Tag Archives: Act 77

Equity

3 ways to ensure equity is at the heart of your work

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VTDigger reports that Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French said “From our standpoint, we portray districts being on a journey. Just like everyone in the world is on a journey. And we don’t see 2020 as some sort of hard and fast date.”  However, regardless of a deadline, we should remain focused on centering equity as we implement personalized learning. Equity is at the heart of this state policy.

Whether you are well on you way or just starting work on the three pillars keeping equity at the forefront of education work is a moral imperative. And here are three resources to help in your journey.

What do *you* mean by equity?

The National Equity Project  defines it as “each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential.” Furthermore, they offer that moving toward it involves:

  •  Ensuring equally high outcomes for all participants in our educational system. Removing the predictability of success. Or failures that currently correlates with any social or cultural factor.
  • Interrupting inequitable practices, examining biases. And creating inclusive multicultural school environments for adults and children.
  • Discovering and cultivating the unique gifts, talents and interests that every human possesses.

Sounds simple in theory; challenging in practice.

3 structures for centering equity
1. Equity audits

Equity audits help examine us examine gaps in opportunity. Even more, they identify solutions to addressing those gaps.

First and foremost, Teaching Tolerance recommends using the equity audits from the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium. You can choose the right grain-size for your work. Everything from systems level to classroom/teacher level audits. And they’re robust!

Another resource: the The School-Wide Cultural Competence Observation Checklist (.pdf) They arrange questions into the following categories:

  • Community & Parents
  • School Policy & Practice
  • Classroom & Teacher
  • Student
  • Curriculum & Instruction

Along those same lines? The VT Agency of Education’s tools and checklists to support implementation of the Vermont Guiding Principles. The AOE lists resources in the following categories:

  • Frameworks
  • Classroom/Program Tools
  • Individual Tools
  • Family Engagement Tools
  • Professional Development Tools
2. The Equity Literacy Framework

Paul Gorski and EdChange developed the Equity Literacy Framework. 

The framework encourages you to consider applying the following frames:

  • “The ability to Recognize even the subtlest biases and inequities.”
    • How are you engaging a variety of perspectives to help you recognize bias and inequity in your system?
    • What perspectives are missing?
  • “The ability to Respond skillfully and equitably to biases and inequities in the immediate term.”
    • What steps are you taking to respond to bias and inequity?
    • Who holds you accountable?
  • “The ability to Redress biases and inequities by understanding and addressing them at their institutional roots.”
    • Have you examined your policies and procedures for bias?
    • Who needs to be at the table to construct or revise policies so they are more likely to be bias free?
  • “The ability to Sustain equity efforts even in the face of discomfort or resistance.”
    • How do you communicate your equity efforts?
    • What values help you stand firm when the going gets rough?
3. Examine your own practice

The most important resource by far, on this list, is you. Don’t underestimate your own power as a change agent. Push your thinking. Stay informed. Find ways to reflect. Collect feedback, think deeply, and reach out to other educators doing the same work.

Reach out to your students. They can provide invaluable feedback on your journey.

Here are a few more resources to consider:
How will your practice change?

Equity connects many of Vermont’s educational initiatives. Still, we always have more work to do. So as you, your team, your school, and your district continue to make transformational change, find your leverage for greater equity. You’re the single most valuable change agent in bringing — and keeping — equity at the heart of teaching.

Equity

Vermont schools have a transportation equity problem.

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When I travel to schools around Vermont, I hear many versions of the same concerns:

  • Going anywhere from our school costs hundreds of dollars.
  • We want to take students into the community, but we burn through our budget by October.
  • Transportation funds are running low (or are gone).
  • We know it is so important to give our students community and field experiences.
  • Technology can support this work but nothing takes the place of getting students out into the field for hands-on experiences and opportunities.

How is this supporting the promise of Act 77?

Specifically, the promise “to extend and validate learning experiences in our communities, campuses and beyond”?

It’s a complicated issue in Vermont schools, but it comes down to two things: what we know works best for students, and equity. So let’s take a look at some of the transportation equity issues Vermont schools are facing — and what a few rural educators have to say about them.

What we know works best for students,

First of all, why do middle level students need to have access to community and field experiences?

(Hint: it has to do with engagement, motivation and transferable, lifelong skills). Let educator Morgan Moore sum it up for you:

These allow authentic audiences for our students. Seventh and eighth grade students are much more motivated to research, write, present, etc. when they know they will be presenting outside of the school. In a K-8 school we provide many leadership opportunities for them in the building, but after nine years they need new, challenging, audiences. They also learn more while out in the community, by interacting with other students and places. It is imperative that they are on college campuses, at fish hatcheries, local libraries, ordering food on Church Street, etc. In all of these experiences they learn about the resources in their community and state, and apply school skills to real life experiences. After thirteen hours in Burlington for Vermont History Day last Saturday, students went home and immediately started researching for next year’s project — that is not the norm in a typical social studies classroom.

-Morgan Moore, Humanities Teacher, Burke Town School

And what we know inequity looks like.

Reducing isolation and increasing access — across the board

Vermont is a rural state. Many students live in rural locations, with limited access to transportation and activities beyond schooling. Teachers often marvel how many students have never been to Vermont largest city, Burlington, or even to a park in their own towns.

This impacts our students living in poverty most of all.

Families who can provide transportation to extracurricular activities do so. They bring their kids to lessons, activities, and sports regularly. This is not available to all of our students, creating an opportunity gap for learning key transferable social skills, growing social capital, developing interests and purpose in the community. Providing increased transportation equity to field experiences for students can reduce some of this isolation and the associated opportunity gaps.

The majority of our student population have limited resources to plan experiences beyond the local area. Most families have two parents who work. As a result, children (esp. in rural areas) do not have access to a variety of experiences; they are limited to what is available in their particular community.

Students of all ages need a wide variety of experiences to build background knowledge, language development, an understanding of the wider community, and an understanding of people and places outside their limited communities.

-June Murphy, literacy coach

Reducing dependence on parents — and teachers — hauling students

Many times we hear that students getting out into the community in support of their project-based and service learning experiences hinges on teachers driving students to these locations. This is, of course, incredibly generous of these teachers, but can put them in a difficult spot, driving students in their personal cars. Do we want to place this extra burden on our teachers? Often, teachers doing this is the only way they can make these experiences happen.

At The Cabot School, in Cabot VT, a trio of middle school students have the opportunity to spend school time working on one of Vermont’s oldest organic farms, Molly Brook Farm, over in West Danville, as part of the Cabot Leads program. West Danville is about 10 minutes from Cabot, by car. The students describe the experience as invaluable and engaging. Farmers Myles and Rhonda Goodrich teach students math, biology and economics on the farm — and the only way for students to get to Molly Brook is through the good graces of Cabot’s school librarian and her electric blue hatchback.

We also frequently call on parents to provide transport. This comes with its own set of concerns. Insurance, safety, and yes, equity. Does every parent in your class have the ability to take time off work? Do they all have their own vehicles in good repair?

Also, many districts require parents to undergo a background check, complete with fingerprints. It’s a long process, and a complicated one and extra expenses for the district to pick up.

So, classes with more parents available and willing to do this can go more places.

How is this equitable? Who might it leave out?

Buses are expensive

Buses in rural locations can be prohibitively expensive. In school budgets, teachers can blow through the allotted amount for field trips by October, and often with one trip. Sometimes schools only budget for one field trip a year for each class. Do we really want just one performance, presentation, community visit, field experience and opportunity per year? How does that limit the experiences of our students, especially those who have a one somewhat traditional field experience (such as a museum visit or theatre performance) in the spring?

What about collaborating with other students regionally? Or presenting at state-wide conferences such as Dynamic Landscapes and Vermont Fest?

This spring, three schools took part in the first ever Battle Physics tournament. The tourney was located at Green Mountain Union HS in Chester VT. Now, Leland & Gray students wrote a grant application to support their tournament entry, and it included bus rental. At the same time, The Dorset School, in Dorset VT, provided funding for student bus transport. Two schools, two school budgets, one big disparity.

Incredible learning opportunities cost money for transport.

Buses are very expensive and we are not able to take frequent enough trips to allow students to pursue personal interests and flexible pathways, within their school day. Therefore, it means that only students who have transportation can truly pursue flexible pathways. I wrote a grant to address this challenge, but then found out that buses are only available within school hours – so we are not able to use the buses for trips that end later. Being in a rural area, it often takes us 1-2 hours to get to a destination, which leaves us only two hours at most to be in a location (often this is not long enough and we need to leave conferences or experiences early, or miss them due to timing).

-Morgan Moore, Humanities Teacher

Often, schools have a limited budget for transporting students on longer trips by bus. Many classes rely on parent chaperones/drivers in order to plan field trips. This is an obstacle for some classes. This also poses inequities from class to class. If there is a grade level where there is a “pocket” of parents who are available to chaperone AND have larger vehicles to fit more students, those classes tend to have more field trip experiences than others.

-June Murphy, literacy coach

Arranging transport shouldn’t be a teacher’s responsibility.

We know authentic audiences want to hear from students. We know students benefit from sharing their learning widely. But all the time and effort it takes teachers to plan opportunities for their students to share their work makes my head spin. Fundraising and grant applications take hours of extra work. Work that takes teachers away from teaching and their personal lives. All of this impacts the sustainability of teaching as a career.

Coordinating and leading these experiences is no small task. Adding “find funding” to this list makes these experiences only available to students where the teachers take this on.

The promise of act 77

The two tenets of act 77 are flexible pathways and personalized learning plans. According to Vermont’s Agency of Education, flexible pathways (bolds mine):

Flexible Pathways Flexible Pathways are any combination of high-quality expanded learning opportunities, including academic and experiential components, which build and assess attainment of identified proficiencies and lead to secondary school completion, civic engagement and postsecondary readiness. Flexible pathways allow students to apply their knowledge and skills to tasks of personal interest as part of the personalized learning planning process. This does not refer to a finite menu of pre-selected pathways from which a student must choose, but also includes school-based course offerings, virtual or blended learning opportunities, community or work-based learning opportunities, and post-secondary learning options among others.

If we are designing ways students can have equitable access to expanded learning opportunities, we must address all facets of the system.

And transportation’s one of them.

If we had access to affordable transportation students could regularly meet with community partners, engage in field activities, present at conferences, visit other schools, see performances, art, etc. A teacher could truly create captivating experiences at the start, and during lessons, that would engage middle school students. Students would be interested in learning because they would see the real life applications and be able to present to real audiences, win awards, prizes, recognition, etc.

-Morgan Moore, Humanities Teacher

Leaving students out of learning experiences based on access to transportation is a serious problem. Plans for Act 77 implementation have to include district-wide plans for transportation.

No really: #fleetofvans

The hashtag #fleetofvans first emerged in a #vted Twitter chat about equity and flexible pathways. Lindsey Halman of UP for Learning, tweeted #fleetofvans as she highlighted this problem and ignited a hashtag, but really, a way of thinking about this issue.

Is a fleet of vans the answer to the transportation issues faced by Vermont students?

Imagine if all Vermont schools had a fleet of vans — or affordable buses — at their disposal.

Imagine if those vans and buses could be booked by students as part of taking the reins of their opportunities.

I’ll leave you with a quote from teacher Kim Dumont, from the Ottauquechee School, in Quechee VT.

In order to provide authentic, meaningful learning experiences to all children, regardless of location, transportation is crucial. Children in rural areas would particularly benefit from having readily accessible vehicles at their school. Without vehicles at their disposal, valuable opportunities may be out of reach. In this case, investing in a fleet of vans is truly an investment in our future.

Districts, schools boards, communities, and school leaders: how could *you* address the transportation equity problem in Vermont?

Action Research, Flexible Pathways, Proficiency-Based Learning

Flexible pathways in proficiency-based learning

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Choose Your Own Adventure

practice for proficiencyIn Sam Nelson’s classroom, students choose what they learn, and how. Through the use of learning scales and targets, Nelson sets guidelines for students to demonstrate proficiencies in whatever they choose to study. Between the two systems — flexible pathways and proficiency-based learning — students negotiate a curriculum that keeps them engaged and satisfies their curiosity about the world around them.

How does it all work? Let’s take a look.

Continue reading Flexible pathways in proficiency-based learning →

Community-based learning

Community Based Learning in Vermont: What’s going on?

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4 lessons from a recent gathering

community based learningOn Friday, March 11, more than 50 participants from public and private schools, community education partners, and higher education from Vermont and the surrounding region gathered for a Community Based Learning workday, put on by Big Picture Learning, Eagle Rock School, Big Picture South Burlington, and Partnership for Change. This day of speakers, working sessions, and roundtable discussions brought together educators from different settings to “explore the possibilities, challenges, and resources of community-based learning in Vermont.”

A few folks from the Tarrant Institute were in attendance, and in this post we present 4 lessons about community-based learning in Vermont, gathered from the formal and informal discussions throughout the day. Continue reading Community Based Learning in Vermont: What’s going on? →

Self-directed learning

Self-directed learning and playlists

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Curating lists of online resources for deep dives into content research

Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education Susan HennesseyWe have been spending much of our time here at the Tarrant Institute exploring the idea of what engagement looks like in a learning environment where access to resources is ubiquitous, where learning can and does take place anytime, anywhere.  That is why when Lisa Nielsen’s Learning without Teachers, Textbooks, or Tests – a Case Study, crossed my personal learning network (PLN), I perked up.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no interest in exploring a world with no teachers, but I could imagine one without the other two Ts in her title. I am interested in guiding others with robust examples of self-directed learning, or as Nielsen puts it, real-life learning ventures.

Continue reading Self-directed learning and playlists →

Action Research, Student-Led Conferences

Student-led conferences and engagement in PLPs

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A middle school case study

Katie Bryant, an English teacher at Lamoille Union Middle School, presents the results of her semester-long action research project examining the relationship between student-led conferences and engagement in PLPs, or personal learning plans.

Here’s what she and her team discovered.

Transcript appears below.

Hi! I’m Katie Bryant.

I teach at Lamoille Union Middle School, I’m on Team Extreme. And a lot of my faculty went to MGI last summer, working on creating implementation plans for PLPs at my school, as they’re brand new this year.

I felt like the student-led conference was going to be a really big part of that.

Just really quickly about my school:

We have four mixed 7th/8th grade teams, 4 core teachers and a special educator on each team. There are about 60 students on each team.

We are in the third year of our 1:1 iPad initiative, so students all have iPads and a lot of students bring them home, and they use them throughout the content areas.

We are in our first year of implementing PLPs — pretty daunting, pretty messy, but really good work. And we are using Google Sites for PLPs. I get that question a lot. Yes: we are using our iPads to create Google Sites, which is tough, or uncomfortable at first, but is actually working better and better.

And then student-led conferences were only piloted on my team this year, so the other teams continued with traditional the parent-teacher conference model, with the intention of possibly trying student-led conferences throughout the school next year.

This was my abstract:

student-led conferences and engagement in PLPs

By the end of the project, the question and my abstract felt very different. I don’t know if others  had that same experience, but I felt like the question was really hard to answer, especially with the feedback that I received, and it became more about implementing the student-led conference — as messy as it was going to be — letting it go and just allowing it to happen. And then learning from it.

But I was really interested from the get-go in how these student-led conferences might influence engagement in a PLP.

Are the students motivated by the fact that they have to make a presentation to their parents about their goals? Or not. That was basically my question.

Honestly, I feel like my whole team should be here, as I couldn’t have done it without their support, and as you might’ve experienced, it takes a lot of time up front — tons of time up front, and totally worth it in the end, but without a team that functions really well together I don’t think this would’ve happened.

We had a lot of tools to work with.

We worked together to take a lot of tools from around the state. Peoples Academy Middle Level, lots of stuff from Main Street Middle School around goal-setting; scripts and all these different materials, and tried to make them our own.

We had students setting up sites of their own — super-basic, we’re in the infant stages of these sites.

We have an About Me page, and then some goals, evidence, future. And where we’re at right now is how do we use this evidence and reflect for our next step.

We created a goal-setting template, because one thing we knew we really wanted was “My goal is important to me because…” So when they’re presenting to their parents they’re saying why their goal is important.

We had a student script that students could use for the conference themselves. They had that in front of them when they stood up in front of their parents and their teacher.

And one of the awesome things we realized with that was that because they took their iPads home, every student was creating a Google Slideshow for their conference. And they were able to work on that at home, even if parents weren’t able to come to school. We also Skyped with a few parents, too, which was awesome.

We had a take-home script for the students, which was specifically for when they were at home  at the table with mom or dad (or both! or whoever) and they could go through their goals together and their parents could add goals and comments.  And there’s a place for a parent signature on the back. Some families took advantage of that.

For us, parent involvement is a big issue at our school, so having students to have the ability to do this at home — you don’t even have to have wireless, you can just download and save a copy on the iPad — was really a nice option for many people.

So in order to plan for the student-led conference we gave each student a template that we gave them to fill in. We actually had them keep in some of the Act 77 language so that they could explain that to their parents: “Why are we doing this? THIS is why.”

And then we had a personal goal, an academic goal, and really simply, evidence from each core class: what is something you’re really proud of?

Here’s a student example.

His personal, long-term goal is to get a job in the art industry as an artist, book illustrator or animator for movies. And then he went through how he will know when he’s achieved his goal, and why he wants to:

And then he has an academic goal as well:

And then we gave students a lot of free rein, and we made suggestions as to what they to choose from their classes, but they were able to choose, finally, what to show their parents:

We said, “Choose something from Math that you’re really proud of. Take a picture of an assignment or it could be a project you did on your iPad that you want to import. And he did that for each core class.

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Pre-SLC Student Survey

So I tried to ask students before the conference how they felt about the student-led conference, if they’d ever been in a conference before. Here are a couple of quotes from my survey:

“I have never talked in front of my parents and teachers before and I’m a little nervous.”

As you might imagine, 7th and 8th graders, most of them said they were very nervous. A lot of them said they felt awful about it. Here’s another quote:

“When I was in Michigan parents had a conference with your one teacher, and you sat outside of the room when they talked about how you were doing in school and what you needed to work on or any behavior issues. The meetings ran for about twenty minutes and never did the student get to talk to the teacher and parents at the same time, and after the twenty minutes were up your parents came out of the classroom and said good job or I am disappointed in you.”

Ouch, right?

I was really interested in seeing how their feelings would change after they presented to their parents.

Post-SLC Student Survey:

“The best part was having my parents be proud of me and letting me tell my parents how I felt like I was doing in school and how I felt about my grades and teachers.”

and:

“I liked getting to present what I do well and what I would like to see myself do better and compare it to my teacher’s and parent’s ideas.”

and:

“The best part was that I got to lead it and it helped me talk about what I’m doing well and what I need help with. Plus it made me feel good to get feedback on my work in that very moment.”

and then:

“The best part was getting to show your parents what you’re proud of and getting to interact with your parents and teachers at the same time. I also think that it was nice to have your parents and teachers make a goal for you and to have them know what you’re doing in school so they can help.”

A lot of this feedback was really great to hear: a lot of the students were really nervous in the beginning and then in the end felt really empowered, which was great. Not every single student felt that way, of course, but it was nice to see a lot of shift in their perspective.

Parent Surveys

One of the really big things I wanted to make sure to do was to capture the way that parents experienced it, so when parents were there, we had a survey for them to fill out as soon as they were done with the conference. It was up on a desktop, there were no internet issues, they were logged in, they could do it on their way out of the room, to find out how they felt about it. And I got some great input from them.

100% of parents preferred this model to a traditional model, which was pretty surprising. They all loved it. Some, I think, were maybe a little uncomfortable coming in, and then they stayed and loved it.

  • “The best part was hearing about my son’s goals that he has set for himself. Hearing him talk about what he wants for his future and the path he has taken to make sure he can reach his goals.”
  • “The best part was watching my son taking control of his own education.”
  • “The best part was being able to use technology to participate remotely and share the material.”
  • “The best part was that it was led by my son!!”

SLCs and PLPs

The other thing that was just great about doing this with the PLP, hand-in-hand, was that we were able to get a goal or a wish that the parent has for their student, there that day. So they sat and listened to their child’s goals for themselves, and then they were able to articulate a goal or a wish that they had for them. And that gets immediately implemented into their PLP site, as something that we can watch over time. It was really nice to get that parent involvement, which is part of Act 77 and also best practice.

Did the SLC motivate students to set and achieve goals?

Really hard to answer. Really, really hard to answer. I asked students that question. I didn’t really know what else to do.

  • “Not really, but I am trying more this trimester then last one.”
  • “I think it made me more aware of my goals and more likely to start taking them seriously.”
  • “Definitely, because it gives you something to work towards, and makes all these hours in school not seem pointless.”
  • “I think the SLC makes more people aware of your goals and more people help you try harder to reach them.”

Although not concrete, really nice to hear that at least some students did see the connection between motivation from the conference, and their goal-setting.

Challenges

There were a lot of challenges.

Asking the right questions, is always really tough for me — asking the right questions on the forms themselves. Knowing how to ask the right questions so you’re getting the kind of answer that you’re looking for is really hard. So that, moving forward, is something that I’m constantly trying to improve. Not to get the feedback you want, but to get at the feedback.

Another challenge — and this is kind of a good thing and a bad thing — is that there’s so much out there around the state, that people are using for goal-setting and reflection and student-led conferences and sites — there’s tons of stuff and it’s all awesome. But you have to take it and make it your own. Otherwise it doesn’t feel authentic.

That was a challenge sometimes with me and my team. We had all this stuff and it was great, and it’s really about how do you make it your own?

Time. That’s basically the biggest challenge.

For me, it was really hard to know that it was going to be really messy and imperfect and it wasn’t all going to work out great. And maybe parents were going to be upset, or… who knew? But to just go with it and let it go. That was hard.

And the last was, of course, building in time for the students to prepare for the student-led conference. I spoke with my administrator at the beginning of the year, to let her know that this was my personal focus for the year and I would be taking some content time to help students prepare for their student-led conference. I’m an English teacher so it does make sense for reading/writing/communicating that this would fit in with my content, but I did have to have that conversation.

Highlights

As a team, we were able to conduct SLCs with 70% of our students and their families, as opposed to less than 40% last year using the traditional model.

In the past some combination of teachers had been in a room together doing conferences, and that limits you, right? You don’t have as many time slots. In this case what we did was homeroom teachers met with their students in their homeroom and their parents, and then if anyone was very concerned about meeting with the Math teacher we set up that too. Which was great.

  • And as I said before, parent involvement in our school is a big issue, so this is a huge jump for us: 100% of parents reported that they preferred the SLC model to the more traditional model. That was great to know.
  • Watching students interact with parents and teachers in this way was really insightful.
  • 83% of students were nervous or unsure about leading a SLC beforehand, but 71% reported that it went pretty good, or fantastic, afterward.
  • 50% of students had achieved one of their goals by the end of the first trimester.
  • At the SLC we were able to capture a goal that parents have for their students, which serves as a start to involving parents in the process.

Next Steps:

We’re working on carving out time in the spring to have a follow-up SLC, which has never been a part of our schedule before but it makes sense, to plan another evening, have the parents come back in and check in on goals.

We’re going to share our experience and results with the rest of our school, hoping that they too will pilot some SLCs next year.

We’re going to continue our PLP work, especially around goal-setting; also a very messy process.

And we’ll improve the SLC process on Team Extreme next year.

That’s pretty much it.

Student-led conferences image by Clive Warden; licensed under Creative Commons 3.0 (reuse-attribution).

 

Innovative Edtech Classrooms

Rethinking the traditional school schedule

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Keep students centered in the conversation

rethinking the traditional school scheduleWhen it becomes time to talk about scheduling you can often feel the tension rise as everyone’s values and beliefs are put on the table in the attempt to make everyone happy.

In many cases the term “everyone” often refers to adults and omits what works best for students.

Continue reading Rethinking the traditional school schedule →

Self-directed learning, The 21st Century Classroom

Personalized STEM learning at Essex High School

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New podcast episode: Essex STEM Academy

student-guided stem learningIn this episode, we talk with math educator and STEM Academy leader Lea Ann Smith about Essex High School’s STEM Academy and take a look inside a program that lets students pursue projects in medicine, engineering, computer science, mathematics or biology — by working with community partners during the school day.

Continue reading Personalized STEM learning at Essex High School →