ASU gathers highly effective classroom teachers to share their successes
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In the Gadsden Elementary School District, near Arizona’s border with Mexico, most of the students are poor, and many are English language learners.
Yet this district has embraced high-level math education, with dozens of students earning college credit before they even get to high school, according to Homero Chavez, director of the early-college program in the district.
Chavez was among a group of educators who came to Arizona State University last week to share their best practices and learn more about how they can leverage ASU’s resources to help their students.
The teachers were part of this year’s ASU Impact Corps, a program of the ASU Helios Decision Center for Educational Excellence. The program is possible because of the sophisticated data tracking in the center, which identified public high schools whose graduates were particularly successful in STEM disciplines at the state’s three public universities.
The center reached out to the schools, talked to teachers and identified what they did in the classroom to prepare their students for success in college and in careers.
Several were invited to join the ASU Impact Corps, creating a network of mentors to share resources and best practices around the state, according to Dawn Foley, program manager at the ASU Helios Decision Center for Educational Excellence, a partnership between ASU and Helios Education Foundation.
This is the second year of the program, and this year recognized 13 teachers and two districts — Gadsden and Chandler Unified — at a three-day retreat. Chandler was honored for its initiative focused on student success in math, which involved more teacher training and more college-level courses.
“The goal of this event is to bring superstars together to learn from them and for them to learn about the tools that we have at the ASU center to support the work that they're continuing to do in their communities,” Foley said.
“Ultimately, our goal is to continue to get more students to be successful when they come to us at the university level across the state.”
The educators visited the Helios Decision Theater in Phoenix to learn how to use data visualizations in their own work.
“We work with these teachers to take this back to their communities and to share with their teams and others in their community about the resources that the decision center offers,” Foley said.
In the Gadsden initiative, teachers identify high-performing students starting in fourth grade. They’re then offered after-school tutoring and high-level math coursework.
The students in the early-college program also take the ACT and are enrolled in courses at Arizona Western College in Yuma.
“We’re enrolling kids as early as in sixth grade in pre-calculus,” Chavez said. Others are enrolled in algebra and English 101.
“We have seen a lot of growth. We have seen a lot of kids that have graduated with engineering degrees and medical degrees.”
Chavez said that one student graduated with an associate’s degree at age 14. A student who participated in the first cohort, Raul Rojas, is now a teacher in the program at Southwest Junior High School.
Since 2007, more than 3,500 students have taken the math courses, and the program has evolved to a coordinated system for identifying proficient students, Chavez said.
“Every school in America and here in Arizona has kids that are waiting to be discovered. They're waiting to be challenged,” he said.
John Morris, who teaches engineering and software and app design at Casa Grande Union High School, is part of the Impact Corps. He developed a four-year engineering pathway at his school, based on his own experience as an engineering major in college, plus his 20 years of experience in the automotive manufacturing industry.
“I bring those things together to create a curriculum that I think would best prepare students for the real world of work, and also to prepare them to come here to ASU or any university, and in that first year of engineering, just to glide through it because they've been there and they've done that with me,” he said.
Morris said it’s important for his students to see what they’re capable of.
“I think having a place where they can go, where they feel safe and where they can build on their successes starts to change their outlook on life. And rather than looking down on life and not seeing themselves going anywhere outside of Pinal County, they see themselves as engineers while they're still in high school and they build up their confidence in being successful in their projects,” he said.
“And that's really important. It's cool to see kids who have never been out of Pinal County end up coming to university, majoring in engineering, majoring in some hard science and traveling the world.”
Devin Ditmore, a chemistry teacher at Round Valley High School in the rural White Mountains, was part of Impact Corps visit. He’s happy he learned about the data-visualization resources available to teachers.
“There’s tons of data now available where we can really quickly identify problems or identify areas of need," he said.
“The example is me being here — they found me by looking at the numbers, not by, you know, ‘Oh, he's a really good guy.’ It's based on data. So that's pretty cool.”
Ditmore acknowledges the state’s reputation for education.
“When you see the school rankings nationwide, we're always kind of toward the bottom in terms of spending,” he said.
“I’ve always felt like we do the most with the least. So I'm totally on board with the mission and always have been.”
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