LEWISTON — More local students are being taught more interactive, engaging lessons, educators told the School Committee on Monday night.
In a report to the committee on how technology is being used, David Theriault, who is in charge of technology at Lewiston High School, said three years ago about 5 percent of teachers routinely used technology as part of their lessons.
“Now it’s 50 percent,” he said. “Technology has become an embedded tool at Lewiston High School. You see it every day.”
Grades six to eight are the only ones that have a computer for every student. But there are more PCs, laptops, and Smart Boards being used all the time in all grades, said Joseph Julias, who is in charge of information technology for Lewiston schools.
Teachers are more comfortable with technology because of professional development and learning from other teachers, Julias said. Enthusiasm “is spreading like a good virus.”
More elementary teachers are building their own Web pages where students check on lessons, assignments and resources to help their studying. Teachers often pay for student access to certain Web pages themselves because they get excited about how students could benefit, said David Marshall, who oversees technology at the Lewiston Middle School, and teaches computers.
His classes are paperless, Marshall said, because student work is done electronically.”
At the Lewiston Regional Technical Center, technology enhances learning in all classes, from engineering to automotive to health care, LRTC Director Rob Callahan said.
For instance in pre-nursing, mannequins are programmed to exhibit certain health symptoms, and student nurses then figure out what illness the mannequins are displaying, Callahan said.
Meanwhile, the city’s PowerSchool, where students and parents can check on grades, attendance and homework assignments, will expand this year.
Now that service is available to parents and students in grades five to 12. In January it will also include grades three and four, Julias said.
PowerSchool is used heavily by students, teachers and parents. “Parents are using it all the time,” he said.
A few years ago School Committee members wondered if teachers would use technology in lessons, said committee member Tom Shannon. Now he said there’s no stopping them.
“It has been embraced. It is part of how they do their jobs. So the investment has paid its dividends already as a tool for teachers to use in delivering education,” Shannon said. He called that a significant accomplishment.
In other business, the committee heard numbers about Lewiston’s Adult Education program.
In the last year there were 7,105 enrollments in 380 classes, said director Eva Giles. Some 483 individuals enrolled in work force training classes; and 498 individuals took English language learner classes. The numbers are about the same as the previous year, Giles said.
Adult education has three overall goals, Giles said, to help people get their high school education and go on to college, to help them find employment, and to offer enrichment classes.
All three are important, she said. There are more than 30 people who have consistently taken enrichment classes since the mid-’90s, Giles said.
Adult education is life changing, Giles said, offering the story of one man she saw at her son’s recent soccer game.
The man introduced Giles to his son saying Giles “is the lady who helped me get my diploma.” He told Giles she’d never know how that changed his life.
Until he had an education he wasn’t able to get a job with benefits, she recalled him saying. He got his GED seven years ago; his son is 5. “’Once I got benefits we decided to have a family,’” Giles said he told her. And he reads to his son every night.
That’s an example of what the program does, Giles said. “We’re transforming individuals and transforming families.”
Committee members went into executive session to hear recommendations for finalists for superintendent. Names of the finalists, which have not been released by the committee, came from a search committee. The goal is to hire someone by December, when Superintendent Leon Levesque has said he’ll retire.
bwashuk@sunjournal.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
