Estados Unidos: Lake high school students to be challenged with rigorous AP Capstone course

Estados Unidos/Abril de 2017/Fiente: Orlando Sentinel

Resumen: Con el objetivo de mejorar el distrito C-rated, los funcionarios de la escuela del Condado de Lake están planeando ofrecer «una clase como ninguna otra» para mejorar las habilidades de pensamiento crítico de los estudiantes universitarios y añadir otro nivel a su currículum. AP Capstone, que ya está en funcionamiento en 17 escuelas en los condados de Seminole y Orange, está diseñado para enseñar a los estudiantes las habilidades de investigación a través de dos cursos avanzados de colocación y se ofrecerá en las escuelas secundarias South Lake, East Ridge y Lake Minneola este otoño. «Es esa educación de estilo antiguo, con discusiones y preguntas, de regreso a la antigua Grecia, incluso de vuelta a Platón y Aristóteles», dijo Sheri Hjelm, que enseña el Seminario AP en la Escuela Secundaria Freedom en el Condado de Orange. Los estudiantes AP Capstone completan el Seminario AP primero, luego toman una clase llamada AP Research. Los estudiantes generan varias preguntas de investigación durante dos años, estudian literatura y luego «agregan a esa brecha en el conocimiento» sobre temas con ensayos y presentaciones verbales, dijo.«No hay un plan», dijo Hjelm. «Los estudiantes se topan con los callejones sin salida, se levantan de nuevo y prueban una avenida diferente».

Aiming to improve the C-rated district, Lake County school officials are planning to offer “a class like no other” to sharpen college-bound students’ critical-thinking skills and add another notch to their resume.

AP Capstone, already in place in 17 schools in Seminole and Orange counties, is designed to teach students inquiry skills through two advanced-placement courses and will be offered at South Lake, East Ridge and Lake Minneola high schools this fall.

“It’s that old-style [education], having discussions and asking questions, back to ancient Greece, even back to Plato and Aristotle,” said Sheri Hjelm, who teaches AP Seminar at Freedom High School in Orange County.

AP Capstone students complete AP Seminar first, then take a class called AP Research. Students generate several research questions over two years, study literature and then “add to that gap in knowledge” on subjects with essays and verbal presentations, she said.

“There is no blueprint,” Hjelm said. “Students run into dead ends, pick themselves up again and try a different avenue.”

In AP Seminar, kids have the chance to get accustomed to a learning environment that revolves more around asking pointed questions than providing answers.

But the course ratchets up the next year in AP Research, during which students as young as sophomores could spend an entire year on a single research question they developed. It culminates in a 5,000-word essay and a 20-minute oral presentation in front of a panel of scholars. Upon finishing, students receive a Capstone diploma.

For Sanuki Prematilleke, who is 17 and graduating from Freedom next month, the AP Capstone courses were the most challenging of her last two years in high school.

But it wasn’t like math or English class, when students budget time to fill out formulas and answer questions in paragraph form. In the AP Capstone classes, researching answers took hours of wading through data and articles.

“Taking Seminar was something I didn’t expect,” Sanuki said. “It was not only a lot more time and work needed, but also a different way of thinking.”

Sanuki, who plans to major in vocal performance at Florida State University, said she studied medical uses for non-spectral color technology and the effectiveness of Title IX, a federal law that protects against gender discrimination in school sports.

Other topics have gained traction for their relevance and motivated students along the way.

As the Orange County School Board contemplated changing school start times, Freedom students studied the impact of sleep deprivation. One junior’s presentation on whether water was a commodity or a right resulted in invitations to speak at three conferences.

The course has seen success in Seminole County, which had some of the first schools nationwide to adopt AP Capstone in 2014.

“When the work has meaning, when that happens, you have that much more enthusiasm for the project,” said Connie Collins, principal of Seminole High School in Sanford. “It attaches real-world problems to real-world solutions.”

Developed by the College Board, AP Capstone was a result of feedback from universities and colleges. Hjelm, who took a five-day orientation course to teach AP Seminar, said colleges noticed that students were knowledgeable but lacked a crucial skill: working through a problem from the ground up by themselves.

Lake school officials hope the courses’ unique challenge can enliven the student body. About 29 percent of 4,600 AP tests taken by Lake students in 2013 scored high enough to receive college credit, according to the most recent state Department of Education data.

With the graduation rate in Lake at 78.1 percent last year — lagging behind other Central Florida districts — officials have often moved their focus to low-performing students.

“But you also have students that need a challenge and providing that challenge has been a little bit of a struggle for us,” Lake School Board Chairman Marc Dodd said.

Lake initially planned to implement the International Baccalaureate program, a prestigious academic course, but some School Board members shied away after seeing its high costs and projected student reach.

In Groveland, South Lake High School Principal Steven Benson heard about the course from one of his teachers who came back after a day of observing AP Capstone at West Orange High School in Winter Garden.

Reporting to Benson, he said he saw students talking to University of California doctors and researchers from New England.

“I was thinking that it was exactly the type of opportunity that we had been lacking for our upper-tier students,” Benson said.

Fuente: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/lake/os-ap-capstone-lake-county-20170427-story.html