idea. Later in the summer, we met with
a focus group of students who were also
eager to see the program launched.
The more we delved into the project,
the more questions kept cropping up.
Who would be responsible for administering the program? What weight would
we assign to each category and to each
activity? Could a student count an experience that was offered during a regular
class as an activity for program credit?
Could we expect seniors to complete
the full portfolio in only one year? And
what would this electronic
portfolio look like?
Aiming for implementation at the start of the
school year seemed like a
daunting task, but we
persevered.
65 points respectively because of the
limited time they had left before graduation). Students who completed their
portfolio would receive a special 21st
Century Scholar Diploma. In addition,
we would seek scholarship money
through a fund-raising drive in the
community, with the hope of collecting
enough to grant some form of scholarship to each student who successfully
completed the program.
To ensure the breadth of experiences
we were looking for, we would require
ences, and guest speakers and to
endorse the 21st Century Scholar
Diploma. We also identified a dedicated
teacher, Karen Thomas, to devote half of
her teaching schedule to administering
the program—approving student
requests, answering questions about
activities, taking in suggestions from
students, coordinating activities with the
teachers sponsoring the individual
events, and ultimately awarding the
points based on completion of the
requirements.
Embarking on
the Journey
In the first week of
October 2008, we held
grade-level assemblies to
introduce the program.
We showed a PowerPoint
presentation stressing the
changing global market-
place and the importance
of a broad education. We
assured students that the
program was voluntary
but encouraged them to
join. In the following
weeks, we held several
sessions to show students
how to create their elec-
tronic portfolios—how to
log on to the database,
apply to enroll in activi-
ties, document completion, and see how
many points they had accumulated so
far.
We also held a series of parent information meetings stressing the need for
21st century skills. The parents were
supportive and felt that these skills were
important for their children; some
offered suggestions of how their
employers could help.
Students enrolled in the program in
high numbers. Few seniors were willing
to participate—although they liked the
idea and told us they wished it had
begun earlier in their high school
careers, most felt that it would be too
much of a burden to earn the requisite
points in one year. But 50 percent of
În a national robotics competition, students design, build, program, and
test a robot that can pick up balls and deposit them in a basket.
Mapping Out
the Details
To design the portfolio,
we talked with our resident tech staff. After much
discussion, someone had
the idea of adapting a staff
development system
called My Learning Plan
that was already used in
the district. This software
enables teachers to electronically apply for
permission to attend a
conference or course, get approval from
an administrator, attend the event, write
up a conference report, and earn credit.
That was just the process we were
looking for! Our programmers set to
work, putting in many hours of their
free time to adapt the system and make
our vision an electronic reality.
Knowing we were in the good hands
of our programmers, we moved forward
on some of the other questions. We
reviewed hundreds of suggested activities and talked about the point value to
be assigned to each. We agreed that
students would be required to earn 100
points for a completed portfolio (except
for current 11th and 12th graders,
whose requirements were 80 points and
students to complete a certain number
of activities in each category: 20 percent
in communication, 20 percent in global
awareness, 15 percent in financial
literacy, 10 percent in health literacy, 10
percent in community service, 15
percent in career awareness and self-direction skills, and 10 percent in information technology. Announcements of
upcoming activities—trips, guest
lecturers, book discussions, and so on—
would be shared on the 21st Century
Scholars’ Program e-mail discussion list.
By mid-August, we had the outline of
our 21st Century Scholars’ Program. We
had recruited corporate supporters
(such as Cablevision, Cisco, and Dell) to
provide internships, shadowing experi-
