Hundreds of parents and students came to the Benton Convention Center on Saturday to whet their appetites at the buffet of magnet schools the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system offers.
Prospective students got a look at 18 schools, each with a tailored focus to learning. For budding artists, there are arts-focused programs at several schools. For those hoping to be engineers, there are science and technology schools for every grade level.
For the soon-to-be chefs, there's the culinary arts program at Kennedy High School.
The philosophies are varied, but they boil down to a simple idea: Learn what you love, and you'll love learning.
As Kennedy freshman Devonna Spease put it (as she patted cheese into dough, making Salvodoran pupusas to feed the visiting masses), magnet programs "let you see another side of school."
"You can actually want to go to school," Devonna said.
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County's magnet schools draw students from all over the county. Students must apply for acceptance, and there's a random lottery drawing for the most popular schools.
There are a lot of reasons the school system has committed so heavily in recent years to the magnet concept. There's a lot of money involved — about $20 million in federal grants the system has won from Washington to fund magnet expansions, Superintendent Don Martin said Saturday.
The schools also offer parents more choices for their child's education and serve as incubators for new ideas, Martin said. A robotics program first put in place at Paisley IB Magnet School, for example, has expanded to every middle school in the county, Martin said.
Staring children surrounding a whirring mini-helicopter and a display of fighting Lego robots Saturday testified to that particular program's popularity.
Because magnets pull from all over the county, they also create "voluntary diversity" at schools, Martin said. That contrasts with the system's traditional schools, many of which have become more segregated in the past two decades as the school system moved away from busing policies and toward the concept of neighborhood schools.
Along with magnet programs focused on the arts or sciences, there are new-wave "immersion" programs that focus on foreign languages. At Ashley Elementary about half the classes are taught in Spanish, and half in English. At Konnoak Elementary some classes are taught in Chinese.
The idea is to offer something for every student and every style of learning. Paisley IB Magnet and Hanes Middle School offer some of the system's most challenging honors curriculums. Early and Middle colleges let students earn college credit in high school. Winston-Salem Preparatory Academy focuses on getting students ready for college.
Prep graduate D.J. Bishop came to Saturday's magnet fair with some family friends considering a magnet school for their daughter. He said he's on full scholarship now at Ferrum College in Virginia, but that wasn't always the path he was on.
"I was below average," Bishop said. "When I went to Paisley I was challenged. … I found myself academically."
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