Kids connect to learning at City View, a new project-based high school in Cedar Rapids

CEDAR RAPIDS — At City View Community High School, freshman Jersey Cambridge, 15, is working on a project she hopes culminates with the students creating a new shelter for people experiencing homelessness in Cedar Rapids.

This week, Cambridge and the classmates in her group are meeting with leaders at Waypoint Services, a Cedar Rapids nonprofit that provides resources for those experiencing homelessness, poverty, or violence or needing access to quality, affordable child care, to get guidance on the project as a part of the curriculum at City View.

Through this project, Cambridge is learning how to problem solve and think critically. She will use real-world skills learned in classes like language arts, math and public speaking.

This kind of learning is what educators in the Cedar Rapids Community School District envisioned when the idea of a project-based high school was initially proposed.

The school opened in August to about 100 freshmen and sophomores. The plan is to grow the school to include juniors and seniors as the students continue through high school.

City View Principal Dan DeVore said “it feels like having a newborn baby.”

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“You feel like you’re the worst parent one moment and the best parent the next. It’s all these ups and downs,” DeVore said.

The first few weeks of school have been “exhilarating” and “frustrating,” DeVore said. There’s been “bumps for everybody.”

“We have more students who have not done well in school historically than I expected,” DeVore said.

Even so, the principal said he’s confident the model will work.

“It’s going to work because students are going to engage and be able to read what they want to and be able to apply math in a way that makes more sense to them,” he said.

The school is located in the heart of downtown Cedar Rapids on the first floor of the Metro Economic Alliance, 501 First St. SE. Staff at the Alliance occupy the second floor. While some classes meet in rooms that resemble boardrooms more than traditional classrooms, students mostly use tables in the open concept office.

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Teachers may spend some time addressing the whole class, but the majority of their time is spent meeting with individual students and groups engaged in project-based work.

Classes are designed to give students access to area professionals, possibly introducing them to a new career they might otherwise be unaware of, DeVore said.

Daniel Lang, an English teacher at City View, said he believes the school “will shift education as it exists” in Iowa.

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“We’re expecting kids who have had the ability to look up anything, to be entertained by anything at any time and get information instantly to sit in a classroom, memorize a bunch of stuff, regurgitate it on a test. It’s no wonder they’re not engaged,” Lang said.

At City View, students drive how they want to learn while still being required to meet certain standards. The project-based learning model “will explode when the majority of our kids understand what we’re doing here and what they can do here,” Lang said.

Monday, the school started a new class schedule because the one they have “is not working for teachers. It’s not working for kids,” Lang said. “This is a unique environment where we are kind of willing to screw it up and are flexible enough that if it’s not working, we can change it,” he said.

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Lang, who took last year off from teaching because he was “burned out and frustrated,” said he’s seen how powerful project-based learning can be.

When he was student teaching in Cedar Falls, he saw high schoolers create a community health expo from the ground up as a class project. The students learned how to plan an event, invite vendors, create presentations and speak professionally, and market the event to the community.

“Building something like that, kids are not going to ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Lang said. “I knew that was really powerful. Students connected learning in a way that felt real, important and gave them an audience.”

Students at City View are still working toward driving their own learning.

“Some kids are doing really well. Others are struggling to figure out what to do with a little more freedom,” DeVore said.

The school district has put aside $1 million per year over three years of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to go toward the high school magnet program. It also has received several grants to launch City View, including part of a $14.8 million federal magnet schools grant to be distributed over the next five years.

A lease agreement between the district and the Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance will automatically renew for successive one-year terms until June 30, 2028.

Under the lease agreement, the school district spent $600,000 to remodel a portion of the Alliance building to be used as a high school. The funds for the project will come from the Physical Plant and Equipment Levy, one of the primary revenue sources for funding school infrastructure and equipment repairs, purchases and improvements.

Revel Emerson, 15, a sophomore at City View, open enrolled into the Cedar Rapids Community School District from Linn-Mar this year.

Emerson said she was bored in traditional classes and wanted to try something new.

She’s already working on a project this year — creating a podcast about how human brains react to horror. Creating the six episodes incorporates the skills of reading comprehension, research, public speaking and meets some science standards.

City View science teacher Ann Jameson said students at the school are exploring the community and in doing so becoming aware of problems they wouldn’t otherwise recognize.

One of her students pitched her an idea to raise money for kids to be able to participate in Theatre Cedar Rapids’ annual summer camp, which he himself has participated in, Jameson said.

“They’re driving their learning and being given voice and choice,” Jameson said. “It’s hard and messy right now, but it is awesome. They’re making real-life connections to their community, their home and themselves.”

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com