A new take on high school A new take on high school (June 17, 2005)

Middle College gives disillusioned teens a place to learn

By Kathy Schrenk

Isha Kuhns liked high school when she first started attending Palo Alto High. But it quickly became apparent that it wasn't the right environment for her. "A lot of people weren't there to learn," she said.

Then she found out about Middle College, a program taught at Foothill College for kids who don't find the typical high school environment conducive to learning. There are a lot of kids like Kuhns, said Middle College teacher Mike Wilson -- kids who are too mature for high school or too distracted by the social pressures.

There are so many of these kids, in fact, that the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District is expanding the program by hiring a fourth teacher for the program, according to Associate Superintendent Brigitte Sarraf.

Middle College takes juniors and seniors in high school from their home campuses and puts them in the Foothill College campus, Wilson said. They spend part of the day with Wilson or one of the other Middle College instructors, studying high school curricula in English and social studies. The rest of the day they take courses from the Foothill catalog with other college students.

"The classic Middle College student is someone who's disenchanted with the traditional high school experience," Wilson said. High school doesn't offer them enough choices or enough depth academically. A student who's really into computer science could choose from only a few courses in high school, but could choose from dozens at Foothill. They could also be "socially disillusioned," Wilson said.

"They're unplugging from high school because they feel it's socially powered. It was not serving them and causing stress or unhappiness and affecting their learning. They're too mature," he said.

Junior Kenji Tomari, for example, gets to take Japanese classes at Foothill, which weren't offered to him as a student at Bellarmine College Preparatory school in San Jose. His father is Japanese and he grew up speaking Japanese, but he was never schooled in the language.

Besides the expanded class offerings, Tomari enjoys the camaraderie of his fellow students and teachers. "I have a better relationship with the teachers," he said of Middle College. Plus, the class sizes are smaller and he's able to get to know people better. "I definitely feel a sense of community here. At Bellarmine I didn't."

Lots of kids feel the way Kuhns and Tomari feel -- so many that the program has to turn away kids every year, said Wilson.

"This year we had over 140 applicants," Wilson said. "We had to reject about 50 students -- classic Middle College students," he added.

Besides expanding the Middle College program, Wilson hopes that the new Freestyle High -- a multimedia learning academy expected to open in December 2006 in the Mountain View-Los Altos district -- will ease the pressure somewhat.

E-mail Kathy Schrenk at kschrenk@mv-voice.com

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