MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — An Ohio school district is trying something different to help students learn. They’re giving students more days out of class.
Courtnie Puckett is trying to help students get to their dreams. She’s a teacher at Rosa Parks Elementary in Middletown, but she’s not running a traditional classroom.
“It’s so fun. I have fun every day,” Puckett said.
Through different activities, kids learn about careers and the skills to get there in her “passport to tomorrow” special class.
“There are no worksheets in here,” Puckett said. “We are all hands on, just trying to give them the different experiences so they can make those real world connections.”
The school district is starting something new, so students can take what they’re learning outside of the classroom. They’re calling it “personalized learning days.”
“We’ll have our teachers learning in the buildings and we’ll have our students learning at home,” said Middletown City Schools Assistant Superintendent Debbie Houser.
She said there won’t be school on these days, but it won’t be a day off.
“We needed more time to help our teachers and support our teachers with the indicatives that we’re rolling out, and the second prong is that we needed a focus area to develop those skills in our students,” said Houser.
Students will be expected to choose from a list of places to go to and jobs to learn about in the community. She said there are options for working parents too.
“We have different experiences for those parents, one of them is job shadow so a parent can actually bring their child with them to work, so that’s also part of careers you get to see firsthand on what it looks like in that career, also we have virtual options,” said Houser.
Three personalized learning days are scheduled so far, and at the end of the day, students bring what they’ve learned back to teachers like Puckett.
“I get to look at that and kind of see what they like and didn’t like and evolve my class to fit that too,” said Puckett.
For more information on personalized learning days, click here.
