Project #3 (C4T#1)

Jon Bacal is chief entrepreneurship officer and founder of Venture Academy, a grades 6-12 NGLC Wave IIIa grantee opening in Minneapolis this August. In his blog he offers sound advice of how to make sure that you have the enrollment numbers you need to have a successful blended school of choice. He breaks it down into three P's: picky parents, personalized learning’s benefits,and perseverance.
Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel’s classic, Picky Parent Guide: Choose Your Child’s School With Confidence.Its definition of a great school is one in which “students of all abilities and types achieve dramatically better academic results than similar students in other schools.” The Guide encourages parents to assess schools on seven Great School Quality Factors, including a clear mission, high and personalized expectations for all students, monitoring progress and adjusting teaching, focus on effective learning tasks, home-school connection, safe and orderly environment, and strong instructional leadership.
Jon Bacal's views on the benefits of personalized learning show that children will be looked at as an individual rather than as a group of children. Each child will have their own path of leaning depending on their specific needs. This means self directed learning, one on one help as needed, and clear direct information to the parents about their child's progress
Perseverance is key when connecting with parents and the community to promote a blended learning school. He suggest parks, community centers, churches, on the street, and even door to door. Another suggestion is to make flyers, brochures,direct mail, advertising and media coverage.He also suggest hands on activities for children and parents and keeping a constant record of who is committing to enroll at the school. One of his major concerns is getting the word out there about the school, because enrollment is key to keeping the doors of the school open.
We have schools of choice within the Mobile County Public School System. I was surprised to read in the blog that these types of schools have problems with enrollment numbers. I jumped at the chance to send my son to Old Shell Road Performing Arts School in Mobile, because I thought it was a good way for him to be exposed to activities like music, dance, drama, and art classes. To be accepted into these schools, you have to put your child, or children on a list and he, or she is picked by a computer drawing. I always thought that this meant that there were a large number of people trying to have their children educated at these particular schools. I have three children that will be starting school in the next few years and we (my husband and I) are considering sending them to Council Traditional School. Jon Bocal's blog makes me wonder (and want to investigate and find out) exactly what kind of enrollment numbers these schools actually have.
Jon Bocal suggest hiring edupreneurs instead of educators. Edupreneur combines the concepts of education and entrepreneur – a person who undertakes any enterprise or venture, usually with considerable initiative and risk. Edupreneurs bring passion, imagination, grit and a sense of urgency in their zealous drive to create and constantly refine optimal learning for young people, organization-wide, and for every learner. He offers five suggestions for picking edupreneurs.
1.Hire edupreneurs who are passionate, versatile, flexible, innovative and entrepreneurial.
2.Select humble, authentic, emotionally intelligent leaders eager to develop themselves and others
3.Choose learning-centered leaders who already live your mission, can build a culture around it, and can inspire and coach colleagues and young people to make it their own.
4.Only pick someone you’d hire in a heartbeat to guide and teach your own children.
5.If you’re not sure whether a candidate meets these tests, keep looking.
As a future educator, I hope that I will be looked at as a edrupreneur. I was born in 1975, so this is a new concept to me. I was taught by lectures, note taking, and the occasional movie (on VHS of course). We had a small computer lab, but our visits to it were rare. I hope to be exposed to this type of teaching through my classes at University of South Alabama, and my experiences in the classroom with other edrupreneurs.