FARMINGTON — As part of a Regional School Unit 10 team, Charlie Swan, principal of Dirigo Elementary School, was one of nearly 150 school administrators, teachers and school board members who spent Thursday learning a different approach to teaching and how to take it back to his district.

As part of the Western Maine Education Collaborative, 11 school systems representing 15,000 students in Western Maine and the University of Maine at Farmington have sent educators to a WMEC-sponsored Consortium for Mass Customized Learning held Thursday and Friday at UMF.

Led by educator, consultant and author Bea McGarvey of Portland, information on how to change the system of learning and explore customized learning for every student was the focus. McGarvey is the co-author of the book, “Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning.”

Teams will work with McGarvey throughout this year to gain knowledge to bring back to their district and perhaps later work together with other districts on this initiative, Mona Baker, executive director of WMEC, said.

That a child can attend school for five years and not be able to read is unacceptable, Baker said of one example raised by McGarvey for the need to individualize teaching to fit the student’s talents and abilities. The educators are learning, creating and planning how to do that on a mass level in order to reach all their students.

After the Industrial Age, education was standards based, McGarvey said during a lunch break. The style tended to split the students into those who got it and those who didn’t. Those who didn’t often ended up leaving school and taking a mill job where they could earn a good wage and could support their families.

It’s not the same today. Those mill jobs are gone. So for some, finding a customized way to help a child learn creates an economic imperative, she said.

“For me, it’s a moral imperative. It’s not right to throw away a child,” she added.

For Swan, the information McGarvey had already shared struck at the core of customized learning … teaching at the child’s pace and learning needs, he said.

McGarvey’s book describes “a detailed vision of how schools can change from the present outdated Industrial Age, assembly-line structure to a mass customized learning structure to meet the individual learning needs of every learner — “not some, not most, but every learner.”

Espousing the ways technology such as iTunes, Wikipedia, Google and others have the capacity to mass customize information in an effective and efficient way, the authors relate how a structural change to teaching is “doable, inevitable, and a potential win for the student and also teachers, parents, society and the economy.”

The educators will work as teams with McGarvey and an Mass Customized Learning coach this year as they explore how to move away from traditional methods to implementing Mass Customized Learning in their schools, Baker said.

WMEC learned Wednesday that it will receive $70,000 from the Betterment Foundation to continue this initiative over the next three years, Baker said. Other local sponsors have also helped bring this consortium together.

Members of WMEC spread over four counties and 50 communities and includes Lisbon, AOS 97, RSU 9, RSU 4, RSU 10, RSU 38, RSU 44, RSU 58, RSU 73, RSU 74, RSU 78 and UMF.

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