Center Delivers Ideas
By Richard Luken | Iola Register

FORT SCOTT — In less than a year, the Lowell Milken Center has established a foothold in the educational community that founders hope will continue to expand.
“It’s already exceeded everything we thought it would be,” said Norm Conard, a long-time history instructor at Uniontown High School.
Conard retired from his teaching post in May 2007 to help start the fledgling Milken Center, which opened last August.
The center is capping the end of its first year with a flourish.
A pair of instructors, Michael Aw, a sixth-grade teacher at Memorial Elementary School in Hopedale, Mass., is in Fort Scott as the 2008 Milken Fellow and Ashley Lippe, fifth-grade teacher at Ogden Elementary School, a few miles west of Manhattan, is participating as the 2008 Milken Intern. Both instructors arrived Monday for a three-week cram session with Milken Center officials.
The goal is to further incorporate what they learn at the center into their respective teaching styles, with an emphasis on teaching understanding and respect among all people regardless of race, religion or creed. Aw and Rippe, who joined Conard in a conference telephone call with the Register Friday, said they planned to share ideas they’ve learned while in Fort Scott with their colleagues, while injecting new ideas themselves to assist the Milken Center’s endeavors.
Their input will be invaluable as the Milken Center strives to improve its information sharing, Conard said.
“One of the new projects we’re working on is to create a clearinghouse for ideas on the Milken Center Web site,” Conard said.
That would allow a teacher, from anywhere on the planet, to learn about project-based teaching exercises with a few clicks on a keyboard, Conard said; an online inservice of sorts.
The Milken Center also plans to offer workshops for teachers across the country, Conard said.
AW WAS familiar to the Milken Center before this year. He was named the 2004 Milken Family Foundation National Educator of the Year for his work at Hopedale.
“It’s one of those life-altering awards,” he said.
He was cited for using innovative teaching techniques as he incorporated math, social science and reading lessons into the classroom. One such example sprang from an idea Aw developed while watching a group of students mingling about at the start of the school day.
“I figured there were about 20 minutes in the school day when students were coming to school but classes hadn’t started yet,” Aw recalled. Aw, figuring the students needed something to occupy their buzzing imaginations, asked that classical music be played as they entered school. “They eventually grew to like it,” he said.
Then, as students waited for classes to begin, he began tossing out simple math questions. The math questions were designed to test everyone, from the most advanced math pupils to those with only a simple understanding of addition and subtraction.
“What we found was that the kids were learning outside the classroom and we didn’t have to spend an extra dime from our budget,” he said. He also worked in league with a librarian who helped create a “Read To Feed” program, in which patrons donated money for each book a student read. The proceeds were forwarded to charitable foundations that battle worldwide hunger.
Both projects, Aw noted, included “outside the box” thinking that helped students excel.
THEIR INVOLVEMENT with the Milken Center has shown both instructors other project-based learning exercises, including Uniontown’s legendary history program that took shape under Conard’s tutelage. There, students created documentaries, exhibits or even short plays about historical events or figures.
One such play was “Life In a Jar,” a story about Irena Sendler, a young Polish women who helped Jewish children escape the clutches of the Gestapo during World War II. Sendler made lists of the children’s real names and put the lists in jars, burying them so that someday she might be able to reconnect with the children.
Sendler’s heroic efforts were largely unknown until four Uniontown students read about her exploits, and then wrote the play. What they didn’t realize until months later was that Sendler was still alive.
Their connection and ongoing dialogue with Sendler made international headlines, as did the students’ trip to Poland to meet her a year later. They returned to Poland earlier this spring, just days before Sendler died May 12 at the age of 98.
The students also were behind Sendler’s nomination in 2007 for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“What you had was a small group of students who did something that created a ripple effect,” Aw said. “Anyone can make a difference.” Aw knows a thing or two about achieving goals from modest beginnings. He came to America from Burma at the age of 13 and could scarcely speak English.
He made his way through the New York City public schools and went on to the State University of New York at Buffalo and Framingham State College to become a teacher.
RIPPE’S APPRECIATION of education was sparked by her mother, a former Kansas teacher of the year.
“I grew up with a wonderful role model, and I literally grew up in her classroom,” she said. “Even if I was sick and I couldn’t go to school, my mother would let me stay in her classroom.”
Her mother also instilled in Rippe the importance of teaching students how to learn.
“You don’t just tell your students what to find,” she said. “You teach them how to find it.”
While teachers must remain ever mindful of ensuring their students score well on State Assessment Tests — the “high-stress” centerpiece in Kansas to adhere to the federal No Child Left Behind program — students also can thrive through project-based learning, Rippe said.
“That’s what makes this so exciting,” she said. “I can’t wait to get back to see what I can do with some of these ideas.”
To qualify as a Milken Intern, teachers must be in their first year of education.