Fowler Schools
Fowler Schools
Emie Carrillo
At Fowler Schools, we not only focus on what’s important to us, but we also focus on what’s important to the students. We believe in the success of every student and every staff member.
Fowler Schools is a place where we focus on the future. We hardly use formalized textbooks - which people might disagree with - but what we use is the Summit Learning Program on Chromebooks, into which book learning is embedded. This program is very helpful not only to the students but to the teachers as well. It tells the students what courses they should complete, the problems that need to be solved, and tells the students if they have passed the course or if they have flunked the course. For the teachers, Summit is a tool that shows what precise skills the student struggles with, what skills in which the student excels, and supports 1-1 mentoring meetings with students in order to encourage and help the students set goals.
This program is fully developed and takes stress off of the students and teachers while still challenging them to become more active participants within their educational careers. Fowler students rarely receive homework due to our emphasis on in-class practice time. Not all people like change. That’s understandable; with this program, it makes change easy and simple. Along with this curricular change, Fowler JR/SR HS has implemented an Individual Plan of Study. This allows each student to create their own schedule that fits their future goals - if students plan on studying welding, they get a custom schedule based around preparation for these welding courses. If a student plans on becoming a nurse, students have immediate access to outside courses through Dodge City Community College. This IPS system also makes it easier for kids coming from other schools to adapt to this school and not have any trouble with credits. Fowler Schools believes in the success of each student and with this program, I believe we will succeed for a very long time.
This school believes in creating leaders, hard workers, problem solvers, and creative minds. This is where our PBL course and Internships come into play. PBL stands for project-based learning: it’s a class in which the student thinks of something that deals with their hobby or future job and they create a project based on these interests. The PBL course is helpful because it teaches students the necessary skills to get the job they want, the mentality for that job, and what college classes are needed to go further with that career. It’s also useful because it shows students how to be responsible, how to become a leader in a workplace environment and face problems that adults in the workforce typically have to overcome. Along with our PBL course is a mandatory internship, which is similarly designed to help students enter the workforce or college for example: if the student is going to college for journalism, he or she can work during the school day at a local newspaper in order to gain experience in a real-life journalism situation (and sometimes these internships can become actual jobs!)
Fowler is a school where teachers actually care about the students’ well-being. I believe that this school is taking off in the right direction, and I hope that other students and schools are willing to follow in our steps. Fowler is the future!