Fort Wayne Embraces the New Tech Model

The first of its kind in Northeast Indiana, New Tech @ Wayne High School opened its doors for the first time to 94 freshmen students on August 24, 2009. The school represents a collaborative effort between local education and business leaders working together to revolutionize the Fort Wayne community.

“We as a district looked at the entire high school experience in Fort Wayne and decided it wasn’t getting us where we wanted to go,” Wendy Robinson, superintendent of Fort Wayne Community Schools, said.

“Our business industry, our business partners, came to us and said we need to do something different,” Liz Bryan, director of New Tech @ Wayne, said.

Both school- and district-level leaders felt that the New Tech model, with its emphasis on project-based learning and 21st-century skills development, was the best way to meet Fort Wayne’s educational and economic goals.

“Fort Wayne Community Schools was researching best strategies for high school redesign, so we started looking at different models and learning strategies. At that time, [CELL] invited us to go out to California and actually do the executive tour. As soon as we saw it, we knew this was going to be the implementation,” Bryan said. “It was the idea of using project-based learning to hit 21st-century skills—that we’re getting the work ethic, we’re talking about the collaboration, we’re talking about the things that matter when you leave high school.”

Robinson said, “New Tech was one of the options within this much larger desire to give high school students other options. New Tech, project-based learning, and the reality-based education kids get—it was a concept that just made sense.”

After just five weeks, many accomplishments already have occurred at the school.

“We have all kinds of things going on. We’re just rolling out our projects now. We’re now starting to get community partners to invite us on field trips and to come tour, and we’re just starting our parent advisory and our business advisory boards to help us with our project roll out,” Bryan said.

Despite being open for just over a month, the advantages of New Tech are apparent.

“We already have success stories from these kids. It’s tremendous,” Bryan said. “In the last three or four weeks, we’ve been breaking the mold that they’re used to. We have students that, for eight years, had been trained to sit in their seats, take quizzes, do worksheets, turn it in, move on to the next concept whether they grasp it or not. [New Tech] just opens up so many opportunities for them and it allows them the individualized attention that I think every teenager needs.”

As the first New Tech in Northeast Indiana, all eyes are watching. District leaders will evaluate the model as they make plans for the future.

“If it’s successful, nothing is off the table,” Robinson said. “We’re going to do what gets us the best results for students. Right now, we plan to add 100 students a year. If we find that the results we’re getting are just absolutely so phenomenal or the interest is greater than the capacity for 400, we can look at other options.”