Metro's understated sign

You probably have to be looking for the signs in order to see them. Planted at the edges of a parking lot that surrounds what looks like an average one-story office building, the words “Metro High School” could just as easily advertise a doctor’s office or an unidentifiable business with words like “solutions” or “enterprise” in its name.

You would also have to be particularly observant to realize that even though you’re on a college campus most of the students who file in and out of the building’s tall glass doors aren’t yet old enough to drive.

There is more than one college in central Ohio, but when you hear the word “campus,” people almost always mean Ohio State University. A city within a city, it is the largest campus in the United States – nearly 54,000 students and 1,762 acres. Metro sits on West campus, tucked in among OSU’s immense agricultural fields, which have been utilized for more than a century and its newer high tech facilities, many of which have only been standing for a couple of decades.

As a writer for the KnowledgeWorks Foundation Legacy publications, I spent four years witnessing daily life in two urban high schools as they grappled with radical changes. Even so, plenty of things going on inside Metro seem as incongruous with high school as its location. Where I sometimes watched gears grind for months before things shifted in existing high schools, at Metro, it’s hard to keep up with the change. 

Decorated with the same neutral tones, portable walls and furniture as the average office, Metro’s classrooms are constantly in motion. There are three periods a day, each one two hours long, and yet there is a sense that the thing the teachers and students want for the most is time. Bounded by the more traditional moments of teachers lecturing by the glow of PowerPoint slides, there are collaborative discussions, students working steadily in pairs or groups, and presenting certain part of lessons themselves, whether the subject is Physics, World History or learning the Chinese language.

Students are regularly asked to put themselves forward, to actively contemplate their own strengths and weaknesses. Many of the teachers model that behavior as they seek out new partnerships with local businesses and departments at OSU or come up with innovative, hands-on projects to get students engaged. Nearly all of the staff members are working to obtain National Board Certification this year. Principal Marcy Raymond herself works, almost literally, in a fishbowl – a room in the center of the building with two glass walls and doors that are nearly always open.

The challenges of telling this story are different than those I’ve experienced before. Where my past projects about educational initiatives have looked back over a year or more, a blog  is an active, living kind of writing. That makes it harder to become part of the scenery, which can be a convenience when you want to learn more about a place and the people. This is also a group that’s already accustomed to being observed, filmed and interviewed, which makes locating its untold stories a bit tougher.  But there are endless good reasons to do so. The combination of ideas in this learning laboratory — from its STEM focus to its enterprising staff to its early college and real-world experiences for students — seem particularly prescient now, given the priorities expressed by Ohio’s governor and the new president.