On a recent Friday morning, Franklin High School sophomore Chase Hatcher found himself in jail.
His “cell”, demarcated by a wide circle of beads on the linoleum floor of Paul Smith Elementary School, was of course smaller and less secure than those found in a standard correctional facility. His sentence – an astounding 16,000 years – proved far harsher.
Hatcher’s crime? Allegedly touching the beaded necklace he was working on crafting with his giddy arresting officer, second grader Elaine Palermo.
As Elaine sounded out Hatcher’s name to inscribe on his paper handcuffs — “Remember what we do with long vowels,” elementary school art teacher Bonnie Gilbert urged — the young correctional officer had a change of heart.
“You’re free! You’re free!” Elaine shouted.
A relieved Hatcher stood up. “It was a long time in jail,” he said with a smile.
The arrest, confinement and release played out in the last meeting of the fall between Franklin high school and elementary students in the course “Inner Child & You in Art,” which tasks the high school “teachers” with developing lessons for their second-grade counterparts, whom they visit weekly.
Created last year by high school art teacher Ashli Craft, the quarter-long class is one of dozens of new courses developed since 2023, when Franklin High overhauled its daily schedule as part of a transition to a project-based learning model.
The pedagogical approach’s emphasis on real-world applications has grown increasingly popular across the country, but few high schools have embraced it as fully as Franklin. The change has allowed the district, with its tight financial resources, to “do more with less,” fourth-year Principal David Levesque said.
“This is year three, and we’re finally settling into what seems to be working for us here at the high school,” he said.
On project block days – Tuesdays and Thursdays – students have two courses of 125 minutes each, while on the other days they have four classes of 90 minutes each.
The extra time means increased access to opportunities outside the school building. Students in a physical education and science course called “Wild Places,” for example, recently traveled to Profile Falls in Bristol to learn about the connection humans have with their natural surroundings.
The longer blocks also allow more students to enroll in courses at Lakes Region Community College through a program called Running Start, and to participate in career preparatory programs at the Huot Career and Technical Center and Winnisquam Career Center. The community college courses supplement gaps in Franklin’s course offerings, particularly in upper-level STEM subjects, due to a lack of teachers.
Last year, Franklin’s 270-student body cumulatively earned 270 community college credits, with 42 students participating in extended learning opportunities. The school took over 300 trips to attend various activities, according to Levesque.
“To have this number of kids do college courses and to try some strange things, to go on hikes in the middle of the day, or whatever it is, is always refreshing for us,” he said. “It’s been a very fun process.”
The schedule has also led Franklin to increase its graduation requirement from 20.5 to 26 credits.
The data suggests the shift is having a positive effect on student engagement: Referrals for discipline have dropped 30% and the attendance rate has increased roughly 10 percentage points, from 83% to 93%.
“That tells us kids are coming to school and they’re participating,” Levesque said.
Students in Craft’s art class agreed.
“It gives us a lot more opportunities to be able to go to different places,” junior Maddie Mango said. “With the two-hour block, it opens up the space for you to be able to go volunteer somewhere else. And you’ll have more time there and just have different career options.”
Those critical of the schedule largely cited their attention spans.
“It’s hard to stay focused, and after an hour, I usually just want to leave or not be in class anymore,” senior Ava Ranelli said.
Crafting courses suitable for the longer blocks has been a challenge for teachers too, Craft said.
“It definitely is a change,” she said. “I have a background as a camp counselor — that was one of the other things I did in my youth — so I’m used to being able to get up, change, switch gears, but I think for a traditional teacher that is a little hard.”
Levesque said the school is conducting additional teacher training that focuses on course development.
“Our teachers took a leap of faith with us and I’m incredibly proud of the work they have done to support the difficult situations that sometimes we are put in as educators,” he said.
Certain subjects are more conducive than others to project-based learning, teachers and administrators have found. Math courses have proven the most difficult, Levesque said.
One math course uses the lawn game cornhole to teach geometry. Students study the optimal angle to land their sacks in the hole.
New courses are constantly in the works, including potential partnerships with manufacturing firms that would focus on engineering, or the group Media Power Youth, which would focus on media production.
Franklin’s project block transition was spurred by a collaboration with the Barr Foundation, a Boston-based nonprofit that supports transformation in public high schools across New England. (The Barr Foundation also provides funding to the Concord Monitor but has no influence over the newspaper’s coverage decisions.)
Levesque said the team working on the schedule shift traveled to schools in several states to explore various options.
“We’re taking bits and pieces from everywhere to Franklin-ize it,” he said. “When you don’t have the funds that some of these other schools have, we take bits and pieces from them and say: What will fit here in our school with our students and in our district?”
Franklin’s approach could become a model for other schools in New Hampshire. Though that is not Levesque’s goal, he said if more area high schools adopted project-based blocks, it would make aligning schedules at the regional career and technical centers that much easier.
“I think we could do a lot of really fun things together,” he said.