If you arrive in Newport, Rhode Island via the long bridges from the mainland that stretch across Narragansett Bay, you are immediately faced with a choice: Head south, and you’ll find the legendary mansions of the Gilded Age—massive marble palaces that were once the summer playgrounds of a bygone era’s titans of industry. You’ll see the clapboard homes of an earlier age of opulence, when Newport was an epicenter of colonial-era capitalism—and, through much of the 18th century, the largest slave trade port in North America. And you’ll find yourself immersed in the symbols of the city that exist in most people’s minds—the land of Gatsby, glamor and gluttony. Head north, however, and you discover a different Newport entirely—the place where Newport’s many middle- and working-class residents reside. And if you cross Admiral Kalbfus Boulevard, and drive past the full stretch of Miantonomi Memorial Park, you’ll find the Florence Gray Community Center, where a decade-old experiment in hands-on learning is sprouting early signs of a wider (and deeper) awakening—learner-centered civic education.

This is FabNewport—and, perhaps, something much larger, demonstrating the value of learner-centered civic education.

On a recent weekday afternoon, a handful of kids had already traversed different pathways across the city to spend their after-school hours here. They did so in part because FabNewport provides a variety of ways to play: a computer lab, makerspace, and arts room, alongside stations for sewing or jewelry making, a heat press, a laser printer, saws, fishing rods—different tools for different types of creative expression, all ready for use, showing how learner-centered civic education emphasizes student choice.

For Xavier, a self-possessed 8th grader munching on a snack, that’s why he keeps coming back to this center of learner-centered civic education. “When I was in 5th grade,” he told me, “my mom forced me to do a program, but then I had a lot of fun. I like who I am when I’m here. And I get to hang out with amazing people and go to cool places.

Read the full article about learner-centered civic education by Sam Chaltain at Getting Smart.