Project Based Learning Arriving at Chester Arthur

Darius Purnell

Staff Writer

We are all now used to project based learning where we look more at process of collaboration and inquiry to establish how well we learn. Sometimes we forget that other high school are not like that. It may be a difficult task for us to bring this new curriculum to other well known high schools, so we start off little by little with middle schools.

Chester Arthur School, located at 2000 Catharine St, Philadelphia, PA 19146, will be redesigned for project based learning allowing extra freedom for curriculum.

That is her opinion and I ask other who are informed that also attended Chester Arthur, Collin Pierce and Jahmar Askew.

I asked the two students how the curriculum was while they attended Chester Arthur.

Collin said “The teachers would just talk towards us in groups. They were more of a lecture based teaching.”

Also what was said was that the teachers mainly focused on monthly standardized testing- Benchmarks and the PSSA.

They both came to a conclusion that now having a curriculum of project based would allow the students to be more interested and helps the students stay more focused because of a past of juvenile behavior.

To expand a little further I then interviewed Mr. Lehmann about the entire project and questions relation to it. He said that the partnership began way before the redesign. The principal wanted to follow the same inquiry based learning SLA. “Her and her teachers came many times to observe classrooms and attended Educon.” He said that there is a woman behind inquiry learning that checks in and visits the school 2 times a month.

I then began to ask for his word on the project of an SLA Middle School. Mr. Lehmann said that it would be at Powell and open for those students

From all these projects I began to wonder how far Lehmann wants to go and how many schools would have the name SLA in their title in the city of Philadelphia or maybe in other states and countries. Mr. Lehmann suggested that it there might be more expansion in Philadelphia, that it depends if the interest of inquiry based learning continues. He then said that if they do expand out of state and to other countries, the name may not necessarily be called SLA.