputnik: Advancing Education through Innovation and Evidence intends to capture. Robert Slavin of John Hopkins University has pioneered the blog and expertly argues for a rebirth of the innovation age, he encourages education reformers to invest in research and creativity instead of assessments and rigidity. (more…)