For three and a half weeks each July, a handful of classrooms on Brown's campus transform into a mini-high school of sorts, hosting around 300 Providence-area students and providing the University's secondary school teaching candidates with hands-on classroom experience.
The experience is part of Brown Summer High School, which just completed its 38th year.
"It's rare that you have a program last as long as it's lasted and remain both viable and valuable," said Eileen Landay, an adjunct senior lecturer in the Department of Education who directed the program for 14 years until the summer of 2005. "Though it often goes under the radar of other students and faculty, it's been an important part of the University's relationship with the community."
Depending on the number of instructors available, BSHS typically enrolls around 300 students, who take a pair of two-hour classes every morning. The program offers enrichment courses in English, science and social studies. The corps of teachers is composed of graduate students pursuing their Master of Arts in Teaching in secondary education along with a handful of rising undergraduate seniors who participate in the Undergraduate Teacher Education Program, a program through which undergraduates can leave Brown after four years with a bachelor's degree and a teaching certificate. Student-teachers completing the program receive certification to teach in 45 states, including Rhode Island.
"The program gives students a laboratory that allows them to question their stereotypes about what the kids are like and what they can learn and also for the kids to come together to meet each other and learn," Landay said.
Unlike many of the high schools that students attend during the academic year, BSHS classes employ an inquiry-based model of learning in which classes revolve around "essential questions," according to Sarah Leibel '97 MAT'06, who taught a BSHS English class two summers ago and served as co-principal of the program this past July.
Students work to answer these questions with the guidance of an essential text. One of the questions this year - "What is freedom? How do you get it, and how do you keep it?"- relied on the autobiography "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." Previous years have included a science course - "Is anybody out there?" - that explored earth's diversity and the conditions required for sustaining life.
"(Inquiry-based learning) shifts the focus of the class to deep thinking. ... We design activities to get (students') personalities out and get them talking about their passions," Leibel said, adding that "essential questions" are fundamental components in the school of "contemporary, progressive education thinking."
The student-teachers work in teams along with a mentor who is either a veteran teacher in Providence or a faculty member from the education department. In addition to teaching seminars, the student-teachers take two education classes in the afternoon, which provide further instruction in educational methods and literacy and allow Brown to grant credit toward certification. Also, during an intense two weeks before the first day of class, the teaching candidates receive the "essential question" and corresponding text from which they must construct a curriculum.
Landay said BSHS is "carefully designed so that it doesn't toss (student-teachers) into a setting too challenging. ... Every one of the (student-teachers) always says it's real professional development and renewal for them."
Brown's secondary school teaching program, of which BSHS is just one component, provides a "gradual immersion process toward independence" during which student-teachers progress from team-teaching to co-teaching to student-teaching before graduation, Leibel said.
"For an 11-month program, I don't think you can really do it any better to ensure that your teaching candidates get as much classroom experience," said Bil Johnson, the current director of BSHS and senior lecturer in the education department. "It's a challenge, but at the same time, it's a great learning experience because they get to develop a curriculum, apply what they're learning and get critical feedback."
"I don't know anywhere else in the country that has this sort of teacher education program," Johnson added. "Harvard has one, but it's really more for taking failed classes, and, actually, they're trying to copy our program."
BSHS, which runs during July, costs $150 per student, though "at least 80 percent of the students get scholarships," Johnson said. "We try to make it as cheap as possible, but if people invest at least $25, they're going to be more invested in the program. It's very important that the students show up everyday so that our teachers learn how to teach. It's their first experience actually doing classroom teaching."
The modest income generated by the program funds materials that students can keep after the program concludes. This summer, for example, students in the English class received a copy of Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," which was used to examine the question, "What does the world look like through someone else's eyes?"
Mentors receive stipends from the University, which also donates many materials.
"It's basically like creating a small high school on a shoestring in this very privileged environment," Landay said.
The program also gives high school students "the unique experience of being on Brown's campus for a month, which they wouldn't otherwise get," Johnson said. "Especially in the science classes, they really get to use the facilities in a positive environment."
Johnson said many students, who come from a variety of backgrounds, return to the program for consecutive years.
"And, occasionally, they actually come to Brown," he added.
SummerPrep, the younger brother of BSHS, is a three-week summer enrichment program for around 100 rising second- to sixth-graders taught by candidates pursuing their MAT in elementary education. Like BSHS, courses are taught in teams in all elementary education subjects: literacy, math, science, social studies, art and physical education.
BSHS launched in the mid-1970s under Reginald Archambault, then chair of the Department of Education. In its early days, the secondary school teacher training could prepare teachers in broader areas, including foreign language and math. The program was restructured in the mid-1980s so that it focused on science, social studies and English. Within the last year, engineering/physics was added as another topic of instruction.
