BROOKINGS – Thanks to approval from the Brookings School Board Monday night, a new pilot program called Mass Customized Learning for Young Learners will come to Medary Elementary in a limited fashion during the 2017-2018 school year.

“(In) the Industrial Age, everything was about mass producing – how can you do that most efficiently,” Medary Principal Jessica Enderson said, explaining the idea behind mass customized learning (MCL). “The Information Age is really about mass customizing – how can you simultaneously meet the needs of all our learners to the best of our ability and have them excited to come back the next day as well.”

Different skill levels

Teaching all children in a class – which could contain students still learning English, have a learning disability, or even need higher level materials – the same way doesn’t have to happen anymore thanks to the availability of technology, she argued.

“With the Internet and technology available, we have a lot of knowledge at our fingertips, and we want to be able to utilize that to better serve our students,” Enderson said.

And it has already been a help at Medary. As Medary second-grade teacher Lisa Shepardson told the school board, every child in her class has an iPad to use, and during class, they can log into an educational program to do class activities or an assessment.

Doing this means students can work at their own pace and skill level with good results, Shepardson said.

“I have students who are doing sixth-grade math, and I have students who are doing maybe first-grade math, but we call it challenge math because everybody’s getting challenged at their own level, and they’re excited about it.”

But this isn’t just sitting students in front of a computer to solve all their problems.

Direct teaching by the teacher is still the most basic form of educating, Enderson assured.

“There is an online learning component, if that’s how it’s best learned, and there are individual and group projects. It’s really looking at what’s the learner outcome, and how is that best learned.”

It’s just that now “the focus is more project-based, hands-on (and) less worksheets.”

It’s also about moving away from teaching all students the same way – an assembly-line approach again reminiscent of the Industrial Age style of education, Enderson said.

Individualized approach

Part of the move away from that and toward a more individualized approach is by having students put in groups consisting of students at a similar skill level.

“Most of you who have your own children have noticed or recognized that even within your own family, your children learn in different timeframes and different ways,” Enderson said. “So we want to do the best job we can of meeting all the diverse needs of our learners.”

Other schools that have adopted MCL methods often have kids of different grades working together based on their skill set. Enderson and a small group of others saw this in action firsthand when they went to visit Harrisburg Freedom Elementary.

“You could not tell the fifth graders from the fourth, third, second. They were all like buddies, helping each other out and really looking out for what’s in the best interest of each other,” she said.

Give them a choice

Giving students a choice in how to demonstrate what they’ve learned rather than all take the same test or assessment the same way is also an important difference with a MCL approach.

If his students are being taught the different parts of a plant and their function, second-grade teacher Seth Sayler said, students could choose to make a video where they show a real plant and explain. Or students could create their own handcrafted plant to use to demonstrate what they’ve learned, or draw a picture or write and present a paper.

“You can see a lot of different ways that a kid could relay that they learned these things,” Sayler said. “What’s nice about these things is the choice, and they also work at their own level.”

He said that classes like science and social studies would be easier to transition into MCL, and work has already begun to move in that direction. Implementation might look different for other subjects such as math and reading.

The whole goal of MCL for Young Learners is to offer students “the ideal learning experience” that drives students to learn inside and outside of the school building at their own level in whatever style best suits their needs.

Pilot program

Ahead of the new school year, there will be a push to educate families at the school about the principles of MCL so those interested can have the opportunity to have their child in the program for the 2017-2018 school year.

Parent meetings will be scheduled and held to accomplish that, allowing parents a venue to hear more and ask questions. It’ll also give school administrators a chance to gauge interest in the program.

Throughout the year, data would be collected, shared and discussed to determine the students’ needs and how best to meet them. Then, at the end of the school year, data the various assessments can be analyzed to see how effective the pilot program was.

As it was written in the agenda item: “As we embrace continuous quality, improvement and innovation, surveys will be sent to families, learners (students) and learning facilitators (teachers) to make necessary changes based on the feedback received.”

Yearlong commitment

Once students start the program, they should stay there for the whole year, Enderson said.

“We really think it takes that long for the idea to sink in and to get a good idea of what it looks like. So, once you’ve committed as a family, you would be there for one year, and at the end of that year, you can re-evaluate. If you feel like it’s in the best interest of your child to move them to the traditional classroom, that’s fine and if you want to continue, then you have that opportunity.”

It’s hoped that afterward, the pilot program would grow at Medary to include two teams and begin at the other elementary schools and Camelot Intermediate.

“This is what education is all about, and I believe this is the reason we all got into this business in the first place,” Brookings School District Superintendent Klint Willert said. “I just really applaud you for being bold and courageous because it’s not easy. … I’m excited to see what’s going to happen and I think our community’s going to be really excited as well.”

Contact Eric Sandbulte at esandbulte@brookingsregister.com.