Walking down a brightly lit hallway splattered with primary colors and science fair posters, a young boy wearing glasses hurries next door to math class. He argues with his buddy about the best Harry Potter book Ñ- “No dude! The Goblet of Fire is no match to the Chamber of Secrets!” Ñ- amidst the noise of banging locker doors.
A typical middle school scene — apart from the boy’s suit and tie, internship next period with the State Climate Office and the video conference he has scheduled for the afternoon with an N.C. State professor.
At Centennial Campus Magnet Middle School, with the help of the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, the “normal” middle school experience — stolen lunch money, school dances, bad yearbook pictures — takes on a whole new meaning. Sixth, seventh and eighth graders learn alongside of College of Education majors, creating a symbiotic opportunity for all students involved.
“It’s a reciprocal arrangement — how can middle school students make education majors better teachers?” Elwood Peters, the middle school’s outreach coordinator, said. “Centennial Campus Middle School was really developed by asking, ÔIf you could have the ideal classroom, what would it be?'”
The seven-year-old middle school’s 600 students are part of its NCSU Leadership Magnet program, located near Lake Raleigh on Centennial Campus. The Friday Institute, physically connected to the school, is its 33,000-square-foot college counterpart, serving as a place for educational research.
“The research at the institute has really helped change how professors teach their classes in the education college. There is a real emphasis on the latest technology, such as video conferencing and podcasts,” Lisa Grable, director of learning technologies, said.
The institute’s dizzying array of technological features includes a television studio, discovery classrooms with laptops on each desk and a board room featuring an LCD display, video camera, video conferencing unit, integrated audio and automated control system.
“It helps our education students to be leaders in the workplace, even if they are the youngest teachers at their school,” Grable said. “They go into their new jobs as teachers with a handle on the latest technology to bring to the classroom.”
Under the leadership of alumna Principal Edye Morris-Bryant, the Centennial Campus Redwolves — just one of the many throwbacks to its Wolfpack inspiration — has a huge variety of collaborative work with the University.
Michelle McDowell, a senior in middle grades education, said she appreciates the link between her college classrooms and the sixth grade classroom she is manning as student teacher.
“CCMS has a lot of Wolfpack spirit. We have takeoffs from the University, such as the HOWL acronym -Ñ Honor, Order, Wisdom, and Leadership -Ñ and our Wolf of the Week program,” she said. “And the convenience of the middle school is so nice. If I want to tutor for just an hour, I’m not driving very far from campus.”
Students are also able to job shadow Centennial Campus and Main Campus faculty and staff, participate in internships down the road at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Centennial Campus office and work with Park Scholars to produce musicals such as Broadway’s Annie Jr.
“The staff and teachers at Centennial Campus Middle School really become a part of the N.C. State family,” Grable said.
Although Business Education and Career Decisions classes may seem more appropriate for the college students occupying the institute’s research facilities, they represent the school’s cross-commitment to technology and relationship-building across age groups.
That contrast is most evident in professor Carol Pope’s Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum class, which meets once a week in one of the Friday Institute’s discovery classrooms.
Twenty-year-olds color in red hearts by the instruction of 12-year-olds, new Mac laptops lay beside glitter and scissors and, when Pope signals the end of the day’s writing exercise, a red-headed boy says to his friend, “Man, that rocked!”
