Marblehead High principal eyes online curriculum

MARBLEHEAD – Marblehead High?s new principal is working on some good ideas in his ninth month on the job.Kenneth Weinstein, a Marblehead resident and the former high school administrator of Brookline?s prestigious Maimonides School, spends 10-hour workdays at the high school, tries to attend a school event most evenings and, during his spare time, there?s always the on-going school projects he addresses with his laptop.Workdays start at 7 a.m. and continue through 5-5:30 p.m., and “If I need to come in on Saturdays, there?s usually a custodian here. That?s easy as well,” he said Monday.How does Marblehead High compare to a private school? Weinstein?s oldest son attends Marblehead High, so that helped prepare him for the change. “Marblehead is very good,” he said, “Good schools, good teachers and the kids want to learn.”In some ways public schools have less money than Weinstein is accustomed to, but the Friends of the Marblehead Public Schools help to take up that slack with grants for special programs.His biggest surprise so far is the paperwork – The Department of Education requires regular reports on public high school teaching assignments and the classes students are taking, much more than he had to file at a private school.However, Weinstein has found time to begin looking into online alternatives to course offerings and textbooks – and he expects the online course offerings to be funded in next year?s school budget.By supplying a Marblehead teacher to teach the equivalent of one daily class out of a five-class workload as an online instructor at Maynard?s Virtual High School program, Marblehead High will receive 25 seats per semester for its students in online classes of their choosing.That helps students who need additional course credits to graduate, as well as those who are seeking specialized classes for their own enrichment in exchange for a minimal teacher commitment. For their first semester, students will be supervised by an adult, to make sure they do all the work required and, as they progress in responsibility, they will be able to work from home.?We?re a little bit late to the game,” Weinstein admits. Swampscott already uses Virtual High School, which began in 2005.Weinstein is studying online access to curriculum – not just textbooks but a broad variety of classroom materials, and he is excited about the possibility of Marblehead creating its own schoolbooks online. Beverly, for example, requires students to lease a laptop for $250 a year – they own it at the end of four years – and use the laptop to access local course materials.High school parent Dave Kinney is helping the local study, still in its beginning stages, at a website, www.MHSopencourseware.com.Weinstein seems to see his most important task as an educator as life education, however, hearkening back to something he said in his interview: “Schools are ethical places, they provide good role models.”?These kids (at Marblehead High) have seen a lot of turnover, it can make them disconnect and lose trust,” he said. “I try to teach them good decision-making. I know their frontal lobe isn?t fully developed yet. We act as their frontal lobe, we teach them to slow down and look after each other, especially when somebody?s about to do something dangerous.”?The more we can have conversations about that, not guilt them or scare them, kids do well with mindfulness. The state doesn?t mandate that, it would be nice if they did.”