Ms. Laura Fleischer Proaño is a Spanish Teacher, Global Scholars Program Advisor and World Language Department Chair at Highlands High School in Natrona Heights, northeast of Pittsburgh. She actively contributes to ABC CREATE, a focused, regional approach to partner, assess, and expand STEAM Education in the Alle-Kiski area. She has worked, lived, studied and/or traveled to more than 30 countries around the world including Ecuador where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer for three years. Prior to teaching Spanish, she worked in the field of international development in Africa, Asia and Latin America for 10 years with a focus on education, health and microfinance.
I learned about EarthTime through professional development with ABC CREATE and the CMU CREATE Lab in 2018 or 2019. I loved that the tool introduced students to big data sets and not only allowed them to visualize that data with interactive layers on maps, but it also enabled them to create their own.
Developing Human Rights & Refugee Stories with EarthTime
> Learning Pathway with five activities
In an effort to support teachers to create innovative lessons that help students develop future ready skills, ABC CREATE invited teachers to work together to develop learning pathways. I collaborated with Highlands High School social studies teacher Michelle Dickerson to create a learning pathway where students create, analyze and compare global refugee situations with Earth Time. I began integrating this unit into my CHS Spanish IV class during the 2019-2020 school year and have continued to do so every year since. Students who participated in the Human Rights and Refugee Unit using EarthTime were asked to reflect on the World Economic Forum Top 10 Skills of 2025 that they used during the project.
Highlands High School, Spanish teacher Laura Fleischer Proaño's students made data narratives using the EarthTime tool. Through her Spanish class, the students researched causes and effects of migration, including refugee migration from Spanish speaking countries. In many cases, the students found that people were fleeing their countries due to instability and violence. The students then learned how to highlight these factors using EarthTime and to write narratives (in Spanish) about the refugee situation in various countries.
This example takes “data” out of the technology or data classroom. The primary focus of this course was learning the Spanish language and culture in Spanish speaking countries. By combining existing curriculum with our data tools, students were able to understand how big data is used for storytelling, and how several different conclusions can be drawn from the same data. We are going to build on what this classroom has done by working with additional Spanish teachers throughout West Virginia who will work as a cohort to create EarthTime narratives with their students.
Laura Presenting Student Work
October 21, 2022 to Nearby Data Educators
I have had the opportunity to share this exciting curriculum with Pennsylvania educators at the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association annual conference in 2021 in a session entitled: Develop Data Fluency, Global Competence and Future Ready Skills: Human Rights and Refugee Unit. Additionally, I presented this work at the during West Liberty University’s Connected Classroom Virtual Learning Series in the summer of 2021, ABC CREATE Showcase in 2022, a Nearby Data Project workshop in West Liberty University’s Center for Arts and Education in the fall of 2022 and a Penn State New Kensington Future Readiness Conference in 2023.
EarthTime Post-Project Student Survey