Center tailors teaching to kids as individuals

OUTSIDE THE BOX: Serving mainly city kids from less-privileged neighborhoods, the Center for Dynamic Learning looks to help children who are not thriving in traditional classrooms. Above, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed takes instruction from Samuel Cunha, red shirt, and Krystalee Diaz Nieves prepares to start cart racing at the Center for Dynamic Learning’s End-of-Session Celebration at Culcutt Middle School in Central Falls. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
OUTSIDE THE BOX: Serving mainly city kids from less-privileged neighborhoods, the Center for Dynamic Learning looks to help children who are not thriving in traditional classrooms. Above, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed takes instruction from Samuel Cunha, red shirt, and Krystalee Diaz Nieves prepares to start cart racing at the Center for Dynamic Learning’s End-of-Session Celebration at Culcutt Middle School in Central Falls. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

Some people learn well in a lecture hall: seated and washed in a torrent of words, written and spoken. Some people learn with their bodies and hands: taking a motor apart, moving across a stage, building, tinkering, orating.
The second type – hands-on learners – are at the heart of the Center for Dynamic Learning, home-based in Providence and active at many schools and child-centered places – such as YMCAs – across Rhode Island.
Serving mainly city kids from less-privileged neighborhoods, the center sweeps up children who are not thriving in traditional classrooms, as well as youth who have gobbled up all they could learn from books and are eager to use their hands to make things go.
The center was founded in 2003 as the Traveling Theatre. Theater teachers worked with children before and after school and during the summer to create, stage and perform musical plays. Years later – along with its name change – the organization added a science, technology and manufacturing component.
In the science and technology component arena, children from kindergarten through high school do chemistry experiments, build rockets, work with hydroponic plants, and even design and build solar- and electric-powered go-carts.
The center’s 15,000-square-foot space on Louisa Street includes a wood and metal fabrication shop with design software, a life sciences lab and a black box theater. Cooperating with partners like the Met School in Providence, center teachers work with 300 to 500 children a year at Louisa Street and a total of 1,200 children at year throughout the state.
Elizabeth Cunha, CEO and founder of the center, has a master’s of fine arts degree. In developing the idea of for the center, Cunha said, “I wanted it to be something that helps children understand how they learn and to find their own voice.
“Anytime you give a young person an opportunity to think, to create, to explore, to make mistakes, and to reflect on the process, this expands their knowledge,” Cunha said.
A bedrock value of all the activity is hands-on learning, inquiry, and appreciating the value of making mistakes. Another essential value is to work with children as individuals, coaxing accomplishments from them based on their personalities and inborn talents.
Despite their best efforts, it is difficult for teachers in regular classrooms to work with children as individuals, said several center teachers, because of teaching loads, lack of time or inflexible curriculums and rules.
Jeannine Magliocco observed the center’s work as former principal of Lonsdale Elementary School in Lincoln. She said center teachers placed children in production roles that pushed their inherent talents. “Children weren’t just plopped into a play,” she said. “Children were responsible for growing their part. They are part of the innovation. In a top-down operation, that wouldn’t happen.”

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