I Visited a High School Where College Isn’t the Gold Standard

“Do you want me to set your hands on fire?”

Normally, my answer to that question would be no. But I decided to put my faith in the hands of Joslyn Pischke, a 15-year-old sophomore at Upton High School in Wyoming.

I rolled up my sleeves and wet my hands and arms up to my elbows as Pischke added dish soap to a small tub of water. At Pischke’s direction, I scooped up some bubbles and held them in my hands.

“Don’t freak out,” Pischke told me, and then she set the bubbles on fire.

To my own surprise, I didn’t freak out as my hands went up in flames. We were in a high school science classroom, and when Pischke asked her teacher if she could demonstrate this experiment on me, the teacher said yes without any hesitation. Pischke, who plans to go to college after she graduates to study equine science, told me that she has thrived under the school’s personalized learning model because it has allowed her the agency to direct her educational path.

For the past couple of years, I’ve reported on the shifting conversation surrounding the value of a college degree; more Gen Zers are choosing to forgo college in favor of other routes, like trade school or directly entering the workforce. Upton is directly taking on that shift by making sure students know college is not their only option. The goal, as seen on posters plastered around the high school, is to be college, career, or military ready.

Before I visited Upton in early September, I’d spoken with teachers and administrators about the personalized learning structure it had adopted for its 82 students. I thought I knew what it meant: Teachers work with each student and give them individualized lessons and assignments based on their learning pace and interests.

I wasn’t wrong; that is, in part, what personalized learning is. But at Upton, I saw that it was much more than that. While there are time periods reserved for the more standard lectures, there are what the school calls “open periods,” during which students can choose how they want to put into practice what they learned. And teachers really mean it when they say that students can choose what they want to do. When I looked around Pischke’s science classroom, I saw at least five different projects that students were working on, which they selected themselves and were approved by their teacher.

I was surprised at the level of personalization at Upton — from what I saw, each and every student was on a different path that they selected to best suit their needs and interests. Additionally, having attended a traditional public high school, the structure of the classrooms struck me. Every class that I walked into looked different, with some students sitting on couches, others working alone at desks, and some standing in clusters. The only classroom I saw that had the standard lecture format with desks in a row was the math class.

As the teachers at Upton told me, switching their learning structure was an uphill battle. Of course, it would be a much different undertaking at a bigger school — or somewhere with different workforce demands — and every teacher would need to be on board.

The power of community partnerships and clear communication

When I walked into Joe’s Food Center, the town’s grocery store, around 5 p.m., a senior at Upton was working the register. I asked her what she thought about the school, and she told me she really liked the structure.

Two minutes down the road, I walked into Remy’s Diner, and I was greeted by another senior. He told me that the school allowed him to complete all of his assignments and lectures in the morning so he could work at Remy’s in the afternoon as part of a work-study program.

The small community is a major benefit for students at Upton. Not only are local businesses willing to work with the students — they sometimes request it, as Karla Ludemann, the school’s computer science teacher, told me. Her students have used the coding and tech skills they learned in class to create websites for local businesses and use their drones to take aerial photos of the area for the city.

Amanda Knapp, the school’s guidance counselor, also told me that businesses have been more than willing to give students work experience. Sam Johnson, an 18-year-old senior who never wanted to go to college, said that he loves hunting, and Knapp arranged for him to get a hunting apprenticeship while in high school. That opportunity led him to secure a job as a hunting guide upon graduation.

Upton’s model isn’t possible everywhere, though. Joseph Samuelson, the school’s principal, told me that the school made mistakes eight years ago when it switched to personalized learning — the district moved too quickly, and both parents and teachers weren’t given sufficient warning. This led some parents to withdraw their kids from the school, and just four teachers from the original staff now remain, likely a result of the lack of training they received on switching to a personalized model.

Knapp also told me that being a small, rural school is a benefit that other public schools in the nation don’t have. Wyoming’s agriculture industry dominates the economy, and it opens up career opportunities and apprenticeships for young students, enabling those who want to enter the workforce after high school.

Additionally, a small population is easier to corral on a learning model switch, and larger public schools would encounter more hurdles getting everyone on board.

More broadly, I found Upton students’ perspectives on their paths postgrad to be emblematic of the national shift we’re seeing in the value of college. When I was in high school, college was the only option I was given, and I’m glad I went — it opened up career opportunities for me that I wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise.

When I walked around Upton’s library during seniors’ free period, I saw three girls sitting in a booth doing homework. I asked them what their plans were postgrad, and they all said college: two of them are going to study business, and one of them wants to study nursing.

I walked over to another senior and asked him what he was working on. He told me he was taking a college course, so I asked him if he was planning to go to college, and he laughed. “Definitely not,” he said. “Trade school.”