Carla Clark | For The Republic Logan Dulong receives his diploma from Principal Mike Reed during the CSA New Tech Commencement Ceremony at Columbus East High School, Columbus, Ind., Friday, May 24, 2024.
It’s June, which means that school’s out.
It’s June, which means the Class of 2024 has graduated from Columbus Signature Academy New Tech. It’s June, which means Mike Reed, principal of CSA New Tech since its opening in 2008, is retiring in a few weeks.
He’s been cleaning out his office, 16 years of work with the school being put into boxes and taken off of walls. But Reed hasn’t just led the school since it opened. In fact, it likely wouldn’t be there without him.
Once upon a time, the building that now houses CSA New Tech was an auto parts store, and Reed had very little interest in a career in education.
“I tried to escape education,” Reed says. His father had been a biology teacher, and Reed noted the trend of educators often coming from families of educators. To get away from this, Reed received a degree in building construction technology from Purdue University.
Reed began work in commercial construction, and although he felt the work was rewarding, it lacked fulfillment in terms of service.
“Why did I go into education?” Reed reflects, “To give back to the community and make a difference in the lives of kids.”
Reed had been teaching for nine years at an alternative school in Columbus as a part of Rebound, a social skills training program. The program included canoe trips, backpacking trips, and other activities. Reed then took charge of the building for five years.
“Quite frankly, I loved my job,” Reed says.
During a principal’s meeting, Reed was introduced to New Tech schools. Bill Jensen, the director of secondary education at the time, was explaining the New Tech model, which focuses heavily on Project Based Learning.
“He’s describing that hands on learning, that authentic problem solving and collaboration, and that absolutely resonated with me,” says Reed. From that point, Reed was interested in learning more about the New Tech model.
Three months later, Reed was in Napa, California visiting the original New Tech high school.
Napa business and industry leaders approached the school board and expressed that students were lacking “soft skills,” which are typically equated with the ability to effectively communicate in the workplace. New Tech began as a potential solution to this.
“When you visit a New Tech and you interact with students of a New Tech school, you’re immediately drawn to their maturity, their ability to communicate and talk about their own learning,” Reed says.
When looking deeper into what the model of Project Based Learning entails, it can be easy to see where students may get these communication skills. For CSA New Tech, projects begin with an entry document or entry event. To give the projects a real world application, they come from community partners and are fit to the state education standards.
From there, the students define two things: What they know, and what they need to know. They approach logistics, content, and their end goal through this lens. In the process, the teacher becomes a facilitator. Students even enter a group contract, where they define goals, share contact information, and define their approach for solving conflicts.
At CSA New Tech, the intention of these projects are the “school wide learning outcomes.” Content is 60% of their grade, and written communication, collaboration, agency, and oral communication each make up 10% of their grade. These learning outcomes are where soft skills are intended to develop.
A few years ago, CSA physics students volunteered their spring break to travel to New Orleans. Using standards they had learned, they worked on housing repair for homes that had been impacted by Hurricane Katrina.
More recently, biology students have been working heavily with the community garden. They’ve started a tree nursery with the goal of giving back to local parks. They’ve even built beehive boxes for four community partners who wanted their own hives, and the students themselves built the boxes, wear the suits and tend to the hives.
“It’s pretty incredible work that they’re doing,” says Reed.
After his visit to Napa, Reed was even more excited about working at a New Tech school.
“The educators that are involved with a New Tech school are some of the most passionate and giving professionals that I’ve ever been around. So, I knew immediately that I wanted to be a part of that, and I was also ready to try my hand at something new,” says Reed.
In 2007, Reed assembled a design team. The team of educators from local schools crafted a vision of what the school would look like and what the four-year experience would be like.
But there was one thing the school couldn’t open its doors without — students.
“There are great things that are happening at East High School and at North High School. There’s great educators and administrators there. So, convincing young people in our community to take a chance on something new, filling the school was a goal,” said Reed.
Reed took his computer, a projector, and a portable screen with him to give presentations to groups in the community about New Tech.
CSA New Tech opened its doors with a hundred freshmen and five teachers. Each class added a hundred until it was a four year high school, and CSA added staff until they reached 21 members. The district wanted to approach the New Tech model as K-12, and began the first K-12 New Tech program in the country.
“I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity that BCSC provided me. Especially Bill Jensen, who gave me a lot of trust to be creative,” says Reed.
Now, CSA New Tech is host to learning unlike any other in the state, such as a three-year IT pathway taught by an Ivy Tech professor on CSA’s campus. Students can also earn college credits tuition free through the partnership with Ivy Tech. CSA also offers an engineering pathway for students to explore.
“My goal was to create a school culture that embraces and celebrates the uniqueness and diversity of all students,” Reed says. A goal of his with the school was to ensure that students had adults in the school who cared about their wellbeing.
The school culture is also collaborative. “We settled on a consensus decision making model, which states that the people most impacted by a decision have equal voice and vote in that decision. So, for example, the people most impacted by hiring new staff are students, so we always have students on our interview committee,” says Reed.
Since opening, Reed has hosted thousands of visitors from all over the world who want to see the CSA building and the unique work the students are doing.
The visitors want to see what used to be an auto parts store, and meet a man who originally didn’t want to go into education.
“Oftentimes as people leave, they’ll congratulate me and say ‘Oh my gosh Mike, you’ve created this great thing’ and in reality, I haven’t. What I do, and what I have done historically really well is identify really good talent. I hire people smarter than me, who are visionary, who are hard-workers, who are creative,” says Reed, while wearing a dark gray T-shirt with the red CSA logo: A dragon, the school’s mascot, behind blocky “CSA” letters arranged diagonally.
“This school has been a collaboration of lots of talented educators and students, because the students who go here, expect to be and deserve to be part of the process. So, I’m humbled when I receive compliments,” says Reed.
