Mauldin High picked for Bread Loaf technology program
By LaVonda RomainSTAFF WRITER
lromain@greenvillenews.com
MAULDIN -- Greenville County School District students will soon begin using more computer technology in the classroom to network and learn from schools across the country.
 |
|
JASON PARKER / Staff Mauldin High School Principal Rick McClure watches as students Laura Dodd, left, Russ Adams (seated), Dr. Sandy Mills, Bobby Brooks and Mary Burras check out equipment that will be used as part of a national urban education network program. Mauldin is serving as the county's flagship school for the program. |
Greenville is one of four cities chosen nationally to take part in the three-year "Bread Loaf in the Cities" project to help teachers and students use technology more creatively in the classroom.
Students nationwide will collaboratively discuss literature, explain and discuss cultural differences and exchange video projects.
Mauldin High School has been chosen as the flagship school to help spread the program throughout the district. Northwest Middle School in Travelers Rest will also be involved in the program that will include electronic publishing, and use of web resources to intensify classroom instruction and improve academic performance.
Mauldin English teacher Sandy Mills, the coordinator for the program at the school, will be networking with Mauldin Middle School and schools in Nome, Alaska, and Gallup, N.M., through email and video tapes.
"The students grow because they're writing for an authentic audience, and they are more critical of one another than if they're writing for one audience, the teacher," said Mills.
The Greenville County School District is beginning the urban education network with help from a $1.2 million grant program from the Carnegie Corporation through Middlebury (Vt.) College's (Vt.) Bread Loaf School of English.
Dixie Goswami, coordinator of the National Bread Loaf Teacher Network and senior scholar at the Strom Thurmond Institute, said there is already a very active network in South Carolina, funded in part by the South Carolina Department of Education and private foundations.
"Greenville was elected to be the flagship city for our Bread Loaf in the Cities program in South Carolina, so it's a very exciting prospect," Goswami said.
Mauldin was chosen to be the leading school because principal Rick McClure has been a major contributor to the whole proposal and "very active in helping us develop a design for professional development that will be integrated with classroom instruction," said Goswami.
Greenville School Superintendent William Harner has also been very involved in the program, Mills said.
McClure said the school hopes to integrate the networking program into other curriculum besides writing, such as social studies.
The entire Bread Loaf Teacher Network includes about 250 teachers and 8,000 students nationwide.
Northwest Middle School teacher Janet Atkins is coordinator of the Greenville County Bread Loaf Teacher Network. Atkins said although Mauldin High is the first school to participate in the grant program, some schools, including Northwest Middle, have already been networking in their classrooms for several years.
"It will just enhance the learning that goes on in the classroom," she said.
Mills said the program will also force students to do more cross-cultural and critical thinking and writing. Many of the students in New Mexico who live on Indian reservations won't be proficient in English. The students in Nome will be comprised of different tribes and live in a very remote and isolated community.
"Here we have middle-class America," said Mills. "When you're writing Native Americans in Alaska and Spanish-Americans in New Mexico, the students have to realize when they're writing about going to Eckerd down the street, those kids will have no idea what Eckerd is.
Goswami said Bread Loaf will be working in the schools of every teacher from Greenville who received a fellowship to attend the Bread Loaf School this year, including League Academy, Northwest Middle, Mauldin Middle, Mauldin High, Riverside Middle, Carolina High and Academy and Greenville Middle schools.
Other cities receiving the grant include Columbus, Ohio, and Lawrence, Mass. A fourth city will be named this fall.