Blending learning pilot gets underway

More than 60 families piled into one of the new “classrooms” for Maricopa Wells Middle School’s MUSD20+1 Meet the Teacher Night Thursday.

Teachers Robyn Rice, Joe Szoltysik, Willy Lange, and program principal Joe Veres presented information to parents and students.

MUSD20+1 is the first blended-learning environment in both Maricopa and Pinal County. Students spend time in classrooms that look more like common areas in a dorm than a traditional classroom while working on provided laptops accessing their online curriculum.

Sixty students currently are enrolled in the pilot program and there’s a waiting list for others to participate.

Teachers monitor the students and pull small groups to help enrich and remediate in two other project rooms or three traditional classrooms to supplement the online material.

This dual approach to learning let’s students work at their own pace while still receiving one-on-one attention from the teacher. Students and parents were very excited at this new approach and as you walked around the room and saw the couches and fresh fruit scattered around you could feel a sense of excitement in the air.

“We want the students to feel comfortable,” Lange, one of the teachers, said. “We ask them how to they want to learn. If it’s sitting on a couch then we have that, if it’s listening to music, then they can have their iPods or whatever out and listen to music while they get their work done. That’s the way it should be.

“We also teach them how to be digitally responsible since they do get all these privileges. We teach them how to use technology correctly.”

***ADVERTISEMENT***Students, however, do not spend their entire day online.

Rice and Szoltysik have a variety of hands-on projects for the students to learn and do throughout the year along with a Future Cities project, which they have won awards for in the past.

The students also can go to electives such as band, drama, or PE throughout the day depending on what they chose for their schedule.

Veres, the program principal, said, “When working with Mr. Lange, Mr. Szoltysik, and Mrs. Rice, the students will gain deeper depth and application through face-to-face instruction. The online content provides curriculum, the teacher provides real-time mastery. The environment is conducive to their generational needs, instantaneous feedback.”