A public school gal goes to an NHA charter school.... whoa

As soon as I knew I wanted to student teach downstate through my soon-to-be Alma Mater, Northern Michigan University, I did my research and picked the top three things I needed from a school in order to make myself a better educator. These three things were:

1) Diversity: I went to schools in a good sized town called Brighton, MI my entire 12 years of schooling. While Brighton was a great place to grow up with little to no crime rates, the majority of residents were and still are white. As a high school student with a graduating class shy of 500 peers, I could count the amount of non-white students on both hands; I had less than 10 peers that were racially different than myself. Following up my time at BHS, I went to Northern Michigan University that did have more diversity, however, not by much. Since this is a bad representation of most American cities and schools, I have felt unprepared to be in classrooms that were systematically more diverse.
2) Innovation: As a millennial born in 1992, I have been brought up in a world where technology has overtaken the lives and work places of the world (mostly). I grew up in classrooms with computers and technology greater than an overhead projector and I intend to be in a school that is willing to grow with its students and the world. Every new teachers' nightmare is to be put into a school or classroom with no resources in technology and no innovative ideas to help students grow intellectually and create skills to help with the real world. Not to say that it is impossible to grow students without technology, however, it is a lot easier to engage students who are in tune with the latest iPads of today.

3) In a city larger than Marquette or Brighton: I have only lived in these two places my entire life and they have a lot of similarities such as lack of diversity and size, each about 8,000-10,000 in population. Thus my main focus was the Ann Arbor/ Ypsilanti area which is close enough to where I will be living but large enough to where I knew I would get the experience I desired.

So where did I end up for my student teaching placement? South Pointe Academy in Ypsilanti, MI. This school opened only 4 years ago under National Heritage Academies (NHA) which is a charter school management organization headquartered in Grand Rapids but has 82 schools under their management in 9 different states including Michigan. It is a non-profit public charter school for grades K-8 with 8th grade only being added last year!

I am going to be completely honest, I have never stepped foot into a charter school. Every public school teacher who has talked about charter schools never mentioned anything positive but rather about taking needed funds from public schools. The only information I know about charter schools comes from Diane Ravitch's books that speak out about the corruption and politics within public schools while arguing the public school system is not failing. In all of my method classes for education at NMU I have never been told about charter schools other than they are normally owned by the non-public. Therefore, it is safe to say that I not only am getting placed into an environment where I do not know anyone but I know absolutely nothing about this school or how it works.

Flash forward to the week before classes at South Pointe begin, Professional Development (PD) for the teachers and administration begin and as a dedicated, extra lost student teacher, I go to two 16 hour non-paid PD's. I cannot stress how long and tiresome these days were; not because they were boring but because there was so much information that I was actively listening for 8 hours straight with only 30 min lunch breaks. The most confusing yet interesting ideas that the NHA schools enforce are:
1) Moral Focus
2) Launches
3) I can statements
4) Social Contracts
5) No cafeteria
6) No busing
7) No recess/outdoor time for 7th or 8th graders

My reactions coming from public schools my entire life basically was shock and awe. How can a school function without a cafeteria? What about buses? What the heck are launches? Is a moral focus the school motto or the ideal school climate? Is a social contract like classroom rules? Is it illegal not to allow kids recess? Do I know anything?

One lesson I learned before classes even began is that I was defiantly not prepared for this experience regardless of the many hours spent inside different classrooms, but an open mind and a lot of questions can go far.