By: Las Vegas Now Staff
Educators everywhere face the challenge of keeping kids in school and helping them to graduate. Reading, writing and arithmetic — the basics that every student is taught. But how do you get students to really understand what they're learning?
It's not an easy feat — but one local middle school is going to try and reinvent the education wheel.
For thousands of Clark County students, graduating from high school and going to college is only a dream. But the staff at Fremont Middle School wants to make that dream a reality for its 1,000 students.
“This school is about shifting a mindset about what they can and can't do with their lives,” said Antonio Rael. He is the principal at Fremont Middle School. He says simple steps, like changing the way math is taught, will engage students.
“The idea is to get away from the textbook – math doesn't change as far as the values and what the rules are but the way you look math can change significantly. Try to apply math to what the real world has to offer so kids can connect the current knowledge to the knowledge in the math realm,” he said.
And it's not just changing the way math is being taught. Students will also be able to take elective classes in engineering and communication.
Assistant superintendent, Eva White said, “We lose kids because they feel like they don't have a relationship with the school – that what they're learning isn't relevant to them and that maybe we don't make things as challenging as we can.”
It's not just students, but teachers will benefit as well.
“You may have a teacher who's been in the school five years, 10 years, 15 years — who is an excellent teacher but who may not have read the most recent journal article that a professor has written or the most recent book. But by taking the faculty from the university and placing them in the schools and partnership with teachers and in classrooms with students, there's an opportunity to improve student learning,” said M. Christopher Brown, Dean of Education at UNLV.
Michelle Sparks teaches special education reading at Fremont. She plans to spread her passion for teaching into this new program and can't wait to see the results.
“Children carry with them such a high degree of hope – there is so much opportunity to be explored in the minds of these children,” said Sparks.
UNLV professors will be on campus teaching, helping teachers with their lesson plans and even offering masters and doctorate classes for the teachers themselves. This is the first middle school to have this program.
Email your comments to Reporter Colleen May.
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