New Ohio School Keyed to Project Learning
The name is certainly a mouthful: The National Inventors Hall of Fame School Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Learning . The public school system in Akron, Ohio, spent five years and $14.5 million designing this new middle school. Its remit is to teach STEM subjects in radically different ways than traditional classrooms, the Akron Beacon Journal reports. That’s a big task in a city whose middle schools have routinely failed state science and math tests. It opened its doors last Aug. 26, and the paper recently ran a series of stories looking at the school’s first semester of operation. The hope is, the paper says, that the school can hook kids on science and math before they decide those subjects are too hard and boring. The school’s first tranche of pupils was selected by a districtwide lottery. The school eschews the usual instruction method of reading chapters and taking quizzes. Instead, this school’s curriculum leans heavily on project-based learning. Giving students a chance to solve real problems, it’s hoped, will help keep them motivated and excited.
Filed under: K-12 Education News
