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Grant Funds...
There have been questions regarding the Safety Grants received by other Lake County Schools and why Fairport Harbor did not apply for one.These safety grants are being funded by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC). The OFCC is the same organization that is funding the 93% of our new school. When I first became aware of the availability of this grant money, I contacted our consultant with the OFCC and asked if we could apply. I was told that they would not fund school safety upgrades for schools that were already in their Classroom Facilities Assistance Program (CFAP), such as Fairport Harbor.One of the conditions of the safety grants is that the equipment purchased has to be in service in a classroom facility for at least five years. If the classroom facility is demolished within that period, the equipment must be repurposed to the new building – otherwise, the grant has to be paid back. Any new OFCC building should already have the necessary physical security equipment paid for as part of the state project. So, a school participating in CFAP is already getting new security equipment as part of its project with OFCC. The OFCC safety grants cannot be used for salaries, and they were never a potential source of revenue for FHEVS to fund a school resource officer (SRO).Domenic Paolo, Ph.DSuperintendentWelcome to the 2021-22 school year,
I think we are all looking forward to getting back to normal! In Fairport, that means providing future-ready, student-centered, inquiry-based learning experiences for every single child. From our youngest learners to our college students, we are committed to providing an exceptional educational experience personalized to each student’s own talents and interests.
This is a school district that really shines when it comes to getting up close and personal with its students. The emphasis on outstanding instruction is evident at every grade level. We have assembled a faculty and staff that truly put kids first, and they are the pride and the backbone of this district. They provide a safe and secure environment in which our students are able to grow academically, socially, emotionally, and culturally. They develop meaningful and lasting relationships that make any time anywhere learning not only a possibility but a reality.
Sincerely,
Domenic Paolo, Ph.DSuperintendentFairport Harbor EVSD440-354-5400"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained as misunderstanding."- Hanlon's Razor-
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Hooked on Education: A Personalized Learning Project
5/4/2017
By: Steve Gratz
A few months ago, Dan Keenan, executive director, Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, called and asked if he could send my contact information to Fairport Harbor School District superintendent, Domenic Paolo. I agreed and had a wonderful phone conversation with Dr. Paolo about the schools’ Hooked on Education project. Domenic invited me to Fairport Harbor to witness the project and visit with teachers and students.
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Hooked on Education: Testing Fishing Lures on Lake Erie
Captain Dave, owner of Top Flight Sport Fishing, entertained a portion of the Hooked on Education team out on Lake Erie. Here he is giving the 6:00 a.m. safety lesson. The students have been looking forward to doing some field testing. Some lures worked very well while others just did not get the job done.
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State Superintendent Paola DeMaria
State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria spoke at the Jennings Retreat about establishing the conditions for success.
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Thanks to grant funding from the Jennings Foundation, our high school students were able to learn and apply skills in a fashion that makes learning deeper and more meaningful.
Rocket launching for Ms. Tenon's freshman English and Mr. Messer's physics students was a project that embodied many of the things that we are striving to work towards as a district and it was a lot of fun, too. The transdisciplinary approach to education that is endemic to International Baccalaureate is not only successful in our elementary, but also at our high school. As ESSA replaces NCLB, education in Ohio is going to change dramatically over the next decade. As teachers become increasingly collaborative and lessons become more project and inquiry based, our students will find their learning to become more personalized and they will be the ones being launched into a bright future.
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Dr. Howard Gardner
Harvard professor Howard Gardner shares his vision for personalized learning in an age of education reform which grows out of his theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner believes the educational world of the future belongs to those educators and technologists who can create robust ways to present important but challenging concepts.
What is your vision for personalized learning?
My vision of personalized learning grows out of the theory of multiple intelligences, which I developed thirty years ago. Personalized learning involves Individuation and Pluralization. Individuation means that each student should be taught and assessed in ways that are appropriate and comfortable for that child. Pluralization means that anything worth teaching could and should be taught in several ways. By so doing, one reaches more students. Today, we live in a computer age. For the first time in human history, individuation and pluralization are potentially available to any young person. And so the ideas of non personalized, remote, or cookie-cutter style teaching and learning will soon become anachronistic.
What are the challenges being addressed and the opportunities being leveraged?
The major challenge is a system that has proceeded for centuries on the basis of ‘uniform’ schooling and uniform learning: teaching everyone the same thing in the same way. That tack has seemed fair, because all are being treated in the same way. But it is actually unfair, because school is being pitched to a certain kind of mind–in my terms, a mind that is strong in language and logic. Added to that is our system of standardized assessment, which focuses on particular bits of knowledge and which often simply presents a set of choices. Once we have more personalized education, we can provide far more realistic assessments and allow students leeway in how they approach the problems and puzzles that they are presented. -
Dr. James Rickabaugh
Dr. James Rickabaugh is the director of the Institute for Personalized Learning, an education innovation lab dedicated to transforming public education. The institute serves a growing number of member school districts engaged in personalized learning and is a part of the multi-state Innovation Lab Network coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers. Personalized learning transforms practices in a building affects everyone, including school leaders. Our roles become less focused on reactive ways to address concerns, whether academic or social-emotional. Instead, our efforts become more global and systemic – we are able to proactively support all students as they grow by investing our time and energies into systems that ensure they have the mindsets and behaviors to be successful in their current and future endeavors.
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Steve Wozniak
I was invited to the University of Toledo and I had the opportunity to meet with Steve Wozniak. This same visionary who cofounded Apple and invented the first mass produced personal computer shared some of his insights into the future of technology and education. He shared with me that he had taught computer science to students in middle school and that he felt that it was less important what you teach students and more important that you motivate them.
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Salman Khan
Founder of the Khan Academy, Salman Khan began by offering videos mostly about mathematics. The academy expanded its faculty to offer courses about history, healthcare, medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, cosmology, American civics, art history, economics, music, computer programming and computer science. Supported by donations from the Gates Foundation, the Khan Academy offers video instruction free to anyone with internet access. teachers and students around the world us this tremendous resource.
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Dr. Rick DuFour
Dr. DuFour proved that there were increased student performance in schools where there was a shared vision of leadership, where each member of the teaching-learning community contributed, and where teachers collectively planned activities and then reflect together upon completion. He describes these schools as Professional Learning Communities (PLC's). PLC's have collaborative teams, demonstrate collective inquiry, have an action orientation and willingness to experiment, desired continuous improvement, are results-oriented, and exhibit a shared mission, vision, and values, and refuse to let students fail. Dr. DuFour's work was at the foundation of Fairport Harbor's implementation of its own model of PLC.
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Dr. Bob Marzano
Dr. Marzano has done educational research and theory on the topics of standards-based assessment, cognition, high-yield teaching strategies, and school leadership, including the development of practical programs and tools for teachers and administrators in K-12 schools. Marzano's High-yield Strategies have been distilled from research to isolate the instructional approaches that have the greatest positive effect on student achievement for all students, in all subject areas, at all grade levels, especially when strategically matched to the specific type of knowledge being sought.
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Dr. Bill Daggett
Dr. Daggett is the author of numerous books about learning and education, textbooks and research studies, reports, and journal articles. Dr. Daggett was a teacher and administrator at the secondary and postsecondary levels and a director with the New York State Education Department, where he spearheaded restructuring initiatives to focus the state's education system on the skills and knowledge students need in a technological, information-based society. Dr. Daggett’s Rigor/Relevance Framework has become a cornerstone of many school reform efforts throughout the United States.
Dr. Daggett has spoken to hundreds of thousands of educators and education stakeholders in all 50 states. Quick to point out the great things about American education policy, Dr. Daggett encourages us to embrace what is best about our education system yet be courageous enough to make the changes necessary to meet the needs of all students in the 21st century. -
Dr. Rick Stiggins
One of the first to advocate for the concept of "assessment for learning," Dr. Stiggins encourages the use of assessments for something better than sorting students into winners and losers, assessment for learning can put all students on a winning streak. Historically, a major role of assessment has been to detect and highlight differences in student learning in order to rank students according to their achievement. Such assessment experiences have produced winners and losers. Some students succeed early and build on winning streaks to learn more as they grow; others fail early and often, falling further behind. Dr. Stiggins' work has helped us put Fairport Harbor students on a "winning streak." Today, our schools are less focused on merely sorting students and more focused on helping all students succeed in meeting high expectations. Our evolving mission compels us to embrace a new vision of assessment that can tap the wellspring of confidence, motivation, and learning potential that resides within every student.
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Dr. Mike Schmoker
Dr. Schmoker has written five books and dozens of articles for educational journals and newspapers, TIME magazine and was a regular columnist for Phi Delta Kappan. He is well known for his school reform initiatives. His work makes it far easier for students to self-evaluate and to peer-evaluate meaningfully and with confidence. He is an advocate for writing across the curriculum and insists that when students write—especially about what they have carefully and closely read—they enlarge their intellects and prepare themselves for college, careers and civic participation in a way that can't be surpassed.
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Dr. Dennis Petersen
A strong advocate of early learning, Dr. Petersen strives to develop active partnerships with parents and families. He is quick to point out that when parents are involved in their children’s education, children do better in school. We believe that families have the primary responsibility to ensure the education of their children and that open and sincere communication is critical to building mutual understanding and commitment. Innovations in primary education including whole language immersion for kindergarten have led to great recognition across the nation. Dr. Petersen was Superintendent of the year in both South Dakota(1985) and Minnesota (2010).
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Anthony Wagner, Ed.D.
"Consequential and retained learning comes from applying knowledge to new situations or problems, research on questions and issues that students consider important, peer interaction, activities, and projects. Experiences, rather than short-term memorization, help students develop the skills and motivation that transforms lives."
"It’s quite striking that, almost without exception, the great contributors to civilization were educated as apprentices, not as note-takers."
