Program seeks to ‘rewire students' brains'

VANCEBORO — Chase Dail drew on the wall at West Craven Middle School, and he didn’t get in trouble for it. The sixth-grader’s teacher even encouraged him.

The 11-year-old was one of three students chosen by art teacher Donna Hawkins to paint the walls from ceiling to floor of the school’s new computer lab with a calming water scene featuring geese taking flight into a bright blue sky above a lone boat, which sits empty on the water’s edge.

The students were hoping to finish the mural by Wednesday, when the new lab was set to open for a class designed to “rewire students’ brains.” In the lab, students are using the software program Fast ForWord from the company Scientific Learning to work on developing their cognitive skills that are at the foundation of skills like reading.

“This program, Fast ForWord, is all about almost re-training how the kids think,” said school Principal Renee Franklin. “When they come into school not exposed to that kind of critical thinking at a very early age, it’s hard to play catch-up. That’s what we’re trying to do with putting in these kinds of interventions.”

The school purchased the program and 24 new computers using a $120,324 grant awarded recently by the state. Craven County Schools was one of 83 school systems, nonprofits and agencies across the state to receive one of the grants, which were pieces of a $13 million total appropriated by the N.C. General Assembly to target students at risk of dropping out.

School leaders said they can use Fast ForWord to help students improve academically to ultimately help keep them in school. Franklin said that some students in the western part of the county are starting school in kindergarten without the social and academic skills to help them succeed. In their later years, they lag behind their grade level in reading and math. And reading, she said, is a skill needed to succeed in all other subjects.

“We’re thinking kids have dropped out before they get to high school, mentally,” she said. “The biggest factor to encourage kids to stay in school is when they experience success. And this program, Fast ForWord, is all about retraining how the kid thinks.”

She added that the research associated with the program shows that it does improve student performance. They must do the program about 30 minutes each day, and she said. After 12 to 14 months, they start to see a significant increase in their grades and test performance.

Thirteen elementary schools in the district already have Fast ForWord, thanks to a $1.5 million grant awarded by the Department of Defense last year for schools with high percentages of students in military families.

Jo Wheeler, the district’s assistant superintendent for k-8 instruction, said the district wrote the grant to the Department of Defense to address the district’s struggling reader population. But some schools are trying to get as many students as possible to use the program to improve their memory, attention, processing rate, and sequencing abilities.

In the program, the students wear headphones and play what appear to be colorful interactive computer games. One Fast ForWord game played by students at Brinson Memorial Elementary involved exercises such as listening to nonsense words like “cha” or “ma” and matching the sound to word spelling that appears on the screen, while another required them to distinguish between the sounds “sti” and “si.”

 “It is fitness for the brain,” said Todd Bradley, principal at Brinson Memorial. The school has expanded the program from students at or below grade level, to all of its kindergarten through second grades. “Just like you exercise your muscles, this is fitness for the brain.”

Bradley said the school made a special request to its Parent Teacher Organization and the Craven County Board of Commissioners for funding to pay for a new computer lab that would allow the school to expand the program, and that they have already seen student improvement.

“I think it really helps students get back at their reading level,” he said. “It also impacts students that are at their grade level or above. The program is self-perpetuating. Wherever that student is, it challenges them.”

At West Craven Middle, 48 students each from in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades were randomly selected to work in the lab, Franklin said. They will work on Fast ForWord as one of the electives such as art, music, or physical education.

The mural that Chase helped paint on the wall is hoped to lend a calming, relaxing atmosphere to the lab to help the students think.

Hawkins selected three of her best students to work with the lab’s new coordinator, teaching assistant Lori Marx, on what she wanted the walls to look like to help the students learn.

Hawkins said she had her students treat Marx as their client, so they asked her what type of scene she was interested in and then they worked to achieve that goal.

 “It put so much pressure on you, you didn’t want to mess up,” said Chase, who painted a detailed gray and white seagull perched on a post by the door for the project. Eighth-grader Dillon Maravelas and sixth-grader Brian Dawson worked on the larger mural of a boat on the shore, with the geese taking off in flight.

They said they worked on the project for two to three weeks, and were glad to have a chance to break their normal routines to work on the special mural. All three of the students said they want to pursue careers in art after school, and Hawkins hopes the project will add to their resumes.

“When it’s finished, it’s going to look great — I know that,” Dillon said. “We’ve got awesome guys doing a great job.”

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.