SCHOOL WEBSITE

PROGRAM(S) PARTICIPATED IN: Sprint 2014, Solution 2014-2015

TEAM MEMBERS

Gerardo Arriaga, Principal
Jaclyn Leman, Teacher
Halina Mikos, Teacher
Sarah O’Brien, Teacher
Jose Frausto, Teacher
Jonathan O’Sullivan, Teacher
Mary Maloney, Teacher

ABOUT THE SCHOOL

School Type: Neighborhood
Grades served: Pre-K-5
Enrollment: 1046

PROBLEM

We needed to find a way to move our meeting students to exceeding.

SOLUTION

We created a Genius Center in our classrooms to give students a choice in guiding their own learning.

KEY LEARNING

The process our team went through when creating a solution was really taking a deep look into our problem and then asking our students their opinion on how to better reach them. In doing interviews with our students we found that they wanted more choice when it came to challenging themselves in the classroom. Through these interviews we also discovered that many of our exceeding students were early finishers. This gave us the idea to create a center for them to go to that they controlled their choices of enrichment activities.

BY THE NUMBERS

• Hours input by team: 60+
• Students impacted: 62
• Additional educators impacted: 8
• Community members: 0

REFLECTION

We learned through our data that are students really responded to having the opportunity to choose their own activities to work on in class. We found through our qualitative data that the students felt empowered in their own education.

PLANS TO SCALE

We intend to scale our Genius Centers for both greater and deeper impact within our student base through the following steps:  

1. Double the number of classrooms with Genius Centers in the 4th and 5th Grade.  
2. Increase the depth and breadth of activities available to students.  One impediment to this year’s activities was our lack of experience; after having seen how our students progressed and learned with our current activities, we are able to append our current activities to better suit our students.
3. Create a greater number of self-directed activities.