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Pomp, circumstance and a moment of history

Posted on | June 16, 2010 | 2,287 views |

Metro HS celebrates its first graduating class — and all of them are headed to college

By Julia Harris

On June 12, COSI played host to not one but two one-of-a-kind exhibits: An array of artifacts from the Titanic and a parade of beaming high school seniors, graduating as the first-ever class of Metro Early College High School.

For the group of 75 students, it was a day of family, friends and endless photographs.

For Marcy Raymond, their proud and misty-eyed principal, it was just about perfect. “I love them all,” she said. “They’ve done everything we asked them to do, they’ve done things that no one else has done before and all of them are going on to college. It’s very cool.”

Raymond is not afraid to admit that four years ago, no one was quite sure how the fledgling STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) school was going to accomplish the lofty goals it had set for itself. Paramount among those goals was that every Metro student, given the opportunity to take classes at Ohio State and engage in learning experiences with school partners like Battelle and COSI, would go on to college.

Launching any new venture, particularly one as ambitious as Metro, is bound to be fraught with challenge and even the occasional mistake. Just ask three of the newly minted grads, students onCampus has been following since they walked through the doors at the school four years ago.

“Oh, man, no one liked Metro,” said Uneek McKnight, one of the original 93 members of that very first class (now there are 354 total students, a full complement from grades 9-12).

McKnight plans to attend Columbus State for two years before pursuing an art degree at either CCAD, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh or the Art Institute of San Francisco. “We were like guinea pigs and a lot of things didn’t go right.”

Brittany Krause, who has been accepted to Ohio Dominican for next year, chimed in with a smile. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”

And strong they have become. They have learned to be flexible when they have to be, says Raymond, and they’ve learned to advocate for their own learning and achievement. They have learned to push themselves and to have high expectations of themselves and others.

“They’ve learned to be agile, they’ve learned to accept ambiguity — which is exactly what we need in the 21st century. It’s always harder for the pioneers,” she said.

Of course, not all was gloom and doom. This spring, Metro held its very first junior-senior prom at the Franklin Park Conservatory.

“It was beautiful and well-organized and a lot of fun,” said Krause, who was a self-proclaimed social organizer her first two years at Metro. She toyed briefly with the idea of a career in fashion but has since declared a major in biology and wants to become a doctor.

“Service-learning opportunities I had at Metro taught me that I really like giving back, watching people succeed and be happy.”

She’s not the only one who has a fairly secure grasp on her future. Zach Haynes, who has grown from a shy and reluctant scholar into a well-spoken and ambitious young man, credits Metro with sharpening his own outlook. He has accepted a place at Marietta College, where he plans to pursue a career in petroleum engineering.

He’s only a bit sheepish about choosing Marietta over Ohio State, even though he’s earned 43 credits from OSU — enough for an impressive jumpstart in his undergraduate education. He said he was more comfortable with the size of the college in southeastern Ohio.

“When I went looking at colleges, Marietta had more of a small-classroom feel,” he said.

While none of the three have chosen to enroll at Ohio State, Raymond says 44 percent of the graduating Metro seniors will attend OSU in the fall, a statistic with which she is more than pleased.

And for Metro itself, while funding continues to be tight and the balancing act of personalizing education for 300-plus students will always be tricky, the future remains bright. It’s a bit of a pioneer itself, after all — a model for the application of STEM learning models in schools across the country.

Raymond, somewhat of an ambassador for this new way of “doing” school, has been working with schools in New York and Tennessee as they move toward a STEM model and is excited by the possibilities.

“STEM is a way of thinking and doing, not about the courses,” she said. “Agility is key. It’s what kids need to survive in a collegiate environment.”

The Metro habits

All members of the Metro community seek to improve their practice of the “Metro Habits of Heart and Mind:”

• Effective Communicator
• Inquiring Learner
• Active and Responsible Decision Maker
• Effective Collaborator
• Critical Thinker
• Engaged Learner

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