We believe in a shared vision for STEM: Standard Four. Therefore, SPARK believes in shared leadership. This core practice has helped our STEM program implementation. Our first goal was to establish a school-wide mission and vision statement.

Mission

• We are committed to developing the whole child and empowering students to achieve excellence by engaging them in their learning.

Vision

• To create lifelong learners, critical thinkers, and responsible citizens through interdisciplinary teaching who will embrace differences that make us unique while maintaining a global perspective and protecting our environment.

This mission and vision guide our school. We have implemented STEM planning with our PTO, leadership team, and STEM grade-level teams. Weekly planning with teachers has ensured that we share and support school goals. Teachers can share and collaborate on best practices. It also allows for vertical planning to support one grade level to another.

The leadership team includes the Principal, Assistant Principals, STEM Program Specialist, and ELA Instructional Coach. The leaders meet monthly to plan and discuss STEM implementation, teacher professional development, and coaching support. There is also a STEM Leadership team that helps support the vision. Shared leadership is embedded throughout our STEM Implementation.

SPARK uses district employees who promote integrating technology. Our Educational Technology Specialist supports STEM implementation by providing professional learning and modeling best practices within the school and classrooms.

In addition to a STEM committee, we recognize the importance of our parents' understanding and involvement to have success in our STEM initiative. A PTO parent representative, Heena Patel, is our STEM liaison who works specifically with the STEM specialist to support SPARK STEM initiatives and to encourage parent understanding and support of the program's implementation. This is also strong support in our PTO's budget that strongly supports our STEM initiative (Makerspace, STEM Resources, STEM Lab). It also is present in the goals and priorities of our school. Our school's governance team, Go-Team, which is comprised of teachers, parents, and community members, places emphasis on the importance of STEM through our school's priorities. The school spotlights our initiatives on the school news.