Revere granted millions for its schools

REVERE – The Revere Public School Department has received a multi-year, multi-million-dollar grant to make students become active, collaborative, and personally responsible learners in a real-world lab rather than just become a sponge in an outdated lecture hall.”When this transition is made, the students are much more willing learners because they are invested in the process,” Revere Superintendent of Schools Paul Dakin said Thursday. “And it’s much more exciting than just being lectured to for six hours a day.”The nonprofit Nellie Mae Education Foundation announced Monday that it was awarding $16 million in grants to five New England school districts to continue their efforts to develop student-centered learning initiatives. The other districts include Hartford, Conn.; Meriden, Conn.; Portland, Maine; and Pittsfield, N.H.Dakin said the exact amount and timeline for the disbursement of the money has not been made final, but he described the grant as a “multi-year, multi-million-dollar award.”He described student-centered learning as a process where a pupil and teacher tailor learning – and the pace of learning – to a student’s unique skills and needs.The concept consists of four tenets: personalized learning that aligns students’ interests, strengths and weakness into learning; competency-based learning where students progress by demonstrating mastery of a subject through frequent assessment; “anytime, anywhere learning” that incorporates technology; and students taking an active role in deciding how they will learn.”Part of this is to help kids be more responsible and train them for the future,” Dakin said. “Today there is much more problem-solving and collaboration in the work world … so our question is, how do you incorporate 21st-century jobs and job requirements into learning?”Dakin said the money will be primarily directed to the high school – the district’s largest and flagship school, which also recently received recognition as the nation’s top urban high school by the National Center for Urban School Transformation.The money will primarily be used for curriculum and professional development at the high school, but middle and elementary schools will begin to incorporate student-centered learning in smaller doses to prepare students for the high school, Dakin said.”You personalize the learning, and the teacher has to have the skill set to be able to deal with that chaos,” Dakin said. “You’re not sitting everybody down and lecturing on a subject. You are like more in a chemistry lab setting where everybody is working on different things.”Dakin said the district’s teachers and students, however, are up to the change.The district has had success incorporating technology into its curriculum, which has given students increased opportunities to extend classroom lessons and visuals to their homes. The grant award was also received after a year-and-a-half-long process where Nellie Mae teams visited and evaluated the district to see if it was ready for the grant.Now, teachers are beginning to plan for how to incorporate changes into the curriculum, collaborate among each other, and best guide their students.”It’s a major leap that teachers have to make, and it’s only natural that the teachers have to make the leap,” Dakin said. “But once the transition is made, I think it’s going to make our students much more ready for workforce, more ready for college, and much more ready for the challenges of the 21st century that they need to be prepared for.”