SANDPOINT — Most adults have experienced the standard U.S. public school teaching model: you sit in class and a teacher talks at you. You and your fellow classmates study the same subject, at the same academic level, and at the same time in a linear fashion. Whether you are actually prepared or capable of working at that level — or beyond it — isn’t considered.

It’s a one-size-fits-all methodology that can leave some students behind, and others bored with the curriculum.

Enter the Lake Pend Oreille School District’s new experiential learning program, a mixed-age pilot program that places students from first- through sixth-grade together in the same classroom, but teaches them at their own, individual learning level and pace.

“This has been so exciting and fun,” ELP teacher Nicole Huguenin said of what she referred to as her dream job that is nearing the end of its first year.

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