Transformational Teaching Showcase

Featured Projects

Experiential learning can build investment in academics for students. Through the Falcon Network, students will have the opportunity to investigate, research, and present community news pieces while reinforcing literary concepts from daily lessons. Corps members Hayley Lim and Kaitlyn Wesseling's vision for the Falcon Network is a student run mentorship program in which students of all ages plan and facilitate a student broadcasting system. Students will work together to both research and write feature stories on community events, weather/meteorology, and current events within both our community, city, and world. In conducting this research students are exposing themselves to new standards that are often overlooked and not taught in-depth while also integrating literacy skills into script writing and reading on-camera.

As our world changes around us, it is important that educators have access to high quality professional development opportunities. By support our teachers’ growth, we support student growth. The Culturally Responsive Book Club by Lindsay Floyd will provide multiple books and establish book clubs grounded in culturally responsive pedagogy for educators in her school and district.

Movement can play a key role in supporting student academic growth. In a time where students may be spending a majority of their day indoors, it is important that students have spaces like the Action Based Learning Lab at the center of this project. Carma Barlow, principal of Santa Fe South The Hills Elementary, and Nicole Silvestri, assistant principal of Santa Fe South The Hills Elementary, seek to expand and improve their current lab. This space allows students to experience the connection between physical movement and brain activity so that they are able to better learn and retain academic materials. They also plan to open up the lab to families a few evenings a month to encourage stress relief and a healthy lifestyle.

Video games aren’t just for kids anymore! Esports have taken the world by storm with worldwide tournaments and full time career opportunities in operations, business, and technology. GG US Grant led by alum Nick Casorio, is an esports team at U.S. Grant High School. This esports team provides opportunities for high school students to learn about this thriving ecosystem and prepare for post-secondary opportunities in STEM. Through Nick's transformational teaching project, he hopes to bring in state of the art equipment for his students to use. This will allow him to expand his team, offer a wider selection of esports games, and will allow his students to prepare for competition at the highest level of excellence.

Shifting to virtual learning has challenged us to build skill sets of technology integration, student ownership, and arts integration. For this reason, we propose a project with three components: establish a school-wide morning announcements club, launch a House logo design competition and student-led production of apparel for all member in our house system, and a taskforce of students (from all grades) will be recruited to design and produce yard signs for our families to post outside their homes. In doing so, we hope to modify the landscape of our neighborhood and highlight student homes as “SHA Satellite Campuses,” centering relationships at the heart of our work.