Dorothy Venditto, Denise Connolly and Simone Loeffel

The team’s innovative teaching idea, “21st Century Workshop,” is a lab-style environment focused on student-based learning and bringing multiple elements together: classroom instruction with hands-on implementation; academically gifted with mechanically talented; and artistic with the scientific. The three teachers are committed to high standards and rigor, but not through the process of drilling and testing. Their 21st Century Workshop embraces Benjamin Franklin's philosophy "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." A storage room will be converted into the workshop where tools will be hung from the walls, fabrics will be stored in cabinets, and large work tables will be filled with circuitry equipment as students learn how to deconstruct and construct. Initial projects include: "Making Energy from Thin Air" during which students will design and create their own wind turbines; and "Space — What's Out There?” where younger students will build scaled models of the solar system while older students design a star gazing project. The teachers believe that as students are provided with opportunities to build, they will find new ways to create.