Melding Theory and Practice
Document Process
Matt Bednorz
University of Denver
Summer Quarter 2013
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Matt Bednorz / Summer 2013
MELDING THEORY
School Design
I began the school design process by looking at my focus school and then the schools in
district in which I hope to find a job in the future. My ideal school is in the suburbs of Denver
and is traditional in nature. Since my focus school fits that criterion as well as many others on the
south side of Denver, I decided to narrow my search to mostly Littleton and Aurora schools as
well as my focus school. In looking at the websites of these other districts, I came across an
abundance of information that was very useful in the creation of my ideal school, Pathway High
School.
Pathway High School has from 1,000 to 1,500 students and is located in the suburbs of
Denver. It is a school with about 20% free and reduced lunch. It has about 85% whites and 15%
Hispanic with a small percentage of other minorities represented. The school has a modified
block schedule where classes such as LA and Math meet every day of the week and other classes
meet two or three times a week. PHS has a high percentage of its graduates going on to college.
About 83% of the graduating seniors from the 2012 class went on to a college or university. To
help the students in their quest to attend college, PHS offers numerous AP classes as well as
concurrent enrollment classes. There are numerous opportunities for the parents and community
to get involved at PHS, with some of the more active groups being the SAC and the Booster
Clubs for sports and the band.
With this picture of my ideal school in my head, I began to interview people, look on
websites and use some of my data from my pervious projects to put into presentations to
represent my ideal school. The two most informative methods of finding information was from
interviews and the Aurora Public Schools website. My interviews were with my current
principal, assistant principal, a school counselor and the financial director of Englewood
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Matt Bednorz / Summer 2013
MELDING THEORY
Schools. These people were able to give me some detailed information to help me focus my
research as well as brainstorm new ideas to put into my ideal school. The APS website had a
great deal of information about safety and was very easy to navigate.
I began the process of this project by interviewing the principal of EHS. He helped me
understand the portion about governance and then steered me in the right direction for the other
five categories but we did not speak at length like we had for governance. It was at this point that
I decided to create a Prezi on the mission for our second meeting on July 20. When I presented in
our small groups, my teammates gave some great feedback on how to modify what I had
accomplished thus far but what was even more helpful was discussing the other five parts and
how they were going to “tackle” this quarter’s project. After our July 20 meeting, I had some
concrete ideas on how I wanted to proceed for the rest of the project. That July 20 meeting with
our peers was by far the most helpful in leading me in the direction that I took to complete my
project.
From the July 20 DU meeting to August 4, I interviewed three other people and scoured
the local websites for information to help me complete my project. I choose to complete the
information about my ideal school in a Prezi format and then detail the process out in a power
point that accompanied my Prezi. To document my process, I decided to write two paper, one
talking about the process and the second discussing the interviews and observations. Once into
the project, I realized how much of quarter one came into play in designing my own ideal school.
All the work I did in quarter one helped me really think hard about what was most important for
me to include in my ideal school as well as data such as how systems should work together to
complement each other.
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Matt Bednorz / Summer 2013
MELDING THEORY
This project was not an easy on to start since it seems as if we were starting from scratch
and it was during the summer when it is much more difficult to get a hold of people. Yet even
with these obstacles, once I began interviewing people and searching websites, ideas and
resources started pouring in and I had to contain it in a format that made sense. I have found that
Prezis are a great way of presenting information so decided to use one for each of our six
portions of our project. It was during this stage that I began to see some links between the
different portions of our project and became encouraged to see how as a future administrator, I
can help mold some of these ideas that I have put forth into action and make a difference in a
school.
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