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| 2/4/2010 6:20:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | SEE THE SHOW
What: "Blueprint for Tomorrow's Education" documentary featuring BHS Chemicals.
When: Wednesday, Feb. 10, on Milwaukee Public Television channel 10.
Preview: A public viewing of the documentary is set for 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, at Discovery World Museum in Milwaukee.
Lowdown: A half-hour MPTV documentary takes a look at how schools, businesses and communities are partnering to prepare students for the 21st century. Among the programs featured is BHS Chemicals. For additional information visit: www.mptv.org/shows/documentaries.
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Shining a light on innovative education
MPTV documentary touts success of BHS Chemicals program
Ed Nadolski
EDITOR IN CHIEF
For much of the past decade the Burlington Area School District has been a state and national leader in cutting-edge programs. But outside Burlington and the tight-knit educational community, few people know about the groundbreaking work educators here are doing.
Some of that anonymity will be shattered in the next week as the bright spotlight of the small screen shines on the BHS Chemicals program at Burlington High School.
The local program is one of three innovative educational courses that are featured in a half-hour Milwaukee Public Television documentary titled "Blueprint for Tomorrow's Education." The show is scheduled for initial broadcast on Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 7 p.m. on MPTV channel 10.
But those who can't wait for the broadcast will have a chance to preview the documentary as part of MPTV's Community Cinema series Thursday, Feb. 4, at 6:30 p.m. at Discovery World Museum on the Milwaukee lakefront. The screening is free and open to the public, and will feature a panel discussion that includes Burlington High School Principal Barbara Kopack Hill as a panelist.
Count current BHS Chemicals instructor Tim Gesteland among those who can't wait to see the documentary. He'll be taking his students and their families to the screening.
"I'm pumped about this," he said Tuesday. "Initially, I was nervous about having (the camera crew) in my class, but it was neat to see the kids who stepped up when the cameras were on.
"It was also neat to see outsiders get excited about (BHS Chemicals)," he said, adding that members and the production crew took home samples of the personal care products made in the class of have since offered rave reviews about the products and the course.
"It was one of those proud moments for me," Gesteland said, noting officials throughout the school district can feel the same sense of pride.
That pride, Gesteland, suggests, extends beyond the BHS Chemicals programs into the other groundbreaking programs offered at BHS, including the Career Construction Academy (CCA) and the Project Lead the Way engineering courses.
Burlington High School's CCA has been a model for one of the other educational programs that will be featured in the "Blueprint" documentary: Bay View High School's construction, architecture and technology academy.
The show will also focus on the "Green Garage" partnership at Bradley Tech High School in Milwaukee.
Kopack Hill said she is hopeful the show will help raise the profile of innovative educational programs, which will, in turn, encourage more innovation for the benefit of students.
"I think it's a really good idea for people to know it's possible to do this," she said. "The more that schools can get permission from each other to think outside the box, the better it will be for education in general."
She said BHS Chemicals has encouraged educators and students to embrace the benefits of programs that use a real-world model.
"Prior to BHS Chemicals people used to think about science in purely scientific terms," she said. "Now they think about how it applies to business and real-world applications."
The crew from MPTV came to BHS in late September and spent the better part of the school day focusing on the class.
"The kids were making our Shine window cleaner and the camera crew went from group to group asking what the students were working on," Gesteland said.
Because the course encompasses all aspects of product development - from research and manufacturing to marketing and sales - the students had plenty of areas on which to expound for the cameras.
"I'm hoping the kids have a major role in it," Gesteland added.
BHS Chemicals is the brainchild of former teacher David Kreutz, who has since left BHS to pursue other opportunities, passing the torch to Gesteland. Kreutz initially set out to produce a window cleaner and formed partnerships with appropriate private industries that lent expertise, knowledge and in some cases equipment - in the case of Abbott Laboratories it was a high performance liquid chromatograph for analyzing the contents of cleaning formulas.
The course is designed as a holistic approach to education using a business model to conceive (or improve upon an existing) product and then take it through all the steps needed to sell it - from testing and approvals to manufacturing, packaging, marketing and selling.
Students participate in several different phases of the program usually finding the niche that fits them best, whether that is chemical engineering on the development end or graphic design on the marketing end.
BHS Chemicals makes a variety of household and industrial cleaning solutions as well as personal care products such as lotions, lip balms and body scrubs. Although it is set up as a non-profit educational enterprise, the "business" does generate some revenue for the school district that is returned to educational programs.
BHS Chemicals' best customer is the school district itself, which uses many of the company's cleaning agents to clean, sanitize and even strip wax off floors, Gesteland said.
"You name it, we can make it," he added, referring to a wide range of cleaning formulas.
The company also made 25 gallons of hand sanitizer for the district to use at local schools as the threat of swine flu rose this fall.
For more information on BHS Chemicals, including a chance to order its products, visit www.keepcleaning.com.
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