PHOENIX, AZ — Trevor G. Browne High School in the Phoenix Union High School District is the second location within the district to try out a different teaching model.
It’s called an ‘academies model,’ where students get to choose certain career paths they’d like to go into and then have their core coursework like English, Math and Science have that interest incorporated.
“It really makes it more interesting, and I actually want to do it,” said Jeremiah Ratley, a sophomore at the school. “A lot of my classes, they’re just boring. I’m not really interested in, but I still do it because you have to get the good grades. But, if I’m learning something I actually like, then it doesn’t seem like work.
For example, on Wednesday, Ratley was in Raquel Diaz’s engineering class. The students were working with robots on Wednesday, and engineering already has a lot of math and science. Including English may be a little more challenging.
"The design parts of making these robots, there’s a lot of complex words that you need to be able to understand, so it really expands your vocabulary,” Ratley explained.
Diaz is part of a group consisting of eight teachers who help tailor students’ interests in project-based learning for her specific career pathway, which is emerging technology. That would include engineering, artificial intelligence, networking and manufacturing technology.
The teachers collaborate on a weekly basis and figure out ways to help incorporate that career into the students’ everyday schoolwork.
“I'm witnessing a level of excitement. I'm witnessing that it's much easier to engage the students because we're bridging things together,” Diaz said.
The goal is to help the students prepare for life after high school and give them a different way to do it.
Diaz tells ABC15 she’s already seeing results as they incorporate other subjects.
“I can see the lights coming on and they're not so afraid of an exponential curve or a linear curve,” she said.
Other career pathways include health and sciences with nursing and physical therapy, fine arts, construction and automotive as well as business marketing.
