Carson Street Elementary
Written by Youko Amemiya, Instructional Coach Carson Street Elementary
A Vision: Believe and Make It Happen
On November 3, 2016, we became the first Digital Citizenship Certified School in Local District South, second in the entire Los Angeles Unified School District. The following month, along with 43 LD South schools, we were named as a STEAM Academy. “This is a very exciting time,” Martín León, our visionary principal, shares with the staff. “We’ve accomplished a lot since our visit to Fisler Elementary.”
This “visit” set all things in motion. In March 2016, Principal León led a team of Carson Street teachers to visit an Apple Distinguished School in Orange County - Fisler Elementary - an internationally acclaimed 1:1 public school with Fullerton Unified School District. Passion and enthusiasm for teaching and learning are observed throughout this K-8 flexible learning campus. Students work on personalized projects in and outside the classroom. Teachers guide students as they enthusiastically learn alongside the students. What we witnessed was a unified vision, an entire school community trying and doing.
“Wow,” “Amazing,” “Inspiring,” were the utterances from our teachers. Then came a flood of questions and a period of reflection - “What can we do for our students at Carson Street Elementary?”
Towards the end of the last school year, we shared our desire with our existing and new community partners: Apple, LAUSD’s Instructional Technology Initiative (ITI), American Honda Motor Co., PBS SoCal, Griffin Ave. Elementary, and Common Sense Media. Through their guidance and technological support, we were able to begin our implementation.
Students Coding 12 additional iMacs, in pods of three, have been placed in strategic primary grades to engage learners and deepen instructional initiatives leveraging digital tools.
During the summer, four of our Tech Team members deepened their understanding of pedagogy and technology through ITI’s three 3 day Summer Planning Institute. The learning was taken back to our school and shared among the staff, paving the path toward phase one of school-wide implementation.
In the fall of 2016, we began phase one, the first of a three-phase implementation plan, based on the ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) model. For this school year, our goal is to raise awareness and heighten the desire among the staff for leveraging digital tools and resources for instruction through exploring, sharing and professional development.
All students learned about what it means to be a responsible digital citizen through the online lessons from Common Sense Education. Our goal is to teach students to think critically, be responsible, and be safe while online.
October 2016 kicked off multiple parent workshops organized by our Assistant Principal, Gary Saunders, and Parent Community Rep., Salavao Taase, to bridge the school and home connection.
Our instructional shift has already generated positive results. Student responses to technology-infused learning are “Fun!” “Cool!” and “Awesome!” We are also expecting student engagement, attendance, and achievement to be noticeably impacted in the future.
As we continue our journey into a new era of teaching, future plans to reinforce our path forward include ongoing staff STEAM training, an increase in instructional resources through partnerships and donorschoose.org grants, and hosting STEAM Showcase of Excellence. Although setbacks, roadblocks and diversions are expected, we will approach this process with a growth mindset as a school community - we are all learning together.