Officials with the Sulphur Springs School District kicked off Creative Learning for All in Sulphur Springs (CLASS), a foundation aimed at providing resources for the district’s schools, on Thursday night.
CLASS is a foundation that, “provides financial and community resources to enhance and promote educational excellence, equity, enrichment, and well-being for all students,” according to the CLASS mission statement.
“We are trying to bring programs that teachers have brought into their own classrooms, but there’s not enough funding to bring it to the whole grade level or the whole school,” said Shelley Weinstein, board member of both CLASS and the Sulphur Springs Union School District. “We want to bring it all the way across the district.”
District officials say that the three areas CLASS is set to focus and improve upon in their schools are creativity, innovation and wellness.
The focus on creativity is aimed at, “unleashing students artistic talents,” according to officials. During the inaugural event, that focus was displayed through Sulphur Springs students performing with musical instruments.
“We got a lot of great things going on with robotics and music, choir, and band, and we want all of the kids to have an equal opportunity to do that,” Weinstein said.
Innovation encapsulates hands-on learning opportunities for Sulphur Springs students. Students present showed off multiple projects of problem solving and ingenuity.
One project tasked students with adding weight to a paper cup, having it sink in water, but also balancing the weight with seltzer tablets to have the cup rise at an equal speed. The innovation exhibit students also displayed their filmmaking talents by recreating historical events with stop motion animations.
Another facet of innovating learning Sulphur Springs intends to integrate into their schools is learning-level programming. Sixth graders showed mechanical LEGO creations that could be programmed to change color, roll around and produce sound- effectively creating robotics from scratch.
The objective of student wellness is “to support all students physical and social-emotional needs.”
A point of pride for the Sulphur Springs School District is that two of the six state-wide fully-inclusive playgrounds, according to Sulphur Springs Superintendent Dr. Catherin Kawaguchi.
The fully-inclusive playground at Valley View Community School is not just for play, according to Dr. Kawaguchi, it is also used for physical treatment and learning. The city reportedly visited Valley View’s playground when planning the Canyon Country Park fully-inclusive public play area, according to officials.
See Related: Santa Clarita City Council Approves Park Security, More Funding For Inclusive Play Areas
On top of physical wellness, CLASS seeks to provide tools students can use to better express themselves to one another and to their teachers as well. A step in this direction is guiding school children to share “good things” in their lives and teachers giving positive affirmations to students.
Each morning, teachers greet each student at the door to welcome them to class, according to Julie McBride, principal at Fair Oaks Community School. Each class has their own social contract where students decide what is important to them that day- sharing, kindness, respect and many more.
CLASS sets its sights on approaching new challenges and allowing students to grow in more areas than academics.
“We need to make sure we are providing the foundations of course, but we also need to provide (students) with opportunities to grow in other areas, so that we’re developing the whole student- not just their brains with the basics of education,” said Denis DeFigueiredo, president of the Sulphur Springs Union School District Board. “CLASS will give the district the opportunity to have flexibility to bring in the creativity, innovation and wellness- so that we can address the needs of our students.”
These new horizons CLASS sets its sight on are meant for all students within the district- creativity, innovation and wellness are set to be integrated into the classroom, not extra-curricular.
“A student who is not well, is not learning,” DeFigueiredo added. “A student who is not creative, is not reaching all of their potential. And a student who doesn’t innovate, stagnates.”
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