July 2007 — Case Studies
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Curriculum-Based Reform :: Missouri
GET REAL!
Missouri’s eMINTS program gives students access to advanced technology while engaging them in authentic, compelling problem-solving tasks.
TYPICAL HIGH SCHOOL chatter about clothes, weekend plans, and last night’s game subsides as students enter their New Franklin High School (MO) social studies classroom and begin listening intently to the newscast playing on the television screen in the corner of the room. Mr. McGowan, their teacher, sits quietly at his desk scanning files and papers. The newscast is describing a hostage situation unfolding in the Middle East. A plane is missing over Yemen, and there is a fear that American missionaries on the flight have been captured and are being held by a group of extremists.
3rd-Grade Communication Arts
Non-eMINTS Students vs. eMINTS Students
Students scoring “proficient” or “advanced”
on Missouri Assessment
Program testing.
Based on a total of 208 teachers and 3,911 students.
[blue = Non-eMINTS Students; green = eMINTS Students]
As the students settle uneasily into their seats, Mr. McGowan turns down the volume on the television. “What do you think is going to happen?” a student asks anxiously. “I don’t know,” he replies. “What would you do if you were the president? Our military leaders? Our ambassador? What do you know about the countries that are involved in this?”
What McGowan has just done is set the stage for an authentic learning experience, using archived video clips that will take his students on a comprehensive twoweek journey through history, geography, civics, and current events. They will learn more about cultural, political, and economic factors surrounding the United States and its image across the globe than can be revealed in a bound textbook. They will communicate with experts outside their classrooms as they gather perspectives in the pursuit of solutions. They will work to meet multiple state standards and curricular grade-level expectations as they become fully engaged in problem solving, collaboration, analysis, and communication.
McGowan and his students are participants in the eMINTS (Enhancing Missouri’s Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies) program. Their school district, New Franklin R-I, was awarded a grant under the No Child Left Behind Act’s Enhancing Education Through Technology fund. The award provides money to purchase a laptop computer for each student in the high school and, more importantly, for the sustained and intensive professional development that teachers such as McGowan use to create innovative units like the one just described. Using a realworld approach to curriculum-based reform has been a hallmark of eMINTS teaching strategies since the program’s inception in 1999.
