Model High Grads Bid Emotional Farewell

Commencement ceremonies for Andover and Lahser high schools aren’t until Sunday, but students graduated this past Saturday from the school that many say formed the foundation of their high school education.

Many of the 180 graduating seniors who attended Model High School took part in the two-hour event, which was as nontraditional in format as the school itself. After a short introduction by Principal Bill Boyle and an address by Superintendent Rob Glass, students were invited to speak if they wished.  About a dozen of them did, and many became emotional as they thanked their facilitators and Boyle for giving them purpose and confidence to pursue their dreams.

“Model has given me a cornerstone for learning in my life. THE cornerstone for learning in my life,” said the first student to speak, , who took 18 classes at Model. “I have created … a strong foundation for the rest of my life … it’s not going anywhere. And it started here. Because these people teach through love.” Jones gestured to her left, where the Model instructors – referred to as facilitators – sat.

Jones is the first recipient of the Linda Hutchinson Memorial Scholarship, in honor of  the secretary known as the Model Mom, who died in November 2009. She said that while students sometimes don’t feel like doing assignments, at Model “you don’t blow it off.  You do it out of respect, out of love, because you don’t want to let these people down.”

That theme was repeated by several of the graduates, who spoke of learning to think critically, motivate themselves, seek out subjects and learn about things that they were interested in rather than  simply checking off assignments listed on a syllabus.

Craig Kaplan,  a Lahser student who began attending Model as a sophomore, said he was thrown by his first class, an English seminar with Kathleen Conklin, who told Craig to find something he wanted to study. “It was a completely blank slate,” he said. “I ended up doing an entire semester’s work with Dante and other related classics. It was absolutely incredible; I loved that class.”

Kaplan went on to take an independent study class during which he developed a volunteer organization, RAD, which stands for the Reinstitution of the Arts in Detroit. Kaplan began working with students at one elementary, where art classes had been cut, to bring art projects to the students. Eventually, Kaplan brought more Model students down to volunteer. A year later, more than 200 high school students are working with more than 400 Detroit youngsters to teach them about art.

Students direct their own learning

The theme of student-directed learning was echoed by Boyle, who has been at Model for eight years,the past three as principal. He and the Model facilitators are on a first-name basis with students. Even Superintendent Glass, who gave Saturday’s commencement address, got into the spirit. “I’m Rob,” he said, by way of introduction.

Glass went on to say Model goes against the grain of today’s overreliance on standardized test scores. Quoting Albert Einstein, Glass said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Model High School, in its 20th year as a part of the Bloomfield Hills Schools system, offers students who apply and are accepted an opportunity to  take classes that are more self-directed. There are no tests, but student-directed projects – some extremely complex – are prevalent. Students often take on personal projects that fuel their passions; this year, one student, Cora Johnson, launched an effort to educate people about the accumulation of plastics and encourage reusable bags, even designing her own bag. Another student, Boyle said, wrote a book on the Holocaust as his honors project.

It's “intentionally unconventional,” said Boyle, who added that “engaging students in truly authentic learning” is “oddly becoming a radical view in education.”

Speaking Out, with Passion

The students spoke Saturday, sometimes nervously, to parents, grandparents and their teachers – known at model as facilitators for how they encourage students to find answers themselves, rather than strictly instructing them.

Some of the comments:

Mitchell Werner thanked the “whole Model community for giving me a voice in the classroom, because that’s really an important thing when you are trying to learn.”

Rachael Vettese, who is planning to attending Kalamazoo College, said she hated science before high school, and ended up taking every science class and is now planning to go into pathology. 

Matt Rosner: “I was really surprised at how much the teachers care … and it wasn’t what I did, but who I became.” An essay on consumerism in one of his classes, he said, changed his  planned path. “There’s so much more to living our 100-plus years” than owning things, he said.

Jayme Groth: “Model has taught me discipline …it has taught me self-motivation, but it has also taught me to be open.” Groth talked about a sociology field trip that involved taking a SMART bus down to Detroit, that opened her eyes to a new experience and let you see what was around you, “rather than just what was in a bubble.”

Volunteerism Important for Many Students

Several students credited Model with getting them involved in volunteer work, including at Freedom House,  a Detroit-based nonprofit that provides asylum and refugee assistance. Several representatives from Freedom House attended the graduation, including a young girl whom Jones has mentored. Because of Freedom House, Jones said, she’s chosen to attend University of Colorado at Boulder to study linguistics and anthropology.

The unique relationship forged between Model students and Freedom House came out of a visit executive director Debby Drennan made two years ago to the class of Andrea McCoy. Drennan attended the Model graduation Saturday with onetime African refugee Lucie Nyobe, now a Freedom House case manager, and program coordinator Katie Pistoresi. They gathered afterward around Jones, who has become, Drennan said, an “ambassador” for the organization.  

It was a student, too, who started the process of creating a memorial scholarship in the name of Hutchinson, whose mother, Janet Bodner of Livonia;  sister, Barb Nikkila of Canton; and daughter, Nicole Talbot of Austin, TX, all attended Saturday.