Another Segment of “Not the SHS from Which I Graduated”
Remember, I made a commitment to share a lot of “I had no idea moments” with those who continue to read this weekly column, and I don’t want to let you down. Folks, I am not kidding when I keep saying that this is not the Springfield High School a lot of us remember–and that is not a bad thing.
All you have to do is open the SHS curriculum guide. You won’t even get past the first page before you realize there are courses being offered at this high school that were not even on anyone’s radar when I was walking the hallways of Springfield High in the late 1980s. I want to focus on something I observed last week. I came upon a co-curricular project that was coordinated by SHS business department chair Mrs. Bonita Adams. You see, Mrs. Adams, for years, has offered her students the opportunity to learn about different forms of business ownership. She partners them up to create a franchise, and the students are required to create a flyer with all the details of their franchise (name, address, logo, slogan and/or mission statement, description of what they do, etc.) While in the classroom, she covers important life-skills, too, like how to conduct themselves on a job interview, along with business etiquette skills (table manners, how to dress, introductions, body language, etc.). For those who wonder, she also continues to support her students as they create their resume. She even has them design their own business card. Within the unit, her students researched possible interview questions and how they should be answered. Again, working with their partner (because being a good teammate is a critically important skill at any job), Mrs. Adams has the students write a script of how their interview would proceed, using a roleplaying format that has the interview taking place during a breakfast or lunch meeting. Here’s where things got really cool. Mrs. Adams then partnered with our hospitality management teacher, Mr. Nicholas Specht, to give his students a little of the same “authentic” learning that Mrs. Adams was providing to her students.
Now, for those unfamiliar –and there have to be a lot of you because we haven’t shared a lot up to this point– SHS offers a course for students in grades nine to 12 in hospitality management. The curriculum guide presents it to the students in this way, “Have you thought about that dream vacation? Students will learn about how to run restaurants, hotels and travel agencies.” Again, pretty cool, right? In addition to coursework in planning vacations within certain budgets to locations all over the world, the students can study about famous tourist locations, they will evaluate current practices at local locations and develop ideas for improvement. This course can help prepare students for work in many career fields and prepare them for business classes in college. Mr. Specht also is teaching them important service industry skills like how to both prepare and serve meals.
After talking together, Mrs. Adams decided to defer the past field trip that her students have taken to an area restaurant in favor of a quick walk across the hall into the new SHS Cafe, where Mrs. Adams’ and Mr. Specht’s students were graded on their performance, demonstration of course content and skills. To take it one step further, because if you know anything about Mrs. Adams, that’s a given, she also invited Mr. Stuart Carter, manufacturing manager from First Solar; Mr. Shyam Suchak, director of organizational development and human resources for Anne Grady Services; Ms. Buffy Fauver, director of human resources for the Elizabeth Scott Community, along with Dr. Bryson and Mrs. McCarver, to provide a few “tips and tricks of the trades” and help assess her students’ performances.
I’ve said it before, and I will never get tired of saying it again and again, I wish this course content had been available when I walked the SHS halls (way back when).
