Special school programs for advanced and lower-tracks students aren’t unusual, but such programs for the average? That’s unusual.
And that is what Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire has been offering for three years.
In addition to its special lines of study for students at the extremes of the spectrum, Stevenson reaches out to midtrack students through the Stevenson Academy for Integrated Learning, or SAIL, a program for the college-bound.
And let’s take a moment to defang that term “average.” Some of the most brilliant people in history have been poor to average students. Einstein always comes to mind. Grades obviously don’t always reflect what is going on in the brain. And maybe, with a program such as this, those potential Einsteins will get their chance.
SAIL provides a two-year sequence in math, language/arts, social studies and science. Students opting into SAIL have the same four teachers for the entire two-year period, making it possible for students and teachers alike to set and accomplish long-term goals. As SAIL director Wendell Schwartz points out, the program establishes a veritable “school within a school.”
“Students enrolled in SAIL are grouped in cadres of 70 to 90 students and, as a result, enjoy the kind of personal attention associated with a small group setting,” he said. “At the same time, they retain all the benefits of the larger environment.”
SAIL grew out of a suggestion made by Richard DuFour, superintendent of Adlai Stevenson High School District 125, who had read about a similar program in Germany. The concept was reformatted to better fit Stevenson’s needs and offered as an option to the incoming class of 1997.
“Stevenson has close to 3,000 students,” Schwartz said, “and we’re continuing to grow at a very rapid rate. Middle-track students have a tendency to get lost in this kind of setting. They don’t make waves, and they don’t cause problems. And when time is short and resources are stretched, it’s all too easy to just slide them along. SAIL helps to remedy the situation. It’s an ideal environment for a particular kind of student, but it’s not for everyone.”
To participate in SAIL, students must have at least average grades in all of the four subject areas, achieved without benefit of remediation. Schwartz emphasized that SAIL students must be well motivated, intellectually curious and able to conduct themselves appropriately in the classroom. “Since many of the activities are done jointly,” he said, “they should also be able to work well with others. The ideal SAIL student is a self-starter, someone who will benefit from working in a smaller arena and has the ability to excel.”
Operating in a smaller arena was SAIL’s primary attraction for Prairie View resident Renee McClure and son Kyle, a junior. Not only has he benefited from the close relationships fostered by the SAIL format, he has also enjoyed SAIL’s innovative programs.
“The Des Plaines River project has been especially interesting,” Kyle said. “We began by cleaning up the area and then did some scientific testing the following year. It’s really fun to be able to follow up and expand on a project.”
Flexibility is a key ingredient in the SAIL program. Students cover the same body of material as their non-SAIL classmates, but they often do it in a non-traditional manner. The four subject-area teachers assigned to each group work as a closely knit team, which makes it much easier to reconfigure time slots to accommodate special projects.
For example, a recent congressional simulation centered on budget issues took three class periods to complete. Done in cooperation with the Concord Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest organization working to promote fiscally responsible government, the activity gave students–and interested parents–an opportunity to try their hand at balancing the federal budget. The capstone to a quarter-long unit on Congress, the simulation coincided with the federal government’s end-of-the-year budget crisis.
“The timing couldn’t have been better,” said social studies teacher Barbara Vallaly. “We were talking about the very issues that were making front-page news. Listening to the students debating the pros and cons of the various entitlements echoed what was happening in Washington. Only in this case,” she added, “no one was worried about pleasing their constituency and getting re-elected.”
Long Grove resident Margaret Riley, founder of the Montessori School of Long Grove, participated in the congressional simulation. Her granddaughter Sara Pearson, a junior, lives in Buffalo Grove.
Riley said, “In some ways, SAIL echoes the Montessori philosophy, particularly the emphasis on individual initiative and the coordination and continuity between the subject-area teachers. At the simulation, the students were comfortable having outside adults working with them, and we really had a good debate on the issues. I definitely gained some insight on how younger people feel about the problems facing the country.”
Sara’s mother, Lyn, is equally enthusiastic. “My husband and I felt SAIL would give Sara a unique opportunity to interact on a several-year basis with her teachers. In addition, the format gives everyone the option of pursuing complex, long-range projects; learning doesn’t have to be broken up into 45-minute time blocks.”
Sara’s assessment also is positive. She feels a closeness to her classmates and teachers and appreciates the intellectual interaction SAIL fosters. Freshman Mark Paulson of Buffalo Grove agreed, adding that he thinks SAIL helped ease the transition from junior high to high school.
For Vallaly and the other SAIL teachers, the program provides an opportunity to vary their approach. English teacher Elizabeth Kenney, for example, has shifted the order in which she teaches some of the requisite material. Her SAIL students read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” a year later than their classmates, and Kenney thinks the added maturity made them better able to deal with the book’s issues and personalities.
“I really like working in an interdisciplinary program,” she said, “because I get to cover a wide variety of material. One project, for example, dealt with the rapid growth of Stevenson’s student population. To better understand the situation, we studied Evanston’s response to a similar set of circumstances since both communities opted to enlarge their existing high school rather than build a second campus. Having the ability to juggle blocks of time and draw on the varied expertise of the teaching team made this kind of project possible.”
In the three years since SAIL was implemented, the program has undergone only one major change. The original intent was to keep students together for their first three years of high school, but this proved impractical because of the large number of curriculum options available to juniors. Shortening the program to two years solved the problem, although the inaugural class, now in its third year, has kept to the original timetable.
Science teacher Peter Grandbois said his special affinity for the SAIL concept is due, in part, to his dual degree in English and biology. Grandbois spent last year working as a para-professional at Stevenson and opted into SAIL when he joined the teaching staff at the beginning of the school year.
“My own background lends itself quite well to the interdisciplinary approach,” Grandbois said. “I typically encourage the use of writing as a tool to think through a problem and emphasize written analysis as a corollary to hands-on problem solving. “Halfway through the first year, I feel SAIL has more than lived up to my expectations.”
DuFour concurred. “SAIL makes good sense. Learning is integrated rather than compartmentalized, and participants have an opportunity to interact in a creative manner over an extended period of time. Formatted correctly, this type of program can work with–and benefit–virtually every kind of student.”
