"Our job is not to prepare students for something. Our job is to help students prepare themselves for anything" ~ A.J. Juliani
At. B.B. Comer Elementary School our educators have utilized student driven, relevant learning opportunities as the primary lens for focusing instruction to provide authentic learning experiences for the students we serve. This project based instructional focus is the rock solid foundation from which student and teacher agency has grown. In 2016, the school directed its focus on enhancing the school-wide curriculum through the incorporation of STEAM based instruction. The school’s leadership team, comprised of administration, support personnel, and teachers, led research into solutions to their complex problem of creating a STEAM program from scratch. Their solution began with restructuring the school’s focus by enhancing the mission and vision of BBCES to embrace innovative practices and a focus on school wide STEAM. The launch of the #TeamSTEAM initiative would initiate a three year growth plan that included developing a structured STEAM curriculum that would lay the foundation for primary concepts, provide job embedded professional development to staff on cross-curricular implementation, and provide tailored coaching for standards based STEAM in the content area classroom. B.B. Comer Elementary culminated this transition by transforming their outdated media center, as well as an unused classroom, into innovative spaces fitting of transformational work. The integration of STEAM has led to student engagement in coding, 3-D printing, robotics, and the hands on application of the engineering and design process.
When “Building Brighter Futures,” B.B. Comer Elementary does not simply focus on developing a student’s academic success but incorporates a focus on advancing the leadership ability of each student. When preparing students for jobs of the future where requirements may be unknown, it is imperative that students are provided opportunities to cultivate the soft skills necessary to succeed in any workplace environment. B.B.C.E.S provides collaborative learning environments, a focus on moving forward, reflection driven teaching models, as well as opportunities to lead not only their peers, but faculty and stakeholders. As part of leadership development, our students are encouraged to set goals for themselves as well as for their grade level. In order to promote a unified effort toward improvement, incentives are provided individually and collectively to recognize the successes of all.
With any successful mindset or culture shift comes the necessity for high quality leadership, guidance and training. Quality professional development opportunities truly sparked the success of the #TeamSTEAM movement at B.B.C.E.S. by providing teachers with scaffolded, structured guidance into the world of cross-curricular STEAM. The original design for this movement was a three year progression of training with a focus on building both teacher and student agency. Year one provided a full time STEAM teacher in a STEM LAB setting with a full rotation of students that made up the entire student body. During this first phase of the initiative, the STEAM Teacher built foundational knowledge of STEAM concepts using a newly formulated coding progression combined with PBL experiences. This phase allowed regular classroom teachers the opportunity to watch STEAM based instruction and learn about concepts through active immersion. Year Two initiated a co-taught STEAM program between every classroom teacher and the STEAM Leader. This small change allowed all PreK-6 educators an opportunity to help plan, lead, and evaluate STEM work with the consistent guidance of a leader in STEM instruction. Year Three led to the full implementation of STEAM based instruction school wide through the implementation of job embedded coaching in the areas of STEAM, Literacy, and Technology. This mentorship has led to weekly STEM activities in classrooms across campus as well as classroom facilitation of lessons in coding and robotics.
B.B. Comer Elementary is a model for any school with goals of developing a high quality Inquiry Based culture. Our school has hosted visitors locally and from around the state to speak with our students, teachers, and leaders about their BBCES experience. The feedback received by all stakeholders help us to continually self-reflect and grow in all areas related to student opportunity and performance. Like many schools in our esteemed district one time visits quickly become larger visits from educators around the area and the state looking to spark similar change in their own schools and students. We pride ourselves on the growth we have made and our students truly enjoy sharing why they are leaders to learn from.
B.B. Comer Elementary students are immersed daily in opportunities for inquiry in their classroom, Makerspace, and/or STEAM Lab. Our commitment to quality STEM integration includes developing the necessary "soft skills" needed for long term success. The goals for instruction include building resilience, developing empathy, and cultivating focused observers. We long to create a student community of risk takers, problem finders, innovators, and networkers. We have come to find that students were accustomed to structured, organized, predictable learning environments and though they thrived in that environment our educators realized a more realistic "real world" experience would enhance their current learning opportunities. Learning is a process of asking questions, developing solutions, making mistakes and making corrections. In order for our students to grow in this way we had to provide opportunities for productive play and allow them to create.
Due to this mindset shift, "Makerspace" is a hot spot for all ages at B.B. Comer Elementary. The maker movement has been defined as a learning by doing movement that has captivated educators nationwide. "Tinkering" is a powerful form of learning by doing, and our makerspace provides valuable opportunities for students to take full advantage of their creative freedom. Students always have voice and choice during maker time from choosing their materials, to choosing who to work with. Students must make wise choices to successfully fulfill the challenge requirements. Students can choose to work with tools such as: legos, snap circuits, Kinex, Magnetic Kits, Story Building Boxes as well as recycled or repurposed materials. During this time students are provided feedback by their teacher and media specialist. These adults are facilitators and are there to support students in their endeavors by providing feedback, materials and any additional resources needed for success. These facilitators do an excellent job providing students with curriculum based challenges and problems to solve that lead to built in performance based assessments of these "Soft Skills".
The Innovation Station, or STEAM Lab, is a place where bright ideas are born and is a space where creativity and innovation thrive. All students in grades PreK-6th Grade receive STEAM acceleration as part of their education pathway at BBCES. Their time in the STEAM Lab is strategically problem focused and is tied directly to their current units of study through co-planning partnerships with our STEAM Coach. These spaces, though inquiry driven, are still lead by strategic instruction and provide intentional "productive struggle". Our STEAM teacher co-plans lessons with every grade level that supports and enhances classroom content. The STEAM teacher and classroom teacher are collaborative partners in curriculum development and delivery. STEAM acceleration time proves to be a learning experience for both students and teachers, and all concepts and activities presented are considered job-embedded professional learning.
Our commitment to Building Brighter Futures has provided opportunities to make our school "learner centered," and not simply learning centered by spotlighting student talent and ability like never before. These opportunities for problem solving and creativity have allowed our teachers, parents and community members to witness firsthand what dynamic students are here at home.
Students use resources like Makey Makey kits, Dash and Dots, Bee Bots, Ozobots, Lego We-Do sets, Hummingbird Kits and many others (along with Scratch and Tinkercad) to build the necessary skills required to excel in all areas of digital literacy including code.
Teachers and students at BBCES utilize a plethora of technology tools to enhance instruction and increase rigor and relevance. Tools like Quizlet, Google Apps, Nearpod, SeeSaw, Flipgrid, Screencastify, and many others allow teachers to take technology from simple consumption to a powerful means of creation for students in Pre-K to 6th grade.
Building a strong academic foundation for students is the primary mission and vision for B.B. Comer Elementary School. In order to ensure their foundation is solid, more than just authentic learning experiences have to be in place. For this reason, BBCES implements a variety of challenging and scaffolding academic supports to ensure all students have the opportunity to be successful in their course work. Students are exposed to rigorous curriculum hosted by the Alabama Reading Initiative Organization and the Alabama Math Science and Technology Initiative (AMSTI) among many others. These research based, standards driven curriculums allow students to be immersed in content through critical thinking and collaboration every day. In addition, our gifted curriculums provide proficient students the opportunity to challenge themselves with projects, activities and content that strategically prepares them for excellence in the rigorous curriculum they will receive at the high school level. Here at BBCES, we do not only provide supports for academically inclined students; we also incorporate literacy programs such as Boost Phonics, Blast Phonics, Reading Horizons, Ready Reading, Moby Max, and Mastery Connect to help our students accelerate their growth in their academic journey toward proficiency. B.B. Comer Elementary provides collaborative learning environments, a focus on falling forward, reflection driven teaching models, as well as opportunities to lead not only their peers, but faculty and stakeholders. As part of leadership development, BBCES students are encouraged to set goals for themselves as well as for their grade level. In order to promote a unified effort toward improvement, incentives are provided individually and collectively to recognize the successes of all.
To begin our journey, many of our teachers joined the district level STEAM Cohort geared toward providing educators with the knowledge and resources necessary to implement STEAM across all content areas. The innovative spirit of the cohort participants, led to the creation of content based STEAM challenges in their classroom’s. Since that time, we have put the TEAM in STEAM by integrating this type of authentic learning across all disciplines in all grade levels. Teachers at BBCES have never been more passionate about instruction and the students about learning. Students in math are using area and volume to design the most cost efficient and customer friendly popcorn containers for local movie theaters. In English students are bringing life to retelling fairytales by coding dash bots to give life to the rising action, falling action and climax and in science, students are coding robots to perform simple tasks. These are just a few examples of how formerly disengaged students are now empowered to demonstrate their learning in new ways.
Teachers at BBCES are involved in continuous job embedded professional development opportunities led by both school staff, students and outside educators. Educators are encouraged to share their successes with their colleagues through grade level meetings, faculty lunch and learns, faculty meetings and via public presenting opportunities like the county sponsored STEAM By Design Symposium. Teachers at BBCES even lead digital and remote opportunities via Twitter Edchats, PD in Your Pjs, and as Dynamic Learning Project Innovation Advocates. Proudly, our school is set apart from other schools nationwide as a Dynamic Learning Project member, an affiliate of Google for Education, that trains and maintains a full time technology coach on our campus. This coach is charged with leading professional development as well as guiding all core teachers through coaching cycles focused on increasing impactful use of technology within the classroom.
