The creativity of teachers in the Durham Public Schools has given rise to several new programs that will offer students a window into the real world.
More than $90,000 in grants has been awarded during the past month to educational programs in the Durham Public Schools. The Mary Whiting Ewing Foundation of Chapel Hill, funded the majority of a $75,000 grant to the Durham Work Force Partnership to implement its new School-to-Work initiatives in local schools. The foundation, which focuses on education and child welfare, provides funding for grassroots organizations in Orange and Durham Counties that are not funded by local institutions.
The goal of these programs is to integrate real-life business experience into school curricula and to aid teachers in designing original activities that supplement their regular classroom agenda, said Mary Holderness and Mike Yarborough of the Durham Public Education Network, the group that proposed the grant for the partnership and then coordinates it.
John Kondis, Trinity `94 and Durham Work Force Partnership coordinator for the Durham Chamber of Commerce, said that the School-To-Work program was designed because new employees in Durham businesses have shown deficiencies in several necessary skills. The presence of these deficiencies stresses the need to create a dialogue between secondary schools and the surrounding business community, Kondis said.
"We have students coming out of universities who don't know what to do with their education," he said. This predicament reflects a growing disparity between what students learn in the classroom and what awaits them after they graduate. The partnership hopes to motivate high schoolers and eventually middle school students by demonstrating the link between success in the classroom and success in the workplace, Kondis said.
In addition to the $75,000 donation, the DPEN awarded over $15,000 in the form of Teacher Initiative Grants to eighteen Durham teachers who have developed creative projects to enhance their classes.
Peggie Parks, a teacher from Southern High School, received money to fund her project "Surgical Anatomy: Year Two." Said Parks of the project, "This program is unlike anything in the whole state. DPEN has been fantastic and I thank them for their support."
Parks' course aims to give students the chance to explore surgery and its effects on the human body. Over 20 physicians will visit her class to discuss the type of surgery they perform. Students will also be paired with surgeons whom they will shadow for a day.
Daniel Berensen at Shepard Middle School plans to use his grant to start publishing the Shepard Literary and Art Magazine. A panel of sixth, seventh and eighth graders will select poetry, art, songs and comic strips created by students to be included in the publication. "[The magazine] will tie in critical thinking skills in terms of creativity," Berensen added.
Thanks to a $922 grant from the DPEN, Mary Lyons will be able to continue her project at Forest View Elementary School. Entitled "Families LINK (Learn and Investigate New Knowledge) Together," the project provides take-home book bags to encourage interactive reading among children and their families, Lyons said.
"The program will provide quality book selections for parents who are trying to figure out what their children should read," she said. "So far we've had a really positive response from parents about the material."
Over 60 applicants applied for these DPEN grants, Yarborough said. A community-based selection committee consisting of local business people, university personnel, and parents reviewed each application and determined how each program would enhance learning in the classroom. The committee tried to find programs that will add a missing link to the educational process, Holderness said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.