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More than 100 students, teachers, school leaders, and community members came together on Wednesday, Sept. 5 to celebrate the launch of Tulsa Beyond, a new Tulsa Public Schools initiative to redesign the secondary learning experience.
More than 100 students, teachers, school leaders, and community members came together on Wednesday, Sept. 5 to celebrate the launch of Tulsa Beyond, a new Tulsa Public Schools initiative to redesign the secondary learning experience. Four district secondary schools volunteered to serve as pilot sites for the project: McLain, Webster, and Hale high schools and Tulsa Learning Academy.
Tulsa Beyond will bring school leaders, teachers, students, and community members together to design and eventually implement ways of teaching and learning that will provide new and innovative secondary learning models.
“Tulsa Beyond is more than a project,” said Superintendent Deborah Gist, “it is the name of our fundamental belief that we can design schools that produce graduates who are resourceful learners, designers of their life journey, and meaningful contributors.
Each of the four pilot sites has assembled a team of 10-12 members who will meet regularly to begin designing models and plans to improve upon the quality of our current high school education. Teams will explore every potential opportunity idea that they believe will improve the high school experience and begin implementing those plans in time for the start of the 2019-2020 school year.
Gist said: “These design teams are going to study the past and the future, visit some of the best high schools in the country, and then they are going to design some of the best high schools in the country.
“Our pilot sites will be leading the way in transforming teaching and learning. There are cities that have redesigned schools, there are districts that have redesigned systems, but Tulsa Public Schools is the first district that is leading a grass-roots, school-driven effort.”
McLain High School design team member Emeka Nnaka is looking forward to the work ahead for the design teams. Nnaka said: “Tulsa is ready for this, and Tulsa Beyond is letting us think beyond walls, beyond textbooks, and beyond tradition to imagine what could be possible here in Tulsa high schools. I think that what we start here is something that will go past here and live long beyond us.”