Learning Experiences

Launched in 2003, The World Is Our Classroom is a program that creates what are called ‘learning laboratories’ in area companies. These businesses provide different products and services — from wastewater treatment operations at Bondi’s Island to specialty paper converting at Holyoke’s Hazen Paper — but the lessons they impart on students have common themes and goals. In short, they involve science, technology — and possible career paths.

Donald Goodroe knows it will be a while, maybe nine or 10 years at the earliest, but he wouldn’t be surprised if someday, one of “these kids” came to him inquiring about job opportunities.

He used that term to reference the 24 students who were visiting the Springfield Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility at Bondi’s Island the day he spoke with BusinessWest. But in a larger sense, he was talking about the 16,000 or so young people from Springfield and Agawam who have partaken in the tour and accompanying learning exercises at the plant since 2003, or the start of an ambitious program called The World Is Our Classroom (WIOC).

As project manager for United Water, which was given a 20-year, $263 million contract to manage the Bondi’s Island facilities in 2000, Goodroe now oversees his company’s involvement in The World Is Our Classroom, the nonprofit initiative that emerged from United Water’s unique strategy for meeting a commitment made by the company to give back to the Greater Springfield community.

What the company created, in essence, was a learning laboratory, Goodroe explained, at which material being covered in the classroom can be reviewed and reinforced. This model has now been adapted at two other companies in the region, with perhaps more to come.

“It’s one of the things that excited me about coming here,” said Goodroe, who joined the Springfield operation in 2003, not long after WIOC was started. “The program provides value in many different ways, and it shows how businesses can make contributions to the community.”

Finding future employees wasn’t near the top of the stated list of goals for WIOC, Goodroe continued — although he acknowledged that interest in environmental science has been drying up recent years, and this is one way to spark some enthusiasm among young people — but it is one of the many positive aspects of an initiative that, according to executive director Nora Burke Patton, “puts a classroom within a company.”

And in so doing, it introduces students to the world of work, while they also learn how wastewater is treated; how paper is made, coated, and eventually formed into the cover of a Super Bowl program; and how aluminum is fabricated into baseboard heating elements, among other things — and not just by listening, but by doing.

Such learning-while-doing exercises will likely help students do better on their Mass. Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests, said Burke Patton, listing another of the many goals involving this program, which now involves three participating, or sponsoring, companies — United Water, Hazen Paper in Holyoke, and Mestek Inc. in Westfield, as well as the school systems in those cities, area colleges, and a host of sponsoring businesses.

And further expansion is being carefully considered, said Kevin Maynard, chairman of the WIOC Board of Directors. He told BusinessWest that several communities, including Chicopee, are being eyed, but the board will be careful to continue a pattern of controlled growth.

“The need is phenomenal out there, and our programs have been well-received by students and their teachers,” he said, “but we don’t want to grow too fast.”

In this issue, BusinessWest looks at WIOC, which is opening students’ eyes to the marvels of science and technology — and the intriguing world of work.

Liquid Assets

Maynard called The World Is Our Classroom a “sneaky educational program,” and quickly explained what he meant.

“Kids don’t realize just how much they’re learning as they go through their day at Bondi’s Island, for example,” he said, adding that lessons in matters ranging from pure science to organizational teamwork to quality control are often embedded in exercises — such as a dance choreographed to demonstrate how water molecules expand when heated — that are designed to be as much fun as they are educational. “They come out having learned something without knowing that they’ve learned it, which is a good way to teach.”

Burke Patton, Goodroe, and John Hazen, president of Hazen Paper, didn’t use the same terminology, but they essentially made the same point.

“Students are learning on a number of different levels,” said Hazen while waiting for a group of touring students to reach a classroom/lab area the company created, at considerable expense, out of old manufacturing space to accommodate the program. “They’re learning about science — how machines work and how paper is converted — but they’re also learning about the workplace and getting introduced to what could be career opportunities.”

Said Burke Patton, “we’re educating today’s children and inspiring tomorrow’s workforce. Students get a chance to spark the imagination and see what the future could hold.”

Goodroe, meanwhile, said the program provides what he called a framework for understanding and applying what is taught in the classroom, where most of the real learning takes place.

“Something is going to go in one ear and out the other unless you have some kind of framework that you can hold onto,” he explained. “This programs helps create that framework within a context that’s fun, which tends to make things memorable.”

All this this is precisely what United Water had in mind when it started contemplating ways to meet its obligation for community service back in 2000, said Goodroe, adding that the company, which manages plants across the country, traditionally adopts a high school or some similar venture as it undertakes education-oriented community outreach.

In Springfield, it desired to go much further, and involve students at a host of schools in ways that would help with the MCAS. “We didn’t want to reach just a few students … we wanted to reach all the students.”

This story starts in the summer of 2001, when 12 teachers from the Springfield school system met at Bondi’s Island with representatives from United Water and Springfield College to gauge the facility’s potential as a resource for teaching science, engineering, and technology — and found plenty.

What eventually emerged was that learning laboratory, or classroom within a company, first tested in a pilot program involving a few classes, said Goodroe, and a curriculum that is designed to expose students to real-life work experiences while also providing lessons that will help improve performance in science.

Students tour the expansive plant, starting with a scale model of the facility showing each component. During their five-hour stay, students learn about the physical, earth, and life sciences, specifically concepts such as the water cycle, properties and states of matter, and simple machines — as they relate to the theme of wastewater treatment.

They do this while watching and listening to lab-coat-wearing technicians, but also via games and a hands-on experiment in which they create what amounts to their own wastewater treatment facility with a host of possible filters, said Goodroe. In one game, students become ‘water molecules’ that move from one station (such as the atmosphere, rivers, glaciers, groundwater, plants, and animals) to another. If they become polluted, which they will if they come in contact with humans and animals, they must have that pollution removed (through a wastewater treatment plant) before returning to the water cycle.

This interactive exercise shows the importance of facilities like Bondi’s to the community, said Goodroe, adding that most students — not to mention their parents — don’t know what the facility does or how it does it. They mistakenly believe that it contributes to pollution rather than removes it.

Once the program at Bondi’s was firmly established and the business model for the initiative honed, a 501 C3 nonprofit group — The World Is Our Classroom — was formed, with Burke Patton, who owns a marketing/PR firm and has handled public relations work for United Water, named executive director.

Soon thereafter, the organization took the Bondi’s model and worked to take it to different companies and communities.

Pulp Nonfiction

“What we had was an entity with a critical mass behind it, an organization that could go out, get additional corporate sponsors, and expand on the concept,” said Goodroe, adding that this is what those who originally blueprinted the program thought could happen. “But it’s grown more than anyone could really have imagined.”

WIOC first expanded into Holyoke and Hazen Paper, in a development that John Hazen, who was approached by Burke Patton about the program in 2004, called beneficial for students, his company, its employees, and the city itself.

“I liked the idea of doing something in the community at a grassroots level,” said Hazen, who, like Burke Patton, attended E.N. White Elementary School in Holyoke. “We had an experience about a year before we were approached on this where a group of retirees came in for a tour. At first, I was a little cynical about it — it meant time out of the day and a disruption — but we did it, and I’m glad we did.

“What I noticed was that my employees got a lot of gratification from doing that tour, and really enjoyed talking about Hazen Paper and the products we make,” he continued. “That was a turning point for me from an education perspective; when I was approached about The World Is Our Classroom, I liked the concept because I thought my employees would embrace it, and it gave us a chance to do something for Holyoke.”

Many of the children who visit the plant live in that general neighborhood, by the canals, and some have relatives who work there, Hazen explained, but few if any have been inside and know what the company does and how its work touches their everyday lives.

The educational program at Hazen is similar to the one at Bondi’s in that aligns with the Mass. Science and Technology/ Engineering Curriculum Framework and focuses on helping students prepare for the MCAS test, while also exposing students to potential career paths. There are several at the company, said Hazen, ranging from machine operator to salesperson, and many of them opened some eyes, which might bode well years down the road.

“This is our future workforce,” he said, referring to the hundreds of classes that have gone through the plant. “Four years ago, when we started, it seemed like a very distant future workforce, but now, we’re perhaps only four or five years away from that first class of The World Is Our Classroom being ready to join the workplace; time really does fly.”

Hazen said the paper-making exercise, which caps a four-hour day at the company, provides important lessons in teamwork and critical thinking.

“You can’t miss a step,” he said, noting that there are several in the process. “That’s why people have to listen and then work together — and it’s great to see how well they do that.”

Some Cool Ideas

Don Pratt joked that the WIOC initiative at Mestek in Westfield has, at the very least, kept local pizza shops humming; pie is the lunch of choice for touring classes there and elsewhere within WIOC, and one of the highlights of the students’ day.

But there is much more on the menu in terms of fun and learning, said Pratt, director of the Reed Institute at Mestek, which provides technical training for not only installers of equipment made by the company, but also contractors, sales representatives, wholesalers, and even custodians. “We want all the players to understand exactly what they’re selling,” he explained. “Things are always changing, and we need to constantly update people.”

The institute, with its educational facilities, provides a perfect setting for WIOC, said Pratt, noting that, as a manufacturer and a company committed to the Greater Westfield community, Mestek seemed like a logical place for expansion of the program, and visits began in 2007.

As he talked with BusinessWest, Pratt was ramping up for this year’s slate of tours — one a day for 24 days starting late last month. The visits are designed to show how individual pieces of heating and cooling equipment, such as thermostats, work, and also how units are made, said Pratt, adding that there are many lessons involving the environment, as well.

The sum of the experience is greater than the traditional school field trip of decades ago, something that has become a vanishing breed with the MCAS tests and the need to teach to them, he said.

“We’re connecting their education to the real world,” he said of Mestek’s participation with WIOC. “Any time you show people, especially young people, how the pieces fit together in their own life, they take it to heart. It’s a little easier to learn math or science or whatever you’re doing if you can relate it to something that you’ve experienced.”

Maynard said that since it was launched, WIOC has practiced what he called “controlled expansion” — both geographically and with different age groups — and this policy will continue into the future. Indeed, while adding the communities of Westfield and Holyoke, the programs have been extended to include some high school students.

Chicopee is one possible point of expansion, he continued, adding that preliminary work is being done to scout and then meet with companies that will likely make suitable partners. The pattern followed to date is to start a new program and, while it is being honed and made financially stable (meaning the initiative in question isn’t losing money), begin work to launch another partnership.

“That’s what we’re going to continue to do,” said Maynard, adding that WIOC will also work to build upon its base of sponsoring businesses and organizations. This is a deep list that includes the state, which has awarded funding to help get individual programs started, as well as the Springfield Water and Sewer Commission, the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation, Eco/Springfield, a host of area banks, and companies large and small.

Wherever and however WIOC expands, it will endeavor to create programs that expand minds, stir the imagination, and, in the meantime, show how area companies produce the things people see every day.

“Kids who go through the Westfield program, for example, will never be able to walk by a thermostat again without saying, ‘I know how that works,’” said Maynard. “They take for granted that these things magically appear in their lives without realizing they go through a manufacturing process; when they see that, it’s very worthwhile.”

Down to a Science

After listening carefully to instructions for the exercise in simulated wastewater treatment at Bondi’s, one of the students asked the instructor, “are we going to get to wear one of those cool lab coats we saw?”

He was informed that they wouldn’t, some disappointing news quickly tempered by word that they would get to wear gloves — if they weren’t allergic to latex — and protective goggles.

This seemed to suffice, and the episode helped drive home the point about having fun while learning, which is the point of this program — that and giving Goodroe something to perhaps look forward to in about eight to 10 years.

George O’Brien can be reached at[email protected]