Executive Summary

The inception of SPARK Academy at Cowart Elementary School began in a discussion in the fall of 2015. Athens City Schools began, in earnest, to discuss our district efforts to address the STEM pipeline leading from Athens into our regional employers. Our district wanted to assure we were producing graduates that would be innovative problem solvers. These discussions led to the conclusion that if we truly wanted to develop these skills in our learners, we would need to begin from the moment our students entered our system: kindergarten.

The 2016-2017 school year was our pilot year for SPARK Academy. This “school within a school” was housed at Cowart Elementary. Cowart was chosen to house the program due to district concerns about low enrollment at the school. Students applied and were chosen based on a weighted lottery, to assure that the demographics of the SPARK student population closely matched the demographics of the school district as a whole. We began with five classroom teachers, one STEM specialist, and 101 students from across the school district. We are now in our third full year as a school-wide STEM focused school. Our school currently houses sixteen classrooms, four each in grades kindergarten through third, with 300 students. SPARK Academy is a Title One school, with fifty-two percent of our students classified as being economically disadvantaged.

During the 2017-2018 school year, we made a whole school transition to a STEM themed academy, SPARK. SPARK stands for Scientific Project-based Academic Research by Kids. The transition from Cowart Elementary to SPARK Academy at Cowart occurred as our professionals made three big shifts in our approach to student learning. First, we moved from traditional literacy-centered classrooms to STEM-focused content as a means of engaging students. Second, we shifted from teaching content as isolated subjects to a more integrated curriculum where we created thematic units of study. Third, we transformed from the traditional teacher delivered content to a model that encourages curiosity, questioning, and discovery.

We believe that an approach to student learning through a STEM lens increases motivation and engagement. When taken out of context, lessons may seem disconnected and meaningless to students. Using a STEM approach allows our teachers to choose fiction and non-fiction books with STEM themes, connect mathematics concepts to the real world, and create authentic learning experiences through Project Based Learning.

Our model of teaching and learning encourages student curiosity, develops questioning, is driven by student discovery and research, fosters reflection and revision, and shares learning with all.

We feel our students can best explain the qualities that makes SPARK Academy such a special school.