Albany Senior High School

Last week we had the privilege during our ICTPD home group meeting of visiting a number of Auckland Schools. I will try and put down my thoughts here so they stay fresh in my mind. I guess the one that stood out the most was Albany Senior High School, ASHS as it is known is a year 11-13 college on the North Shore. In fact the school does not exist in the google images and it is being built further down the road.

There are a number of development that make the school quite different from our own. Among these is the fact that the school only has students from years 11-13 (with only year 11 at the moment). This alone makes it much more flexible. The school runs in 100 minute blocks during the day and each subject is given two 100 minutes blocks a week. On Wednesday morning after a sharing session students are given time to complete an impact project of their own development. This project is not assessed presently for national qualifications but I’m sure as it develops more cross curricula credits will be brought in.

Also interesting was the treatment of the students as young adults. There are no separate staff and student toilets, students address staff by first names and the learning spaces are very flexible in their design to allow for more movement and remove some of the rigid methods we are forced into with traditional classroom design.

As far as students addressing staff by first names I guess this further moves the teacher from the front of the classroom to beside the learner. I have also noticed that this is a trend of society as a whole. As a child I remember calling any adult Mr or Mrs and it wasn’t until my late teens that I called any of my friends parents anything different. The only exception being my rowing coach. Odd how I recall this now but I am Richard to most young people now, I almost feel I’ve missed a stage.

The toilets is interesting as well, Warren pointed out that there are no toilets in malls for under 18s and maybe this would stop vandalism and smoking in the toilets if students knew teachers went in to the toilets regularly. A small point but very different from the norm.

And I guess the impact project and the class times are the ones that should be given the most thought but I think I will leave that until another visit so as not to be premature in my judgement of what seems risky for teenage boys especially but with big benefits as well.

I say good luck to the team as ASHS and I look forward to following their developments.

( I have not written about their decision to be an open source school as thats been both covered and a whole new post.)