New high school to expose students to the health care field - Dallas News | myFOXdfw.com

At a time when so many schools are under funded and under performing, Cornerstone Schools is creating a new high school, including state-of-the-art classrooms and curriculum.

"We feel that we're doing something that has never been done in American education," said CEO Tom Willis.

Workers are transforming the old Langston Hughes Academy on Detroit's northwest side and within months young minds will be transformed.  This fall the building will house the Cornerstone Charter Health High School.

"We're trying to rethink what a traditional school looks like, and so we started with a blank sheet of paper and just said if we started from a student's perspective, what would this school look like?" said principal Michael Griffie.

The curriculum will be just as forward thinking as the classrooms will be.  The focus is on exposing kids to careers in the health care industry.

"We're going to be a college preparatory school, but students will be able to see so many different aspects of the health-related field whether it be physician's assistant all the way to physicians, health care administrators.  So, they're going to have exposure to a lot of different aspects within a health care system with our partnership with the Detroit Medical Center," Willis said.

The tuition-free school will bring in career professionals or take students to work sites.  A blended teaching style means they will combine teachers with technology, and by the way, teachers will not be called teachers.  They're managers.  They're to support the students.

"The Cornerstone model, the Cornerstone way develops the whole child, and we
feel that we're going to educate the child to be healthy individuals, both socially, emotionally and physically, and also prepare them for a life that goes much further than high school," said Willis.

Cornerstone is enrolling students now for the health high school. You can learn more at the Family Fun Day and Enrollment Fair.  It's happening on Saturday, June 16 from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the new location at 19900 McIntyre Street.  For more information about the school, visit  http://hhs.cornerstonecharters.org.