Taylor raising the bar with Titan New Tech High

Taylor High School is seeing a revolution beginning this year as the school has built a new program that, if done properly, would have its students more engaged in learning.

Beginning with this year’s freshman class, Taylor is abandoning the idea of traditional learning and is adopting New Tech High.

Instead of having students sitting at desks in rows with teachers at the center of each class, New Tech will be based on project-base instruction with a huge infusion of technology assisting the kids in their learning.

“There’s no canned curriculum with New Tech,” said Eric Hartman, Taylor High School principal and Titan New Tech director. “What you get with New Tech is the methodology of delivering the instruction. In a traditional school, we would usually do a project at the end of a unit. With New Tech, the project is everything. The teachers are going to work harder than they’ve ever had to work, because now, not only are they providing direct instruction and giving tests and grading papers; they have to go that extra mile now in working with other teachers to develop relevant projects that will include an entry event that introduces the students to the project.”

The idea for New Tech came two years ago after superintendent John Magers arrived at Taylor.

“I looked at test scores and a lot of other statistics and realized that we could be doing better than what we were,” Magers said. “It was about that same time that Dennis Marler, who is the board president, came and said the board is really interested in some initiatives that will raise the bar for Taylor Schools and so we held a work session and decided we need to go out and do some research.”

Through researching, Taylor found New Tech and a group visited where it all began 14 years ago in Napa, Calif. They later visited Sacramento and New Tech high schools in Indiana.

“We saw what we liked, it was a different model for delivering instruction to kids and every place we went students were very engaged, they were confident, poised and articulate,” Magers said.

In the New Tech environment, the classes focus on 21st century skills.