Julia E. Lyles
“In a short time, the students who have used the self-paced model experienced exceptional growth in math.”
– Julia E. Lyles
In a Title 1 school in rural Kentucky, there is a math teacher who has brought a new depth of innovation to her classroom to inspire her students to take personal responsibility for their own education and become life-long learners. By developing her own online self-paced math program, in which students can access curriculum and videos on Chromebooks in class, this teacher has enabled her students to progress through the material at their own pace.
Thus, her students are in charge of their own learning process: they choose which assignments to complete to illustrate their mastery of the content, learn how to ask questions as personally needed, and experience first-hand how to collaborate with fellow peers, teachers and community members.
The Innovative Educator Prize money enabled her school to purchase additional technology to extend this teacher’s model to more classes and additional math teachers. With the new resources available, fourth and fifth grade teachers in her school adopted this method of teaching, and the third grade students who began with this model were able to progress through their next years’ classes with it.
In a short time, the students who have used this teacher’s self-paced model experienced exceptional growth in math. All classrooms that implemented this program last year successfully set 80% of their students on or above grade level by the end of the school year. Educators from across Kentucky now visit to observe this model in action.