The Strive program is alive and well at Ballard Elementary School in Niles, although school officials are removing the use of the name Strive to quell feelings of competition between it and the school’s other learning group, Aspire.

Strive, now called vertical teams, uses what is commonly referred to as whole brain learning — a highly interactive teaching method that utilizes all areas of the brain to keep kids engaged. The learning group also uses “power hours” where students are grouped based on skill level in a particular subject for an hour each day.

“For instance if you have a third grader who is reading really well they may have the opportunity to go up a level in their set of skills,” said Ballard Principal David Eichenberg. “Likewise, if you have kids that are struggling, they can go back down to a class that is going over fundamentals they might have missed.”

Aspire, on the other hand, is geared toward students who are believed to

benefit more from a traditional learning model. It is now called horizontal teams.

Supt. Michael Lindley said school staff use data mining and parent input to determine which model works best for each student, although no student is locked into either path.

The use of the two terms, Lindley said, created an atmosphere of competition by essentially creating two teams at one school. Some students even wore T-shirts that had the word Strive on them.

“The concept is that we are one team,” he said. “We don’t want to have competition, we want collaboration.”

Eichenberg said Strive had been around for a couple years and that last year some of the non-Strive teachers wanted to give a name to their learning group.

“We had Strive and Aspire and it was creating some division and competition in the building,” he said. “When Dr. Lindley came on board we talked about really deemphasizing the names. We wanted to try to get back to this being Ballard, not Strive or Aspire.”