Josh Lee said he’s seen a drop-off in student engagement at Glacier High School sporting events.
The rising senior isn’t sure what’s causing it. But he does feel empowered to act on it, in part thanks to an approach to learning Kalispell Public Schools has championed. Known as Personalized Competency-Based Education, PCBE for short, the approach aims to give students agency over their schooling experience as they work to meet educational standards.
At Kalispell Public Schools, teachers across grade levels are working on implementing PCBE principles into their classrooms. The district considers itself a regional leader on the topic. Its work with PCBE earned a visit from Gov. Greg Gianforte in 2023. He praised the district for its innovative approach to work-based education in a roundtable discussion.
The approach also served as a key part of the district’s successful levy campaign this spring. Students emphasized the impact of their experiences with the district’s career-focused programming as the levy campaign launched.
And Kalispell Public Schools has worked to bring educators from their partner districts together to share best practices and learn how to implement PCBE into their respective schools. They did so for the second time this year by hosting the Doris Mountain Summit, where Lee spoke on a student panel with several of his peers Wednesday morning. Students on the panel varied in age from third grade to a recent Flathead High School graduate.
At the summit, Lee shared he was part of a group of Kalispell students who visited Red Mountain School in Phoenix, Arizona, last year. Kalispell’s students found themselves inspired by how students at Red Mountain had a voice in their school’s culture. After the trip, Kalispell students formed a group called “Brave Pack Rising.” The name reflects student involvement from Flathead High School, Glacier High School and Linderman School. Lee is a member.
Lee and his peers are spearheading plans for several events aimed at creating a better culture in the district. While the students have support from administrators, the ideas and their implementation remain student-led. Lee said the group hopes to host tailgates ahead of crosstown sporting events and an activities fair during freshman orientation, among other events.
“I think it’s a really cool opportunity and a shift in our district to really allow students to take hold of what we’re wanting the district to do, what we want our schools to look like and I think that’s been really cool,” Lee said.
This year’s Doris Mountain Summit includes two days of keynote speakers and breakout sessions hosted at Flathead High School. The sessions focused on helping teachers better understand PCBE and how they can implement it in their own classrooms.
Last year, around 150 people attended the summit, according to assistant superintendent Peter Fusaro, who helped plan the event. The event nearly doubled in size this year, with 280 attendees from 31 districts and organizations in attendance, according to a fact sheet from the district.
“This summit was created so that we can build connection, and we can share the load,” Kalispell Public Schools Superintendent Matt Jensen said. “Our profession is not trending toward easier, but I believe that our profession should be trending towards more joy and more collaboration.”
Theresa Ewald, Wednesday’s keynote speaker, also addressed the idea that schools can serve students better. Ewald works as the associate director at the Institute for Personalized Learning. She said education has employed a one-size-fits-all model for more than 100 years. But just because that model has been in place for a long time doesn’t make it the best fit for students.
Her speech touched on the idea that knowledge is “temporal.” But, Ewald said, skills students can develop for their futures while in the classroom are “evergreen.”
The skills she means include analytical thinking, resilience and leadership. She highlighted all of these traits as top qualities employers desire as well, according to the World Economic Forum.
She argued educators should shift how they think about teaching. Instead of trying to help students build knowledge, they’re helping students build skills too.
“It is not a one or the other,” Ewald said. “It’s not a first this, then this, because lots of teachers are like, ‘I can’t get to that skills thing ’til I get to the content thing.’ You won’t get to it. You won’t. They have to come together.”
She also offered examples of how teachers can shift from “solo learning” — activities like taking notes — to implementing more “people-based learning” in their classrooms. That includes allowing students to test theories, give and receive feedback and have a chance to argue their points. All of those help students build skills, and can be part of personalizing students’ learning.
Kalispell Public Schools’ other student panel participants gave real-world examples of how personalized education can look in practice.
Brooks Stanfield, a Kalispell Middle School student, shared how science came alive for him through a project on plate tectonics.
“I felt like science was just this thing you had to memorize and you did it on a test,” Stanfield said. “However, this made me realize how it applies to the real world and how geological formations are changing and actually affect the real world, and how we might use this later in life.”
Thistle Campbell, a third grader at Peterson Elementary School, said she enjoyed learning in a self-paced math class. She tracked her progress individually by keeping a “data binder” and meeting with her teacher one-on-one.
And for Sandro Pipolo, receiving personalized instruction and opportunities from his teachers helped him become a more engaged student.
“When I entered my freshman year, I was not involved in stuff like this,” he said. “And then (my teachers) threw trust in the activities I did. They helped build me into someone who not only was willing to speak up here, but was participating in things worth speaking about, which, if I looked back on my freshman year, I would definitely not be assuming I was doing this.”