Utopia High
Sophomores at Wooster High design their own versions of the ideal high school—and end up not with perfection, but with schools filled with freedom, diversity and the perks of university campus life
Amerden High School bears an uncanny resemblance to, well, a college. Students can live on or off campus. Classes are offered at night as well as during the daytime. There is no penalty for skipping class; the dress code is non-restrictive. Class offerings are diverse and edgy—the “Art of Tagging,” for instance, is an elective. And almost anything a student could want is located on campus: restaurants and coffee shops, a mini-mall, even a skate park. It’s a private high school, but multiple scholarships are available—in everything from sports to academics to ROTC to volunteer work—for students who can’t afford to pay tuition.
Amerden’s architects are a group of 15- and 16-year-old visionaries who long for the liberties of a college lifestyle. They believe that teens not locked into rigid academic systems can lead healthier, more-productive scholastic lives.
“If you’re confined, you’re going to be more rebellious,” says 15-year-old Maribah Walkoviak, one of the school’s designers. “It’s like a 4-year-old [being told], ‘Do not push the red button, do not push the red button.’ “
“If you give [students] enough freedom, they won’t be breaking rules,” adds 16-year-old Daniel Bartell-Lewis.
Just around the corner from Amerden High is another unusual school. The planners of this school—its name has yet to be determined—are less concerned with freedom and campus diversity than with conservation and beautiful, efficient design. The school is shaped sort of like a diamond, with eight large, square two-story buildings. In between the buildings are wide walkways and large, square grassy areas where students can lounge or play Frisbee. The second-floor buildings are connected by walkways enclosed with glass. In the middle of all this is a greenhouse where students grow food for the cafeteria. The buildings’ roofs have solar panels. Wide, open spaces abound.
“When a school’s too crowded, it’s like you’re locked in,” says one of the school’s four designers, Patricia Medina, 16.
There are other schools surrounding these two: Xtreme Tactix High School offers classes like auto racing, metalwork and “Analysis of The Simpsons,” in addition to its core classes. At Harps High School, courses are technology-oriented and students check out laptops at the library instead of books. Southshore High is like a standard public school but without the “violence and vandalism,” its creators say.
These schools have sprung from the imaginations of sophomores at Wooster High School. The teens who created them consider them ideal institutions of learning, and a few similarities in many of the plans are worth noting. These schools have open, fenceless campuses. They have fewer rules than the average public school has—fewer dress codes, fewer penalties for not coming to class. And they all offer an intriguing variety of academic options: Latin American history, mythology, wrestling and pre-law, to name a few.
But they are not perfect. While presenting plans for the “perfect school,” most of the sophomores admitted that there is really no such thing as perfection—even hypothetically. There are so many kinds of people with differing needs and demands, they say. No school could ever meet all those needs.
“It started out as the perfect school,” says 16-year-old David Carp, one of the designers of DS High School. “Then it got more practical.”
“You start to realize that [not everyone] can get what they want and still stay within your price range,” says 15-year-old Chesa Adams. “There’s always going to be a fault. There’s no such thing as perfect.”
Wooster High teacher Tyler Smith is also aware that there is no such thing as the perfect school. Still, she asked her English students to play architect, commissioning groups of four to six students to create what they thought would be the perfect school—drafting plans, building a model of the school, writing a mission statement, listing its classes, writing a description of the school and finally, presenting their project to the class.
“It occurred to me because so many kids were complaining to me about school,” Smith says. “On one hand, I just wanted to say, ‘This is just teen angst.’ Learning is an intrinsically human need, yet this age group is so disenchanted, and I have to put aside my own prejudices—like the [wrestling class]. I disagree with it, but this is not my thing. WWF has an impact; Britney Spears has an impact. There has to be a dialogue between students and teachers. [Instead], there’s a gulf.”
Part of the reason for that gulf, Smith says, is that many students feel that they have no voice in the educational system. The design-a-school project may alleviate some of that tension.
“It brings up the dialogue,” she says. “It starts the discussion. It gives students a voice.”
At 11 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, Smith’s classroom is packed. The 30-plus students, most of whom are wearing sweatshirts and jeans, sit on top of desks or on one another’s laps. Some crouch on the floor or all but bounce off the walls with creative frenzy. Supplies are everywhere. Some students paint shoeboxes; others work to draft architectural plans. The room is so noisy and chaotic that someone from another class comes by and shuts the door. Smith, long, lean and elegant, with dark hair and a delicate voice, puts her hand in the air and signals for the students to be quiet. It’s presentation time.
The first group up is presenting Xtreme Tactix High School. A large red backboard displays the school mascot—a blazing tiger—and advertises the franchises set up in the school: Krispy Kreme, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and In-N-Out Burger. The group members—five boys—hand out pamphlets describing the school. Smith notices that both music and auto racing are strong areas of focus at Tactix. She asks how the two connect.
“Because … you listen to music while you’re racing,” one of the designers says. The room fills with laughter.
Next up are the presenters for Southshore High, fictionally located in Miami. Its creators, a group of four girls, say that the school functions in a way similar to TMCC High: It’s a free public school, but students must apply to attend and must have a minimum GPA of 3.0. The school is small, only 500 students. The designers say their school has no violence and no vandalism.
“How are you going to get rid of violence and vandalism?” asks a practical student.
“It’s our school, so our school wouldn’t have violence or vandalism,” says one of the designers. “Any school would be perfect; just take out the negative.”
Someone asks if that level of perfection can be attained.
“I think it would be hard, but not impossible,” says the Southshore High creator.
Smith asks if Wooster could be turned into a perfect school.
No, the students say. You have to start with a clean slate.
I return to Smith’s class early Thursday morning to see the second wave of sophomores work on their projects. The six creators of DS High—two girls and four boys—are drafting plans for a large, sports-oriented private school that has, as they say, something for everyone. There is a baseball stadium on campus that sits 60,000 people and a theater of similar proportions. Like the other students, DS High designers say that their school resembles a college campus in the freedoms it affords and the range of classes that it offers.
“It seems that high school right now is just about credits,” Carp says. DS High, he says, allows students to delve into an area of concentration—physics, pre-law, journalism, theater, ROTC—instead of worrying about counting credits.
The group members agree that a rigid, compartmentalized academic life leads to either frustration or rebellion.
“They’re just keeping us busy,” says 15-year-old James Schroder. “They’re not afraid of what you’re going to do in school; they’re afraid of what you’re going to do out of school.”
“When you hold somebody down like that, after you release them, they don’t know how to react,” adds 16-year-old Anthony Stong.
I ask the creators of Southshore High, who all say they enjoy hands-on projects more than writing assignments, what they’ve learned by creating their ideal school.
“Instead of thinking about it, you can make it happen,” says 15-year-old Michelle Stark.
“Sometimes you can’t put [ideas] into words,” adds Laura Anderson, 16.
Smith believes that when students create something rather than simply writing their ideas down on paper—or responding to someone else’s ideas on paper—they become empowered.
“The reason I chose a project, and not just an essay, is there’s something hugely powerful about creating something, working with your hands, even if it’s just an 8- by 10-inch shoebox.”
Smith explains that building the school model is only part of the process.
“Building it is the first step, and then they have to explain it. It’s awkward for a lot of kids to talk about their ideas. They know that their ideas are [often] not valued, so it’s awkward for them to speak, to have a voice.”
That voice may have been a bit squeaky at first, but it’s gained resonance.
“A lot of kids have been coming in early to school. I have kids talking who never talk. They’ve really been excited.”
Smith adds that many students were initially hesitant to share their ideas and present their work. She interfered minimally during those early stages of the creative process, and after a while, students shed their inhibitions and began to revel in the work.
“They weren’t performing for me anymore as a teacher. This is not about [a teacher’s] ego. This is about them, and as a teacher you have to do everything you can to take the focus off yourself.”
Smith says that projects like this are not just about the teacher; their scope is wider than the student-teacher relationship. When students are working on the project, she says, the classroom becomes a forum for ideas, debate, interaction and the building of dialogues—not just the building of paper and plasterboard campus models.
“The classroom is god," Smith says. "You’re just a teeny part of the process."