[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 5908]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



           TRIBUTE TO INNOVATORS IN FIVE VERMONT HIGH SCHOOLS

 Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President. I rise today to pay tribute to 
educators in five Vermont high schools whose collaborative work in 
school improvement will help high school teachers and administrators 
across the country understand how to support high school reform. The 
high schools and their educators include: Montpelier High School--Owen 
Bradley, David Gibson, and Charlie Phillips; Otter Valley High School 
in Brandon--Nancy Cornell, Ellie Davine, and Bill Petrics; South 
Burlington High School--Tim Comoli, Sheila Mable, and Janet Bossange; 
Essex High School--Kevin Martell, Sue Pasco, and Brian Nelligan; and 
Mount Abraham High School in Bristol--Tom Tailer, John Vibber, David 
Royce and Mary Sullivan.
  These people are outstanding educators who understand how to build 
partnerships between the community and school that enrich the 
experience of their students. All five of these high schools have 
Professional Development School partnerships with the University of 
Vermont, collaborating to prepare new teachers and support veteran 
teachers on behalf of school renewal. Each of them has learned to use 
local resources to bring high school students into meaningful contact 
with adults in the surrounding community, making learning a part of 
life. All five schools are discovering how to link local innovations 
with the national effort to help all high school students meet high 
standards of performance. The Northeast and Islands Regional 
Educational Laboratory at Brown University (LAB), a program of The 
Education Alliance at Brown University, with the support of the U.S. 
Department of Education will publish and disseminate a description of 
their work and the results of the work in The Dynamics of Change in 
High School Teaching: Instructional Innovation in Five Vermont 
Professional Development Schools, which will be released this summer. 
(Clarke, et al, 2000)
  The Montpelier Story, a publication excerpted from the book and 
available now through the LAB, is the story of the success of dedicated 
educators in collaboration with community partners and other resources 
in providing new, student-centered learning opportunities to the young 
people they serve.
  At Montpelier High School, Owen Bradley, David Gibson, Charlie 
Phillips and the entire faculty have redesigned the curriculum to 
support Personal Learning Plans for each student in the school. 
Montpelier students use their Personal Learning Plans to select courses 
and to develop community-based learning projects that help them meet 
graduation requirements and carry them toward their individual goals in 
ways that fit their unique talents and aspirations. The work at 
Montpelier has already inspired schools across Vermont and spilled over 
the borders to Maine and beyond, where it serves as a model for 
redevelopment of curricula and advising to increase contact between 
students and adults.
  Under the leadership of Nancy Cornell, Ellie Davine and Bill Petrics 
formed a team at Otter Valley High School with the purpose of designing 
a standards-based course for students in the school who needed to 
understand how geography and local decision making affect land use in 
Vermont. By giving each student a topographic map of 100 acres in the 
State and leading them through the process of land-use assessment and 
planning required by Vermont's environmental laws, they illustrated the 
application of knowledge and skills in local community development 
efforts.
  Over a period of 15 years at South Burlington High School, Tim Comoli 
and Sheila Mable, both of the English Department, developed a state-of-
the-art media lab that engages students in designing multi-media 
presentations of professional quality for public service organizations 
in their community. Development of the media lab provoked a complete 
revision of the district's technology education plan, creating a model 
technology program for the State.
  At Essex High School, Kevin Martell, Sue Pasco and Brian Nelligan 
have worked for more than a decade to design and refine an integrated 
course in history and English that engages students in examining the 
evolution of human culture from 10,000 BC to the present. By fitting 
course assignment to the individual learning styles of the students who 
fill their classrooms, they have been able to create a challenging 
course in which high school students teach each other, and learn to 
express their views in a wide variety of media.
  Tom Tailer, John Vibber and a host of partners at Mount Abraham Union 
High School developed a physics unit on Newton's Laws that they 
expanded over a decade into a simulation of armed, global aggression. 
Having made ``weapons'' that launch tennis balls over great distances, 
Mt. Abraham's physics students play out the implications of an unequal 
distribution of global power on the school's athletic fields, then 
compare their struggle to current wars and conflicts around the globe. 
The ``Physics War'' is part of a complete redesign of Mt. Abraham's 
science curriculum that bases student learning on performance measured 
against common standards.
  Each of these projects demonstrates that high school change occurs 
when individuals reach across the boundaries that separate them into 
departments and bureaucratic layers, forming partnerships that empower 
all participants to learn and grow through shared effort on behalf of a 
common goal: improved learning for young people.

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