Font ResizeGROTON -- With the approach of the summer hiatus and a recent vote in Dunstable to save the schools' operating budget for fiscal 2010, members of the Groton-Dunstable Regional School Committee have settled into their annual round of departmental presentations.
One of those programs was reviewed at the committee's meeting of June 17 when middle school Principal Steve Silverman reported on the first year's application of "the turning points model for educational improvement."
Developed from research conducted by the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, the turning points program seeks to engage students in education in an active way by creating paths into learning that will capture the imagination of modern youth accustomed to a fast paced world of computer games, music videos, and Googling.
"Specifically designed to assist middle schools become exciting and rigorously engaging places of learning for every child," read Silverman from his presentation. "... the principals and practice of the turning points model ... address the intellectual, social, emotional and physical needs of young ... learners."
Assuming the current school model is inadequate for the needs of today's youngsters, the turning points program insists that its features must be implemented if schools are to be transformed into "high functioning institutions" and "professional learning communities."
With the goal of developing "critical thinking" skills in middle-schoolers,
In their orientation, coaches concentrated on imparting to teachers the general philosophy of the turning points program, which includes an integration of all areas of study so that students can learn to understand the importance of what they are learning and how it can be applied across the full spectrum of their academic lives.
In addition, teachers were encouraged to find ways to integrate the kind of things that interest students with their lessons to better engage young people and promote their interest in the subject matter.
Next year, teachers are expected to continue studying how to coordinate with each other's lesson plans and to understand how their teaching impacts the learning of students. Also on the agenda will be figuring out how to be "engaging and relevant to young adolescent learners" while building a curriculum that is "rigorous," "integrated," and "incorporates the skills needed (for students) to be successful in the 21st century."
"If kids aren't engaged, they're not going to learn," Silverman concluded.
Characterizing the middle school student as being at a "very unique" age level, Silverman told committee members that the goal is to make the middle school an exciting place for kids.
Not necessarily a direct adjunct to the turning points program but definitely something that captured its spirit of making school an "exciting place for kids," was Destination Imagination. DI is a national competition aimed at helping students learn while at the same time encouraging them to use their imaginations to come up with creative ways of problem solving.
In its first year at Groton-Dunstable, the program attracted 50 middle schoolers to sign up. In a presentation last week, a number of them appeared before the School Committee to describe their experiences with Destination Imagination.
Students described how they were broken up into teams and given a "construction" challenge in which they had to build a pair of machines that would work in tandem to complete a simple task. Going into competition with other schools, they had to present their completed machines in the form of a skit that they wrote themselves.
Teams taking part in the competition are composed of five to seven members who, along with a parent, teacher, or other adult acting as facilitator, work to solve one of a number of different Destination Imagination challenges that present them with technical, theatrical, structural, or vehicular related problems.
Working through the school year, the children devise their own solutions to the given problem by acting it out in skit form. Winners of local competitions have the chance of going on to state finals.
Testimonies from parental facilitators lavished praise on the program not only for its ability to excite their children about learning, but also how the team model melded them into a single unit of "best friends." Cooperation and consideration for each other became unintended benefits of the program.
So enthusiastic were supporters of Destination Imagination, that school Superintendent Alan Genovese suggested that it be expanded to the high school next.
Also last week, committee members were introduced to members of the middle school's peer mediation program in which students helped to arbitrate disputes between their fellows.
All together, the various programs in the works at the district's middle school designed to engage students and make them feel like they are part of the educational process continue to move forward with success.
