This innovative, interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning may have started with just two courses, but it made a big impression. Adults throughout the community started seeing high school students as valuable contributors and students started seeing school as more engaging and meaningful. Interest in the program grew organically as students visibly evolved into poised and confident young people excelling as leaders. Interest led to demand, and demand led to several new courses. These new project-based, passion-driven courses include Investigations in Science, Multicultural Service-Learning, Three-Dimensional Foundations in Art, Adventures in Business, Engineering, Advanced Creative Writing, The Art of Arguing, and Research Institute. The school is working to integrate project based learning around competencies in all courses. The students are also able to take dual enrollment courses and a first of its kind dual credit course with five partner colleges at no cost.

There’s a deep foundational belief at the core of Elizabethton High School that students who are invested in the community will create a bright future for their city and make a positive contribution anywhere they live. Faced with a struggling economy and increasingly empty storefronts, three staff members saw a need to develop students with self-purpose, agency, and creativity so they could advocate and carve out new industries aligned with their own interests and passions. To develop youth to become change agents of their community, it was only appropriate that students were asked to reimagine high school. Elizabethon High School developed the Bartleby Program pilot in 2017-18, and the program has now grown across the entire high school. Fulfilling their promise to elevate student voice, the local school board now includes a student liaison position elected by students. Students also regularly present their ideas to the school board.

Teachers at EHS are encouraged to create collaborative, inquiry-based projects as part of their approach to rethinking high school. They’ve invested in training and ongoing support for implementing high-quality project-based learning (PBL) to ensure the projects they create are rigorous and meaningful. Projects include businesses developed in the Entrepreneurship class and in the Business Management Career Technical Education program, children's storybooks developed in College Prep English, podcasts preserving local veterans' stories in the integrated English III and U.S. History classes, plays developed in drama in conjunction with Barter Theatre, and a genetics study conducted in biology. Students present and display their projects at an open-house at the end of each school year. This encourages the ongoing involvement of community partners who are invited to sponsor new projects, serve on judging panels, and mentor students as industry experts.

EHS educators are intentional about showing students what is possible—beyond the opportunities they may have originally imagined for themselves—and then helping them build the knowledge and skills necessary to take advantage of those expanded opportunities. Originally in the Entrepreneurship course, students pitched business ideas for a spot in the class, worked with local business people as mentors, , and, were eligible for $500 in seed money to start their business. One student, who was already working as a graphic designer, was so impressive that two members of the selection committee hired him on the spot! Another student won $1000 in First Tennessee Development District’s Shark Tank with her idea to start a delivery service of farm-fresh, locally grown foods to customers’ homes. She was one of nearly 300 participating from eight counties. During Pitch Night, student entrepreneurs showcased their businesses. All five featured at the end of the school year were operating and generating profits. Currently, the class has morphed into a student-based enterprise of a cafe where students operate the business while working with school and community leaders to further develop all aspects of being a business operator.