This solutions journalism project was created as part of reporter Emma Davis’ service project as a Report for America corps member. Davis worked with nine high school students in Hillsdale’s 2021-22 yearbook class to produce journalism relevant to their district. The students include Delaney Painter, Devon Simmons, Jackson Radcliffe, Jacob Spillman, Klaire Meyer, Marissa Heldenbrand, Celeste Harris, Aaron Horton and Alexis Hamilton. Yearbook teacher Kyle Wissel also contributed.
Find the introduction here.
JEROMESVILLE — Each student creates a personal learning schedule that fits their needs in the northeast part of Ohio at Mayfield High School.
One student, for example, might learn math concepts for five hours on a given day and spend 30 minutes on English classwork.
The next day, their schedule could be completely different.
Mayfield began offering instruction this way during the 2019-2020 school year through what it calls “The Option.”
Students can create a customized schedule for their core classes — math, English, science and history — with electives scheduled outside The Option. Further, students have flexibility within their curriculum to incorporate multiple disciplines as well as personal and career interests, Mayfield High School principal Jeffrey Legan wrote to Ashland Source.
“It is important to share that The Option is a choice that students make when selecting their courses,” Legan wrote. “All students have the option of selecting a learning modality that best suits their learning needs.
Therefore, students can choose from traditional courses, individual self paced courses, or a fully customizable school day (The Option).”
The Option is not going to work for all students, Legan explained.
“This is why we offer various learning modalities,” he wrote. “Overall, we are getting away from the industrialized model where everyone learns the same material, at the same time, on the same day, and is magically ready for their assessment on the same day.
“We recognize that all students learn at different rates and need different levels of supports.”
A handful of Hillsdale educators traveled to Mayfield this spring to see how “The Option” works, including principal Davis Baker and yearbook and social studies teacher Kyle Wissel.
Baker has seen first-hand success with this type of approach in his previous leadership roles at Harrison High School in greater Cincinnati and Glynn Academy in Georgia.
“Every minute of every day from the time you’re in kindergarten until the time you graduate, you’re in classrooms, study halls, and lunch — every minute is accounted for,” Baker said. “As they become juniors and seniors, we need to back off.
“We need to let them take responsibility, working in groups, putting together presentations and projects, working to meet deadlines — because that’s what they’re going to see when they get to college.”
Students at Hillsdale High School have expressed a desire for greater flexibility and autonomy over their own schedules. Some have left Hillsdale because of this, deciding instead to attend college classes or the career center. Implementing Mayfield’s approach at Hillsdale may provide a remedy to student retention, which historically has dropped off for junior- and senior-year classes as students pursue alternative options outside the building.
Hillsdale students have the option to take classes through College Credit Plus, a dual enrollment program where students can earn college and high school credits simultaneously by taking courses from Ohio colleges or universities.
Some of these college-level classes are offered in-house, meaning they are taught by Hillsdale teachers at the high school. Students also have the option to take courses at the higher education institutions the district partners with — North Central State College, Ashland University and The Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute.
“If I had a choice and I could sit here and have every minute accounted for, or take a college schedule, I’m going to take the college schedule,” Baker said.
There are fewer college-level classes offered within the building than students can access outside the building. Next school year, 2022-23, Hillsdale’s staff will teach 11 college-level classes, including English composition I and II, college algebra, trigonometry, CCP physics I and II, introduction to sociology, introduction to psychology, livestock selection, nutrition and management, and CCP Spanish I and II.
Some Hillsdale teachers have taken it upon themselves to get a degree that would allow them to teach college level courses for Hillsdale, including chemistry and physics teacher Luke Power.
Power is currently taking master’s-level physics courses, to eventually teach college level physics classes for Hillsdale students.
In general, teachers need to have one degree above the level of class they teach. So to teach CCP courses, teachers need a bachelor’s degree — with the caveat that they need to have taken masters-level instruction in the specific subject they teach.
“Now I do have a master’s, but it’s not in physics, so now I have to take my master’s physics in order to teach CCP physics,” Power said.
The district paid for the classes Power is taking, which cost between $3,000 and $4,000. Power said this has alleviated financial obstacles for him, and likely would for others who chose to take classes as well, but taking these additional classes overall requires an additional time commitment that some people may not be able to give.
What would make more students stay in the high school throughout their school career? For some, it would take more class offerings — both in a variety of subjects and difficulty levels.
Junior Daniel Painter is taking several CCP classes — financial accounting, speech, digital literacy, American history — because he said he could not pass up graduating high school with an associate’s degree. But, if those same CCP classes had been offered at the high school, he said he likely would have stayed.
“I never really looked into what Hillsdale had to offer,” Painter said. “I just knew that you get a guaranteed college degree with this program and that’s what I was looking for.”
The same was true for junior Max Vesper. He also decided to take CCP classes outside the high school building, but said he would have stayed if the CCP classes he needed to obtain an associate’s degree were offered at the high school.
Painter also enjoyed being able to have more control over his schedule and not have to be in a school building all day everyday.
“I’m more of a ‘stick to myself person,’ so that helped a lot too,” Painter said.
Similarly, junior Nick Kandel has enjoyed the flexibility of a college schedule. When asked if he would have stayed at the high school if the types of CCP classes he took — statistics, digital literacy, among others — had been offered at the high school, he said probably not.
“The college experience was way better,” Kandel said in comparison. “It was a lot more laid back, a lot more independent, which I like more.”
Some students wished they could have tried out more classes before committing to a program outside the high school, such as junior Braden Rottman.
Rottman decided to attend the career center because he wanted to study cyber security, classes that are not offered at Hillsdale. While Rottman does not regret his decision to attend the career center, he reflected on his classes being more challenging with the coding and the school work being more difficult.
At the same time, Baker said the school is limited in the classes it can offer because with most juniors and seniors leaving the building, the school runs into the issue of not having enough students interested to fill a variety of classes.
Some classes offered during the 2021-22 school year had as few as four students, and although Hillsdale tries to run with the interest it has, Baker said offering classes with so few students is not necessarily sustainable. Fewer students spread among electives also starts to squeeze the music and agriculture programs, which Baker said are near and dear to Hillsdale.
Some students at Hillsdale High School also seek greater individual control over their school-day schedules, including junior K’Lynne Harris. Harris chose to take classes online this year because it afforded her greater scheduling flexibility, which she said allowed her to help her parents take care of her younger brother.
“It was a family decision to let him sleep longer and not get up as early,” Harris said.
While Harris switched to online learning this year, she would like to return to in-person high school next year, for her senior year. Still, she wishes the traditional school setting offered her more scheduling flexibility.
“The main assumptions are that I’m lazy or not trying hard enough,” Harris said.
But, that is not the case, she countered.
“A unique thing is I can do assignments whenever, and for however long I want to,” Harris said.
This would be similar to the pace of instruction with “The Option,” which would provide students more autonomy over their schedule while alleviating some small class-size concerns through an overall individualization of instruction.
How does “The Option” work?
Through “The Option,” Mayfield students’ schedules and learning paces are specific to each student and driven by their understanding and mastery of learning goals.
The same is true for assessments. Students determine when to take assessments based on their readiness. A student must also have 80% mastery of a unit before moving onto the next step of their learning goals.
Teacher involvement varies, both compared to the traditional school day and per student. Teachers monitor student progress, provide small group and one-on-one instruction.
Students are also a part of a capstone course, which lasts the entire school year and tasks students to research and solve problems inspired by their interests.
Students are given greater autonomy over their schedules and pace with “The Option,” but student progress is tracked and teachers intervene when they are not reaching 80% mastery.
When a struggling student is identified, a paraprofessional (such as an intervention specialist) will work with the student to create a personalized success plan, which involves the student identifying key areas for growth and meeting with the paraprofessional regularly to monitor that growth.
Hillsdale intervention specialist Angela Layton currently offers one-on-one support and intervention study halls for students with Individualized Education Programs. Layton said she thinks “The Option” could be helpful.
“The unknown is full of challenges but also potential,” Layton said. “We are excited as a team to tap into the resources and the creative strengths of our team to unleash that potential for our students.
“Whatever the challenges may be we can together find creative ways to prepare our students individually and collectively for their next steps after their time here at Hillsdale.”
Layton said it would be important for staff to be prepared for students who may fall behind in “The Option,” particularly knowing that some students struggled to stay on track and turn in work with individual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A potential remedy, Layton suggested, could be to keep freshmen on a more regimented schedule and allow greater flexibility as students increase in grade level.
Mayfield and Hillsdale are not similar when it comes to size. Mayfield serves a larger student body — about 1,700 — and has more teachers. For comparison’s sake, Hillsdale has 273 students in grades 9-12 enrollment for the 2021-22 school year.
Mayfield did not add more staff when it switched to “The Option.” Existing staff did receive paid professional development, and the school created a flexible learning space where students can work.
“As we created this learning modality for students, we knew that we were unable to hire additional staff,” wrote Legan, the Mayfield High School principal. “Instead, we thought outside of the box to reimagine how we can provide a customized learning approach to meet the varying needs of our students.”
While Mayfield’s approach is still relatively new, and was interrupted by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, data available suggests it has benefited students in a few ways.
Legan and others at Mayfield measure success by looking at both academic data and soft skills gained, such as time management, communication, problem solving, self-advocacy and organization. Mayfield also partnered with an Ohio State Research team in 2020 to help the school develop qualitative and quantitative research to help inform our practices.
“Since the development of The Option, our students have scored proficient or higher on all of their End of Course assessments and our value added scores have been above average meaning that our students are earning greater than one year’s worth of expected growth,” Legan wrote.
Some aspects of The Option have changed as assumption met reality.
“Originally, when we began this journey, we assumed that many of our seniors had the soft-skills needed to be successful in this learning model,” Legan wrote. “We now understand that these soft skills need to be embedded across all disciplines while focusing on goal setting. Now that we have entered our third year offering this modality, we continue to offer more cross-curricular connections which is the ultimate goal.
“Disciplines should not be taught in silos. This is not how the world works.”
Legan wrote that Mayfield educators ask students what their favorite class is when they enroll in “The Option.”
“They say The Option,” Legan explained, “even though it is not a ‘class’ but rather an environment in which they learn.”
Next: Bridging division across cliques, political views by getting curious.
