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[13]. Jamison Jr. High School

Jamison Jr. High School

If I were a high school principal and it were up to me to establish the rules I would probably immediately be cited as "unconventional" or "eccentric". My school would have a strict set of formal guidelines (to institute the necessary discipline amongst the student body and faculty) but said formality would be implemented from a definite informal stand point. There would be a dress code but the dress code would consist of casual wear emblazoning the school name and any requisite propaganda promoting school spirit and agendas espoused by the academic curriculum.

Students would be required to adhere to class guidelines and setting and achieving academic goals would be stressed but classes would be designed around the individual student's strengths and weaknesses in order to promote the desire for excellence. I would do away with classrooms and encourage students to study where and when was best suited to the individual in an environment defined by wide, open outdoor vistas and expansive, relaxed indoor arenas for use during inclement weather. The best modern description of my school would be a School of the Arts, where any given students talents would be focused upon and individual students would have more power over their desired academic direction.

The similarities between high school life at "Kenn's School" and those on a college campus would be many. From a sociological perspective, Kenn's School would differ greatly from that of the average high school in that students would have a greater degree of control over what they learned and how they used the knowledge gained in classes to promote not only the values and mores of the school but to develop real life application of their individual strengths as students while working on whatever weak areas each might need to strengthen. In a normal high school, the norm is often indicative of an inevitable and eclectic grouping of "cliques"; there are the "Jocks" and the "Princesses", the "Nerds" and the "Geeks" and so on and so forth.

I would try to break down such stratification with as many "informal" applications of "formal" norms (dress code, class structures and arrangements, disciplinary measures, etc.) as could be implemented with the inclusion of student opinions along with those of the faculty in as democratic a process as possible.

Granted, my time as principal is limited but I'd hope that by making positive changes in the short term that long term positive results would outweigh the negative. My focus on the sociological perspective of innovation in a common high school environment would be focused on both aspects of students discovering the uses to which their innate talents might be put in the process of inventing new ways of learning and applying said talents individually as well as in real world application towards the betterment of their school, the world abroad and, ultimately, of themselves.