Upton High School was paid a visit by Wyoming's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Megan Degenfelder, earlier this week. Superintendent Degenfelder has been a proponent of personalized learning as well as reimagining education in Wyoming to be more career oriented and aligned to needs in the local workplace. These are a couple areas UHS has made a focus over the years, creating an innovative and unique model that has been catching interest from across the state.
This visit was a part of the Superintendent's "Tour of Excellence" as she travels to different districts to see the great things going on in education around Wyoming. Leading her tour of Upton High School were two high school seniors, Kailer Duarte and Sophie Louderback as well as WCSD#7 superintendent Dr. Clark Coberly and high school principal Joe Samuelson. Nick Trandahl from the Weston County Gazette was also in attendance for the tour, covering the story for the local newspaper.
The Superintendent's visit focused heavily on Upton High School's career and technical programs which was able to produce 33 industry recognized credentials last school year. It currently offers 8 programs of study in addition to its plethora of other electives. Likewise, through the personalized learning platform, students work at separate paces, allowing many to work ahead and finish classes early. This has allowed UHS to put students on a college track if that is part of the pathway they have chosen. During the 2022-2023 school year, 24 UHS students completed a college course and earned college credit at no expense to them.
In addition to the exploration of classrooms and Upton's unique model, the Superintendent was curious about Upton's transition to personalized learning and how teachers were trained and prepared. As a small school, UHS has been able to individualize pathways and preferences for students, but questions arise regarding what that might look like on a larger scale. In addition, creating buy-in and providing training for mass populations may look different from school to school. Nonetheless, Upton High School provides a model and basis to begin building off of.
This all follows the announcement from the Governor Mark Gordon's office to kickstart the RIDE initiative which seeks to create a "systematic change" in education to better reflect local community needs in the 21st century. As a part of this RIDE initiative 9 pilot schools were chosen to engage in a more student-centered approach to learning through "four areas of focus: competency-based learning; flexible pathways; personalized learning; and student choice."