High school students and adult mentors from high schools in Bethel, South Royalton, Chelsea and Rochester got together at the Bethel Town Hall on Monday to talk about flexible pathways in public education.
The students are enrolled in a course called Communicating School Redesign: Shaping Our Future Together. It's a year-long course that pairs students and adults to discuss different ways of learning. The goal is to influence the local implementation of personalized learning plans and flexible pathways to graduation, as spelled out in Vermont's Act 77.
The law is designed to offer students more options than might be available through their local schools, such as online learning, work-based learning, dual enrollment in high school and college as well as early college enrollment. The Communicating School Redesign course was created by a group called Up With Learning that works with Vermont's Agency of Education to promote Act 77.
The White River Valley Supervisory Union students enrolled in the Communicating School Redesign course created the day-long Spring Student Congress as a way to get the Communicating School Redesign students from different schools together and share ideas.
