Nex+Gen Academy Celebrates New Digs

At the grand opening celebration for nex+Gen Academy High School, U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman recalled what his father, a chemistry professor, used to say about traditional lectures: the notes of the teacher go straight to the notes of the student without ever passing through the student’s mind.

It won’t be like that at nex+Gen, said the senior senator from New Mexico, because of its focus on project-based, cooperative, high-tech learning. At the newest school in APS, teachers don’t stand in front of the room and lecture at kids all day. Instead, the teachers – they call themselves facilitators – present the students with a problem, give them the resources they’ll need to solve it and send them off in search of solutions.

Sophomore Antonio Gonzales, one of the school’s 165 students, said that’s one of the things he likes about nex+Gen, which celebrated its new $12 million building at a ceremony last week. “This is not your typical school. We’re a community of learners; we collaborate with our peers; we can hire and fire group members; we use state-of-the-art technology; we meet deadlines.”

Another unique quality of the school, one that superintendent Winston Brooks is especially proud of, is its partnerships with corporations like Sandia National Laboratories.

“In all my years in education, never have I seen a private/public partnership like this,” Brooks said. “Everyone has a stake in this school.”

Nex+Gen is built on the model of the national New Tech High Schools, which includes 62 schools in 14 states. Nex+Gen is the first New Tech high school in New Mexico. Lydia Dobyns of the New Tech Network also noted that the APS school is the first New Tech high school in the country to be built from the ground up, designed specifically to accommodate project-based learning. All other such schools are located in existing buildings that were renovated for that purpose.

Nex+Gen Academy opened this year as a small magnet school with ninth and 10th graders only. Students spent their first couple of weeks of school in portables until the new school building, located on the Del Norte High campus, was complete. They made the move to the new building the first week of October.