For more information on Auburn Middle School’s plans, go to www.auburnschl.edu/ams and click on “Changes coming to AMS!” on the left.

AUBURN — When James Hand visited Portland’s King Middle School last month, what he saw made him smile.

Students were into what they were doing.

“They were engaged in high-order thinking lessons,” said Hand, the Auburn Middle School principal who watched King students work on a play.

“Kids wrote their scripts,” he said. “They were recording it.”

On another visit, Hand and Auburn teachers watched Portland students work on a project. Some were writing; others were editing. They were asked how many would finish the work on time. “Every kid’s response was, ‘All of us, of course,'” Hand said.

For more than two decades, King Middle School has done “expeditionary learning,” which means different kinds of lessons that are relevant to students. It’s more active learning that incorporates community projects.

For example, in one project the city of Portland wanted to categorize trees on sidewalks.

“All of a sudden, they had 85 kids willing to go out there and collect all the data,” Hand said. Teachers build their lessons — including English, art, science and math — around the community projects.

That kind of teaching will come to Auburn Middle School in the fall of 2012.

“We aren’t meeting the needs of all kids,” Hand said. Thirty percent of Auburn Middle School students aren’t proficient in their grade-level performance, tests show.

“I was trying to find other avenues and stumbled upon King Middle School,” Hand said.

He and 12 Auburn teachers visited the school in November. Excited by what they saw, Hand and more Auburn teachers went to the Portland school in December. Students of all abilities were being challenged, he said.

“They really wanted to strut their stuff,” Hand said. “The classrooms were all mixed (by ability levels) versus tracking. It was the level of student engagement that made the difference with us. Kids rolled up their sleeves and were working. It was so exciting.”

Many Auburn Middle School teachers now offer hands-on learning in small chunks. The plan is to take the style school-wide, Hand said.

The next 18 months will be spent training teachers and developing lessons based on community projects and resources, such as local businesses and the Androscoggin River.

Auburn School Superintendent Tom Morrill said national studies show that too many of today’s students are bored in school, don’t like the traditional classroom lectures and prefer active learning about relevant, real-life problems.

It used to be that students passed for putting in “seat time,” but some didn’t learn. Society can no longer allow some not to learn, Morrill said.

“We can’t afford to lose a portion of our students,” he said. “The required skill level is higher than it ever has been.”

The expeditionary model has been around for years, and is proven, he said. King Middle School student performances, test scores show, are the highest in Portland, Morrill said.

Getting a similar program in Auburn will take time to do it right, he said. The principal and teachers “are trying to identify real community topics and make sure they’re relevant. … My compliments to the AMS staff for going down this road. It shows great courage.”

There will be some costs for teacher training and curriculum development. Morrill did not yet have cost projections, he said.

bwashuk@sunjournal.com