In this episode, Robert Balfanz continues the conversation with New Hampshire’s Extended Learning Opportunity Network’s Kerrie Alley-Violette and Sean Peschel, two on-the-ground educators working to make “learning anywhere, anytime” real.
At the time when the sources and locations of knowledge and training have multiplied exponentially, innovative efforts like New Hampshire’s ELO Network help break seat time requirements, drawing on the realization that learning is not determined by the amount of time a student spends in a classroom, but rather occurs both in school and through experiences outside of schools. What Kerrie and Sean’s groundbreaking work shows is that challenging seat time is being done—and thus that it can be done.
In this episode, Robert Balfanz continues the conversation with New Hampshire’s Extended Learning Opportunity Network’s Kerrie Alley-Violette and Sean Peschel, two on-the-ground educators working to make “learning anywhere, anytime” real.
At the time when the sources and locations of knowledge and training have multiplied exponentially, innovative efforts like New Hampshire’s ELO Network help break seat time requirements, drawing on the realization that learning is not determined by the amount of time a student spends in a classroom, but rather occurs both in school and through experiences outside of schools. What Kerrie and Sean’s groundbreaking work shows is that challenging seat time is being done—and thus that it can be done.
Robert Balfanz:
Hello, and welcome to the Designing Education podcast. Today we're picking up where we left off in our last conversation with Kerrie Alley-Violette and Sean Peschel, and talking more about New Hampshire's Extended Learning Opportunities effort and what it takes to implement it well. We can't wait to jump in, but before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and never miss an episode. We're available on Spotify, Apple, and Google podcasts, just to name a few. Welcome to the Designing Education Podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Pathways to Adult Success Program and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. I'm delighted to have you join us today. This is the second part of a two-part discussion with Sean and Kerrie in the latest in a series of conversations we're having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country. We'll talk about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to long-term success. To pick off where we last left off, in the first session of our two-part episode, Sean and Kerrie talked to us about New Hampshire's Extended Learning Opportunities effort, which gives students high school credit for learning and skill building that takes place outside the school walls and often the school day. We discussed how this helps schools break down the constraints of a seat time approach to education and the value of extended learning opportunities to students in schools. Today we're going to dig deeper into how extended learning opportunities work at the school level, and what it takes to effectively offer them. Joining us again today for part two of the conversation are Kerrie Alley-Violette, president of the ELO Network and the ELO Coordinator from Sanborn Regional High School in New Hampshire, and Sean Peschel, ELO Coordinator from Oyster River School and Vice President of the ELO Network. Welcome, Kerrie and Sean.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
Thank you.
Sean Peschel:
Thank you, Bob. Good to see you.
Robert Balfanz:
In the first part of our two-part episode, we started off asking what was a good day in high school. For our second part of the episode, I'm going to switch it up and say, in the work you do now with extended learning opportunities, what is a good day?
Sean Peschel:
It's a good day when you're not in the building and not in high school. When you're out of the building, out in the community, working with students and their community partners in their learning experience.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
Every day is a great day. I say this all the time, that I truly have the best job in a school that you possibly could have, and I truly mean that. Every day helping kids find passions and engage and work on things and then connect with community partners and expand that connection between our school and our community. It's just amazing.
Robert Balfanz:
Wow. That sounds like a great job to have. Let's start and learn more about it. Sean, can you briefly remind our audience with the New Hampshire Extended Learning Opportunities effort is.
Sean Peschel:
Yes. Extended Learning Opportunities are a chance for students to individualize, personalize, and customize their high school experience through academic growth and career development, through exposure on field trips, or exploration of job shadows, informational interviews, or even doing experiential work or internships in advanced studies that [are] student focused, student driven, and student designed.
Robert Balfanz:
Wonderful, wonderful. Kerrie, can you share a little bit with us about what the ELO network does?
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
Yes, the EOL network connects everybody in our state who does similar work and gives them opportunities to learn and grow. Currently, we're expanding what we do, offering professional development, especially to our newer coordinators because in the ELO world, our coordinators could come from a teaching background, from a school counseling background, and maybe even from a community partner background. We guide them through the process of what will work for them in their building, knowing that just like an ELO for students, everything's different. ELOs in our state are different in every school.
Robert Balfanz:
And about how many schools in New Hampshire are part of your network?
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
I believe, Sean, correct me if I'm wrong, there are 85 schools. In the state of New Hampshire, every high school has to have a policy of how they will handle extended learning opportunities. It's written into our state law. So there is one person that's designated to do that in every building now. Some are at a very low entry level and some do this [with] 140, 200 kids interacting in these roles every day.
Robert Balfanz:
Yeah. What I think is quite powerful about the New Hampshire effort is it really combines this legislative framework. I mean, it's backed and shaped by legislation, and then you've built up an infrastructure that actually supports school level implementation of that legislative framework.
Sean Peschel:
And what's been nice about it too, is that it's been so organic. So even though it's been legislation kind of making it happen, it just says you have to have it happen. How you have it happen is up to each individual school district or school itself on how they want to implement it and create that.
Sean Peschel:
So it's been quite interesting in that sense. And we as a network, I think, try to standardize that or try to have some commonalities amongst schools. And as we mentioned in our last episode, with our regional structure, you know, the state of New Hampshire is, you know, three hours from top to bottom and maybe two hours across, but we try to have at least the regions be similarly focused and working collaboratively together. And we cross regions too; just because we're in the Seacoast region doesn't mean we don't reach out to the North Country or the Southwest or the central area of our state. We do work with everybody collaboratively.
Robert Balfanz:
That's great. And Sean, can you tell us a little bit more about the role of the ELO coordinator at a school?
Sean Peschel:
Sure, I see the ELO coordinator as that academic social worker where they bring everybody to the table. But the first person to come to the table is the student talking about what they want to learn or do or take part in. You know, again, being student driven, student designed, student focused. We then reach out and say, what area of focus do you want to be in? Is it social studies? Is it math? Is it English? What area or career-driven experience? And then also which category does it fall into? Is it advanced studies, independent coursework, an internship, a job shadow? You get all that ground work of foundational information laid out, then ask the student, is there a teacher mentor that you have in mind that you want to work with? Do you have somebody that you've already reached out to in the community, To be a community partner, to provide you that community experience? And again, I think it's teaching those social skills, those soft skills of networking, collaboration, communication. Even though I am the coordinator that kind of oversees the process, I’m giving the steering wheel and the gas pedal to the student to initiate and drive the experience as much as possible. And then also the teacher mentor and the community partner, we're providing the place and space for the student to learn. But we're also the bumpers in the gutter of the bowling alley to keep that ball straight as they go down and hit the too. We never want to see a student fumble or fail. But again, through those fumblings and failings we have learning that takes place too. So it's also always a good thing to trip and stumble sometimes, because you get right back up and keep on going on the experience.
Robert Balfanz:
Yeah, it really strikes me how in a way [it’s a] straightforward role, but also it seems a radical departure from traditional organization of high schools where basically somebody else decided the program, maybe the school board, maybe the superintendent, maybe the principal, and everybody else is just implementing, right? But you're actually co-creating with the students and the opportunities. That's very exciting.
Sean Peschel:
Yeah, and it could be taking competencies that are already in place from courses and repackaging it in a different way, or starting from scratch and creating competencies from scratch for the student. And also, Bob, we mentioned to the teachers when ELOs first came about in our state, there was fear from teachers across the state that they were going to lose their jobs. If students can earn credit not in their classroom, they'll no longer be employed. But that has not happened. There's been no staff member that I'm aware of in New Hampshire that has lost [a job] because now teachers are engaging with students beyond their own classroom too. That okay. If I've taught you Ceramics 1, Ceramics 2, I want to really work with these kids that want a Ceramics 3 and give them more passion to be in the profession too. Which has been I think re-invigorating and re-energizing for some of our staff members too, to enhance and expand upon what we're actually already doing in our schools.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
Oh, I so agree with that, Sean, because we had that fear in this building, and by educating those teachers and getting them to connect with students in different ways, it's made them better teachers in their traditional classrooms. As well as, hey, I have this idea; do you think you have a few ELO kids that might want to work with me on this? And that's really… in the first session, I talked about the submarine project. That's really how that got going. like that. So it really has given our teachers a little bit of a push and engaged them more in the teaching role, which has been awesome to see, that evolution.
Sean Peschel:
Yeah. And taking on that extra role of being a teacher mentor for an ELO, it's beyond our staff members' responsibilities. Like they're still “stuck,” I say “stuck” in air quotes, stuck to the traditional classroom of somebody who blocks a day. But if a teacher wants to take on an ELO student or students, it's above and beyond. So it’s kind of nice to see that growing to in our building.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
Because in our buildings, our teachers don't get paid to be a mentor. Some schools do that, a small stipend. But in our building, they don't. So it's a volunteer.
Sean Peschel:
Yeah. And we've had ELOs now, you know, from the beginning when the regulations were established, but also just having the position as a full-time position for about six years. This is the sixth year of the position. I've been the only one that has held that position, which has been kind of nice. And we at Oyster River rolled the program out slowly. We didn't want to open the floodgates and have students try to earn credits in alternative ways right from the beginning. So we slow-rolled it out. And this year, ironically, the schools, the high schools discovered the possibilities. So now once a month, we have students who are doing ELOs or doing something above and beyond or things that they've learned from our building, presenting at our staff meetings. So out of the hour staff meeting, the last five minutes is dedicated to Student Spotlight. And then some of our staff members wish that the whole hour was dedicated to Student Spotlights. But yeah, just seeing and hearing what students are doing is engaging the staff members who didn't know what was happening. And maybe a little purposefully, we wanted to keep it a little bit of a secret, but now that we're getting it out, people want to do more and take advantage of all the possibilities that our school currently has to offer.
Robert Balfanz:
Yeah, that's amazing. When you think about it, seat time in the Carnegie unit came about in a time and place, as I said, when the only place you could really, in a mass way, learn academic knowledge was from a teacher. It gave teachers that monopoly on learning. And you could see where some might be hesitant to give that monopoly up. But another thing seat time did, though, is it gave American US teachers many more hours teaching [rather] than doing other work [compared to]other nations. Because someone had to be in the classroom with the kids teaching them. They can't be anywhere else, right? So our teachers end up teaching all day and having very little time to work with colleagues or to do other work. So you could see how, they'd be nervous at the beginning, but you could see how breaking that seat time and that strict schedule could also free teachers up to be more innovative and creative.
Sean Peschel:
For sure, definitely. And I think it's also working in structures too, that here we have students that are leaving our campus, what they're not supervised with an adult with them at all times; a staff member is not with them. They may be with a community partner—we'll make sure they get the background check as a volunteer for the school district—and are they transporting themselves? So with all those legalities and litigation that could take place, that's where ELO is going to push that line a little bit more, like “No, it's okay that the student can leave our building on their own and by themselves, as long as they go where they're supposed to be going” and I think here you've got that you can know where they're at and so on and so forth, a little radar in your classroom of sorts.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
They have an app on their phone, so they check in and it gives me an actually GPS location that they're at where they're telling me; they're not home. And then when they're done for the day, it's kind of like just checking in and out of work, a thing just for accountability.
Sean Peschel:
I think there's another key piece of the ELO coordinators to make sure that the sites the students are going to are safe sites. The State of New Hampshire has a pretty strong Department of Labor, so all the DOL forms need to be approved: that your program's approved, the site's approved, that their safety plan is on file with the state, that their workman's compensation is on file with the state, and so on and so forth. So all the environments that our students are being sent to have been pre-checked by the ELO coordinators to make sure it's a safe site and the individuals that they're working with are dubbed as volunteers for your district.
Robert Balfanz:
What are some of the challenges schools face in creating a strong ELO program?
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
Some of the challenges would be if your district is not open-minded, in my opinion. If you have an administrative team, a school board, a community who's open-minded to allow you to create these opportunities and to be a little creative, then you're able to do your job and to do it well. By the time that our students graduate, they have had at least 10 opportunities for career-connected learning just in our advisory program, through our career speakers, career interviews, or job shadows, starting when they're freshmen. So we actually have that requirement built in. And then on top of any other career-connected learning that we do, that just naturally happens in our building. So I would say the challenge would be, if you didn't have a supportive district administrative team that sees that vision and sees the importance in the students taking ownership in their learning, then that would be a wall. We're lucky, I think, in our districts that we have that support to be able to just explore it every day. If I come up with a new idea, try it and I'm thinking, okay, here we go. Here's, let's do something new. So it's just so nice to have that support piece.
Sean Peschel:
Yeah, definitely huge. And I think financial support too comes into play also where Kerrie and I are very fortunate that our 100% role is the ELO coordinator. Some of those districts that may be struggling financially, they may roll it out slowly. We're tacking it on to a teaching position or tack it on to a school counseling position. But as that program grows, as the numbers and the population and the data show the growth, you then hopefully can bring on that person to be more of 100% full time. So it is a struggle and a barrier. And I think one of the things that we as a network are trying to do is collaboratively share our resources of community partners. But also, if a school doesn't have any ELO coordinator, for whatever reason they don't have one, I've offered, and I think Kerrie has too, offered for us to partner with other schools and take on another school's student as ours and walk them through the process. So that transferability, if Oyster River has overseen this experience, it can transfer to their transcript and towards graduation as credit earned, which would be nice. I think another barrier too that could be, and the one that I face, is that currently ELOs in our district are only for elective-based credit. We're looking to move into the required courses, required credits for graduation arena. Again, it's just a slow rollout, making sure we're getting everything lined up, all of our ducks in a row, and are ready for the next level of it. We did the same thing with internships. I didn't jump into internships right away. We did more internal, inside-the-building type stuff: those independent course works, advanced studies. And then, now that that's showing proof of the pudding, we're [saying] okay, let's roll out into the community, and build that community support too. So it's all about how you roll it out. I think slow and steady you win the race overall.
Robert Balfanz:
Yeah, no, those seem real. But it also seems like there's a lot of momentum building and the proof is in the pudding. And one curiosity I have is that we've talked a lot of students being very excited about this and feeling engaged, particularly sometimes students that have become sort of disengaged because of COVID or the pandemic. But do you run across students that are like strong defenders of traditional learning and don't want to leave the building, want to just be taught by a teacher all the time?
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
We do, I do, and then that's their choice, and they don't have to choose it. Doing an ELO is a choice. And just like when they do core signups, ELO is listed on their list of availabilities. And if they want to take that, or if they'd rather take a traditional classroom, again, that they have that choice. Oftentimes, though, they come around, and at some point, they say, well, can I do this? And can we do it in the summer? Maybe they don't want to give up their traditional electives or their courses that they have during the year. I'm lucky enough that I also am hired throughout the summer. So if a student wants to do an internship or an ELO opportunity, I'm there to guide and mentor them through the summer.
Robert Balfanz:
That's great that it builds through the summer.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
Yeah, not all schools do that but that's something I pushed for a long time ago, because students were doing some really great work, or going into different businesses, and then they just they weren't getting credit for it. Well, why not? You're learning, and you're doing this; why shouldn't we reward you?
Sean Peschel:
Yeah, and what's nice about being year round is that ELOs in my school district do not work in the timeframe of semesters and year-long courses. Traditionally, a semester-long class is half credit, full year-long course is a full credit. You can start an ELO whenever you start it and end whenever you end it. No matter if it takes you a year and a half to do five competencies, it's still, air quotes “still,” only worth a half a credit. It's based on the student progressing through student voice and choice, student agency. Students in my building could do an ELO for a part of their day. You know, there are seven periods in their schedule overall. You know, we have a rotating schedule, yada, yada, yada. But it could be one of those boxes filled in, or it could be above and beyond. It could be on the weekend. It could be in the evenings, whenever. I always tell students that if you have to take a pause from your ELO, because life gets busy maybe with your job, or sports, or other academic commitments, the ELO can take the back burner for a little bit. Just let me know. Check in with me. Let me know what's going to take a pause. But make sure your traditional courses are still moving along, because there's still deadlines and due dates, reports and quarter ends, so on and so forth. But unfortunately, what ends up happening sometimes is, the students get so engaged with the ELO, the traditional courses are the ones that take the back burner because they're more engaged in what they want to be engaged in versus what's being told they need to be engaged in. But we find that happy balance; and again that's the academic social worker coming into play and making sure everything's going smoothly and in the right direction.
Robert Balfanz:
Yeah, what you just said, Sean, is both so logical and still so mind-bending for everyone who has been so steeped in traditional high school schedules and timeframes. The idea that you could start your ELO at any time and ended it at any time and it's not bound by a semester or a quarter, you know, or a year or the, you know, not over the summer. It just shows us how ingrained those schedules are in our mind, that we would see that to be so mind-bending.
Sean Peschel:
And again, it's still one of those transferable skills: the student doing the time management piece, that “when am I ready to do it for a checkpoint, when am I ready for a check-in or a benchmark?” thing. It's again putting them in the driver's seat and putting them in control and learning those skills of networking, collaboration, communication, time management skills, all those things.
Robert Balfanz:
And I think that's a great lead into my next question, which is, how do students get credit? How do they show what they did in their extended learning opportunity?
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
So part of what they do, we have what we call the four pillars of an extended learning opportunity. And that's our research, reflection, our project, and our presentation. For us in
[our] building, our students have to do a presentation to demonstrate their growth and their learning of what they did in their competencies, what they set for their competencies. We do a day each semester where that's actually our staff meeting. All the staff members are put into different rooms. I divvy up the kids and they listen to our students give a presentation and show their products about what they learned, what their growth was, what their competencies were, and what their next steps are. It is honestly one of the favorite days of the year in our building. I actually had a couple other schools this January come to visit us, so they could see what we do. The kids are so super nervous in the beginning, they're like, “oh, I have to talk about what I do.” But once they start talking, you just hear that pride and that engagement of “this is what I learned. And now I learned this is not what I want to do the rest of my life.” Or “yes, this is solidified, I want to go to nursing school or I want to go to be an auto mechanic.” So it's just them defending their learning. It’s the coolest thing in the world.
Robert Balfanz:
Yeah, well, that sounds, I mean, I want to come see it. And what really strikes me about what you're describing is that we know that nationally, despite lots of efforts of many amazing counselors, guidance counselors, college counselors, still many of our high school students get very little guidance on what to do after high school and very little experiential taste of it. So they just have some loose idea in their mind and they enroll and get accepted and get to college, then find it's the wrong thing, right? And so this idea of getting that learning by doing before you have to do it, just seems both so logical and far too rare.
Sean Peschel:
And very similarly, at Oysterville High School also, the students… You know, we don't have a day dedicated to it. Some districts have a whole day dedicated to the presentations. Kerrie’s school has the staffing dedicated to it. In mine, it's more personalized in the sense that the students, when they're ready to defend their knowledge or show proof that they've learned, they come to me and say, I'm ready to set up my presentation. And the students know that I'm required at the table. [It could be] myself, the student, and their teacher mentor, community partner, whoever their ELO team was. That is their choice. They can invite aunts, uncles, cousins; they can fill the whole auditorium if they want to, or keep it to a smaller classroom. It's not meant to be stressful or anxiety-provoking, it's them sharing their experience. Like Kerrie mentioned, from the beginning they have some nervousness, but that quickly dissolves and goes away, and it's just a show-and-tell of what I've learned, showing their products and bringing to life those competencies and how they've met those competencies.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
And these presentations could be something like slides, in a formal presentation where they're standing up, or they could be taking us out into the parking lot and showing us how they trained a dog for five different commands, or taking me through an ambulance and showing me the steps for when they get to a situation of how they deal with everything. I mean, we had a student who did firefighting, and we timed him and he put on his firefighting suit as if he was going to a call. So they can demonstrate their learning in so many different ways.
Robert Balfanz:
Yeah, that's wonderful. All right, so here's my last big question. Both of you, Kerrie and Sean, have been working this for a while, learned a lot, put a lot of effort into it, had a lot of hard-won lessons. What would be your advice for other states, and schools in those states, that are interested in starting an extended learning opportunity [program]?
Sean Peschel:
Interesting to bring that up, working with other states. One of our border states is Maine. And for about, maybe five years or so, Kerrie, they’ve been coming to our meetings?
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
I would say five, I would say five.
Sean Peschel:
Yeah, so the people that have similar roles, maybe they're community collaborators, or school-to-work coordinators, they were coming to our state meetings, and even our regional meetings too, because Kerrie and I are on... Maine has actually launched ELOs in their state. Their Department of Education, I believe, funded 25 ELO coordinators statewide, grant-funded, where districts can apply to get funding for an ELO coordinator. And now this is their first year of having their own ELO network. We're actually going to their state conference next month. We're going to be listening, participating, and in whatever way we can, supporting them. That's one of the interesting things backing behind their ELO rollout. New Hampshire did not [do that]. It was a local control and do-it-on-your-own type thing. But it's been quite interesting to see them and work collaboratively with Maine. We have some friends of ours, some coordinators on the Vermont side, that work with Vermont businesses. Same thing with Massachusetts, with our Mass border. They work with Massachusetts businesses. The Mass Department of Labor is a little bit more lenient than the New Hampshire Department of Labor. So they said, hey, if you can get kids in Mass, go down to Mass, [it might be] a little bit easier. But again, we still do the work. We want to have safe spots and safe locations, all the New Hampshire regulations. But yeah, I think working collaboratively across states has been helpful because we are a small state. The New England region is very a collaborative area.
Kerrie Alley-Violette:
The cool thing working with Maine, we really were kind of Maine's mentors because most of what they have done and rolled out has mirrored exactly what we do in our schools. So having that connection has been really great. And we are actually in conversations of maybe having some conferences between the two states where we can really help each other out. So we're excited about that.
Robert Balfanz:
That's wonderful. That's really wonderful to see it growing. Thank you, Kerrie and Sean. As we close out today's episodes, are there any last words you'd like to share with the audience or to let them know where they can learn more about what we've discussed in our episodes, our two episodes together?
Sean Peschel:
I think again just two websites to have our listeners go to is the nhelonetwork.com which is our organization's website, and also go to beyondclassroom.org for other examples that have actually taken place in New Hampshire, that you can take back, replicate, and use in your own districts.
Robert Balfanz:
Wonderful, wonderful. So as we end here, I'd like to thank Kerrie and Sean again for joining me in this two-part discussion and for sharing what they are learning about enabling students to learn anywhere, at any time, and receive high school credit for it. More and more states, as we've heard, are starting to chip away at the tyranny of seat time in the Carnegie unit, but no state has gone as far as New Hampshire in creating not only a legislative opportunity, but school-level infrastructure to enable it to happen. As we work together to design schools for students of the 21st century, being able to incorporate the learning opportunities that are available and occur outside of the formal school day or the school walls into the formal preparation we require for our students to graduate from high school and apply for post-secondary schooling and training will be essential. That's why we are so excited to be able to engage Kerrie and Sean, two on-the-ground educators working to make learning anywhere, anytime, real in our two-part episode. What their work shows is that it is being done, which tells us all it can be done. Before we let you go, I want to ask that you please subscribe to the Designing Education podcast to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five-star review. Also, please share the show with a friend or colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center and the Pathways to Adult Success project. Thank you, everyone, for listening, and we invite you to listen to the other episodes in our Designing Education series, wherever you listen to podcasts; and be well.