Willow Run Middle School is a technological paradise. When I first stepped into the school, I was amazed at the new-ness of their building. This facility makes me want to learn. It’s clean and well kempt and quite modern. On the walk over to Shirley’s classroom, I made a comment to her, “I feel as if I’m in Jurassic Park.” Remember in the first movie with the opulent main building? Try visiting Willow Run’s library, and you’ll begin to wonder where the T-Rex skeleton should go.
I could hardly believe the extravagance of technology here. A Smart Board in every room with a ceiling-mounted digital projector is coupled with a laptop-cart, complete with a full battery of thirty laptops. Gone are the days of the analogue clock. Even their time here is digitalized. Naturally, the kids don’t waste their time or energy turning an ordinary pencil sharpener. Each room is equipped with a desktop computer linked to a color laser printer that can be accessed through the wireless network and printed to from anywhere. The ceiling is no longer a place just for lights anymore. Here at Willow Run, speakers are poised above the students and distributed evenly throughout the room. Knowledge now comes in 5.1 surround sound.
But there are some relics of the past that have lingered and endured in this room. The lonely overhead projector has become a shelf for boxes and papers. The only other technological eyesore is an ancient television mounted in the corner. Its screen is as big as the computer monitor just a few feet below it. Where’s the wall-mounted eighty-inch DLP television? This is shameful.
At Belleville, I have no windows. I would enter into a death-match with any of the other teachers there if it meant I could win a windowed room. It’s sad because a majority of these “windowed rooms” only have openings that are a foot and a half wide. Shirley’s room has six large windows. Each window is three feet wide and about six and a half feet high. It’s pretty much a whole wall of glass that’s broken up by intermittent windowpanes.
Big Brother is always watching you in Willow Run. Every room has a little hockey-puck shaped glossy black thing attached to the ceiling. Big Brother is always watching. After I finish writing this, I’m going to go look for O’Brien.
It seems blindingly obvious to me that money isn't the answer to bridging the achievement gap. this school is state of the art in almost every way. yet it functions similarly to schools that in much greater disrepair. perhaps amazing technology and amazing facilities aren't all that they're cracked up to be.
but honestly, i would jump at the opportunity to steal a classroom out of willow run and use it for myself.
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8 comments:
Great post. (You got me itching to visit Willow Run now.) I think you certainly have a point in that, like most other "fixes," infrastructure and technology aren't a cure-all when it comes to systemic low academic performance in a school/district. It has to be accompanied by effective leadership, good teaching and a host of other improvements that might go deep enough to begin to address the complexity of problems that likely exist. But then again, money, infrastructure and technology might be the catalyst needed for deeper change; maybe cool teachers like yourself would be lured by the opportunity to work in such a technologically progressive environment?
-Tafaya
Larry,
Very interesting. I visited Romulus and Ann Arbor teacher told me, "Now you will see a school with real problems." And yet, it was this immaculate structure stuffed to the brim with technology and new facilities (swimming pool as achievement gap anyone? My high school in Mt. Pleasant Michigan didn't have one).
How do schools get these reputations? Is it just based on MEAP scores? If schools have poor performance do people automatically think that they do not have sufficient resources? I don't have enough experience to answer these questions.
I would argue against your "Money isn't the answer" title. I would argue that if we could have more and better trained teachers to lower the number of students they have to handle at a time that this would improve performance. These teachers would have the time to work one-on-one. These teachers would be trained professionals rather than perpetual substitutes. These teachers would have the time to contact parents and get them involved. All of the above would cost money, and perhaps rather than giving teachers higher pay in cushy jobs in the suburbs why not try granting "hazard pay" to work in troubled districts?
Mark
Sounds like an interesting place to visit. But, does the "real question" then become: does the staff utilize all the technology available to them?
Also, while I have not visited the high school (other than for the MTTCs)...does that technology also exist there? Or does it exist at a comparable level? I would have to guess, given what I saw during the MTTCs, that technological equality is unlikely. But again, maybe this is because much of the school that I saw was not very up to date....
Larry, I was shocked when I visited Shirley too. And I think good points have been made: It's not that money isn't the answer, it's just that money is "mismanaged." Why pay for an amazing library or state-of-the-art technology resources if there aren't enough librarians to keep the library open or enough tech personnel to train teachers? Why update the infrastructure at the expense of hiring more highly qualified teachers?
It's a theme I talk about in my blog a bit too--that no single thing can be a fix-all. Technology is great. Infrastructure is great. Money is great. But these things are only great if they're implemented with adequate support and effective leadership, with the hearts of real people involved.
Thanks for your post.
Larry! I forgot to attack your post! :P
As one of a few spokespeople for WRMS, I'd like to say that most of the teachers (at least on our team/hallway) utilize the technology a LOT. I can't walk down the hallway to make copies without seeing at least three teachers with their projectors/smartboards on. Kids in my class take quite a few quizzes/tests on their laptops for ELA as well as participate in the Accelerated-Reader program by taking their tests on the laptops as well for points.
But there aren't enough books in that Jurassic-Park-lookin' library, and quite a bit of the majority of these books are way above my average kid's reading level. I'm wondering if there's been a change in importance from books to technology, if the technology is so new that students haven't really had it in their prior/elementary years and is really not relevant to their reading ability. (And maybe this technology was brought in to increase their education and is still in the early stages.)
I almost feel (yes, almost) like there's something wrong in the picture, but I've only been there a short time and haven't seen WRMS's past nor its plans for the future.
As another WRer, I was also going to make objections to your article. But then I realized that the only close-to-decent point that I could make is that our students actually do have to dedicate time and energy to pencil sharpening, especially since most of the school-issue sharpeners are long-broken. My mentor teacher bought an electric pencil-sharpener at the beginning of this year, which recently died after the students sharpened it to death. Before then, however, students from other classes were interrupting class to ask if they could sharpen their pencils there. Now, we have the little manual sharpeners, with the razor blade covered with plastic, and the first 5-10 minutes of class seems to be dedicated to pencil sharpening.
And, of course, there's the issue of WR being 4 million or so in debt. Maybe it's only 2 mil now, I forget. That being said, the infrastructure is solid at the middle school.
Did you get a chance to visit the high school, Larry? That's an entirely different story. The high school had been there for a while before the middle school was added, and it lacks all the luxuries of the middle school. One thing that worries me is that, given that 9th grade is the sink-or-swim year for dropouts, what does this do to WR students when, as they ponder dropping out, they're dropped into a building that looks older, grimier, and darker. Not exactly good for morale.
This is all beginning to sound like the Four Yorkshiremen sketch from Monty Python, so I'll end on a high note. Yay windows!
Larry,
Great job comparing the various schools and bring up some very real, but not so obvious differences about the quality of the education with regard to monetary concerns. I agree with Tafaya I'd like to see Willow Run also. I don't believe all the U of M classes even have smart boards in them -that's impressive.
Larry,
First, I am surprised that Willow Run is this technologically savvy. It seems to me that tax dollars have been thrown into this school to improve performance through state-of-the art resources. I teach at one of the richest high schools in the state, and I have yet to see a Smartboard.
I'm curious how the students respond to the technology. Are they in awe of it? Do they like to use it? Does it help them learn? I wonder, if we asked them what their school needed most, what their response would be.
Here in The USA, we love to throw money at problems. Interesting that you have experienced a very real-life example of how that truly is NOT the only answer.
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