Munford High School

From monitoring the egg production at the chicken coop, creating a plan to market the honey collected at the beehives, and maintaining the water quality for the Koi and Catfish located in the six 1,000 gallon fish tanks, Munford High School is the place where ideas hit the dirt.  Munford High School is located in the foothills of the Talladega National Forest on the southern tip of the Appalachian Mountains in Alabama. The Munford Schools were the first in the southeast to incorporate forestry, conservation, and conservation education themes into the basic curriculum and campus design.  Munford High School is student-centered and focused on teaching and learning. Applying the new standards within the Common Core initiative, placing technology into each student’s hand, shifting the instructional focus to Project-Based Learning, and laying the foundation for a multitude of sustainable partnerships, Munford High School’s staff and students have united to meet the challenge of better preparing our graduates to become college and career ready.  #Teaching HOT is our instructional focus. Teaching Higher Order Thinking (HOT) skills is essential for our students today. Our common core standards and Project Based Learning (PBL) projects require higher order thinking. In addition, many high stakes tests such as the ACT and ASVAB require higher order thinking. The wording of these tests calls upon students to process, reason, seek evidence, reflect, and generate knowledge based on what they read and write, whether in a scientific context, mathematical context, historical context, etc. It is very important to “explicitly” teach these skills within the classroom.  Munford High School is a place where its administrators, teachers, and students are enthusiastic about providing today’s youth with as many opportunities and tools for learning to survive successfully in college, career, and life.  This is evidenced by the documented increase in Munford High School’s graduation rate, ACT composite scores, AP qualifying scores, and our local school benchmark results.  To continue our efforts, Munford is excited to be a part of the Dynamic Learning Project, which is supported by Digital Promise, EdTechTeam and Google. It is “aimed at improving education equity by empowering teachers to leverage technology in powerful ways.”  With support from the Dynamic Learning Project, Munford High will provide personalized, tech-based coaching to help our educators leverage technology in transformative ways.