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The Learning and Engaging Adolescents Project engages all students, including those who are disaffiliated for a variety of reasons, in an exciting, technology-rich learning environment. The key tenant of the program is student-centered learning, with particular emphasis on individualization, ability to self-pace, relevance of task, engagement of authentic audiences, and creativity, utilizing technologies that are fully integrated into the curriculum.

Like the neighboring Maine Learning Technology Initiative, we identified the middle grades as the critical entry point for our technology integration effort. Middle-level education has a 20-year track record of changing teachers’ practices to embrace student-centered pedagogy[1], and the team of middle-level educators at UVM has special expertise around using technology to create student-centered classrooms.

In the first year that I-LEAP was implemented at Milton Middle School, thirty disaffiliated students participated. In years two and three, the program was expanded to a full heterogeneous team of sixty students taking all core subjects in the I-LEAP model. As Milton enters its final year of grant funding in the fall of 2009, we will simultaneously launch the program at a second site, Edmunds Middle School, across a full five-member team working with approximately 85 students.

To formalize delivery of the most effective professional development around technology integration for teachers in the I-LEAP project, the Tarrant Foundation funded the development of a 3-credit graduate course at UVM, dubbed the I-LEAP Institute. This summer, the Foundation hosted 25 educators from Milton and Edmunds in this free course, including the entire Milton Middle School faculty. The course includes a 4-day face-to-face intensive, an on-line learning community, and two additional days in the fall to support curriculum implementation.

Throughout the development and launch of the program, a research and evaluation team from UVM has provided extensive, on-going professional development and support to teachers in the classroom on how to most effectively integrate technology into curricula. They are also tracking a wide array of student data to conclusively demonstrate the program’s positive effect on academic performance, discipline referrals, student engagement levels, perceptions of school and of learning, and other factors critical to high school graduation rates, post-secondary education aspiration and success, and employment potential.

The commitment of the Tarrant Foundation and the UVM I-LEAP team has been to develop and rigorously test a highly successful model of student-centered learning through technology. We intend to generate statistically-significant results over time that will encourage further investment, from both public and private sources, in student-centered, technology-rich learning.

I-LEAP has now moved past the development and “pilot” phases. It has been implemented and evaluated over the past three years in the Vermont school system, and the Tarrant Foundation has committed to launching a new I-LEAP site around the state every two years, or on a more rapid timeline as we are able to attract additional funders to the project.