Warwick wins innovation education award

ALBANY — The Warwick Valley Central School District’s Partners In Education (PIE) program has been awarded the "Be the Change for Kids" Innovation Award, which was handed out at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering on Thursday.

The awards were developed by the college with the New York State School Boards Association. Three schools were chosen from the dozens of districts from across the state that submitted applications.

The association developed its "Be the Change for Kids" campaign several years ago to help districts across the state make the most of limited financial resources and encourage the development of innovative programs on a budget.

Students from the winning districts received a tour of the college and attended a press conference where they heard from executives from the association and college.

The three winning schools were selected to receive the awards for thinking "out of the box" in developing and delivering ground-breaking programs that are motivating their students to pursue exciting high-tech careers, and for demonstrating new educational paradigms that can be deployed to benefit students across New York State.

Judges' comments
The judges were quite impressed with Warwick’s PIE program, stating: “This program successfully engages parents in their children’s education, and does so in a creative fashion with parents working with the kids on solving a problem, making presentations, and/or researching materials for instruction.”

The PIE program has been an educational option available to Warwick elementary families for 30 years. Teachers, students and parents work together as “Partners in Education.”

Each PIE class is made up of children from two grades – K/1, 2/3 or 4/5, allowing students to alternately take on the role of mentee or mentor.

Teachers use an integrated curriculum where multiple subjects are taught under the umbrella of one theme.

This encourages students to draw conclusions between subjects, making learning more meaningful. Parental involvement is key – all PIE parents are involved in some way in their children’s classroom learning.

By the numbers
There are currently seven PIE classes in Warwick. Approximately 150 to 175 students are enrolled in PIE each year. Over the span of 30 years, about 900 students have benefitted from the PIE program.

Warwick’s PIE program is delivered at no additional cost – all that’s required is a group of teachers willing to embrace the challenge of multi-age classrooms and integrated curriculum with the assistance and support of parents, school officials noted in their press release announcing the award.

The “Be the Change for Kids” Innovation Award comes with a $5,000 grant to the program, which will be used to enhance the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) component of the PIE curriculum, which will allow PIE teachers to offer students more opportunities for hands-on learning in these fields early on, and to foster the passion necessary to be successful in these and other career fields in the future.

Essential information
To find out more about the PIE program by visiting the PIE Facebook page for photos and examples of work done in PIE classrooms at: https://www.facebook.com/#!/WarwickPiePartnersInEducation?fref=ts