Short takes
I-Poly: ‘Second to none’
International Polytechnic High School is unique and flourishing for a variety of reasons, only one of which is that it is located on a college campus: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Among its other distinguishing components is the fact that enrollment is limited to 500 students, and the atmosphere is familial by design.
“My goodness, yes—the kids mix,” Principal Elsa Martinez says of the small-school environment. “They travel from one class to another in a cohort group, similar to a university setting. They become very close.”
But the now-successful school suffered through a rocky inception. Founded in 1993, it was a project of the Los Angeles County Office of Education.
“It started off as a dream,” says Martinez, who signed on as principal in 1998. “ ‘Second to None,’ the visionary document the state developed in the 1980s that helped kick off the public school reform movement, formed the basis [for the curriculum]. Teams from LACOE and Cal Poly worked on it together. But there was no strong infrastructure. There was controversy over grading and teacher assessments, and the curriculum hadn’t been approved by [the University of California system]. When I came in, it was really to work on those aspects.”
There were also philosophical divisions at the time on the direction the school would take, Martinez says. Moreover, classes were held in Cal Poly university buildings. But after three years, it became clear that I-Poly needed its own site, which it now occupies on campus.
“It was a huge transition,” Martinez says. “There were many growing pains, to be honest with you.”
With the school near to closing, Martinez was brought in as part of a “last-ditch effort” to turn things around.
“My charge was to name clearly what our mission would be. And then, to hire staff and teachers that had the capacity and the passion to be able to embrace the [“Second to None”] tenets and to work really hard, which they did. I had some teachers spending the night in their classrooms and others coming in on weekends to meet with kids.”
Fast-forward nine years and many refinements later to a school recognized by CSBA as a Golden Bell Award winner in 2006, praised for its innovative approach to learning.
I-Poly’s curriculum is based on a project-based program organized around teamwork at every level: students with students, students with teachers, teachers by grade level and by content teams, teachers with administrators and—a vital component—with parental and community involvement. Teachers are free to design course curricula as long as they meet state content and university standards.
“The organization is flipped upside down in that the work of administration directly supports the work of the teachers, who are closest to the students,” Martinez says. “Teachers determine how and when students meet and the method of instructional delivery, including where instruction takes place—be it in the classroom or out in the field.”
Students are mixed and travel in groups to each of their core classes—English, math, science and social science, Martinez says. I-Poly is not a magnet school; instead, its enrollment is intended to reflect a student body that is similar to that of regular high schools and that reflects Southern California demographics.
Communication is stressed across the board.
“The curriculum teaches [students] communication skills and conflict resolution,” Martinez says. “In difficult times, the teachers move into ‘coach’ mode. They don’t fix the problem but coach the kids on working out the problem by themselves.” The fact that these acquired communication skills easily translate into their social lives, she adds, is a bonus.
I-Poly’s “international” features saturate the curriculum.
“The problem-based part of the program is getting kids to look at problems in their communities, the nation and globally,” Martinez says. “And not necessarily in any order. We want them to become socially conscious about what is happening in their world. At every grade level, they are focused on different problems with a global perspective. We have ninth-graders who are looking at hunger, the environment, issues of genocide and diseases—worldwide.”
Joseph Stits, a retired assistant superintendent of the Bellflower Unified School District and currently a consultant to the California Continuation Education Association’s executive board, came away from a visit to the high school in July 2006 very impressed. Stits visited as the chair of a Western Association of Schools and Colleges review of the I-Poly program.
“Far too often, the course of educational reform takes the route of research, reporting, reform formulation, publication, surface implementation and oblivion,” Stits says. “[At I-Poly] I discovered there is another course—effective implementation.
“Project-based learning is alive and well at I-Poly, and it is implemented in the broad context of the California content standards [and] delivered in a manner that engages and involves students. The staff is in perpetual assessment of the effectiveness of their programs, and they use concrete data to drive change and improvement of the curriculum and their instructional methodology.”
Stits’ praise means a great deal to Martinez, but she is not about to rest on her—or the school’s—laurels.
“Our mission is to work with a broad range of youngsters,” she says, “and our goal of humanizing the learning is really important to us.”
As a testament to I-Poly’s successful approach, about 95 percent of its graduates go on to some form of higher education; of those, 55 percent matriculate to four-year universities.
“The premise that underlies the educational mission of the school is that all students can learn if learning is relevant to [them] and is applied to the real world,” Martinez says. “The integrated, project-based approach provides the vehicle to learning at I-Poly.
“We’ve brought the tenets of ‘Second to None’ to life here,” she adds. “We have different relationships with our kids; our kids have different relationships with each other. It’s all in those tenets from ‘Second to None.’ ”