Evansville school provides ‘community of learning’

by Jenni Luckett
Wednesday, January 2, 2008 12:15 PM MST

“Good morning!” Principal Donna Mathern calls over the intercom at Evansville Elementary School. “We have some more celebrations today!”

Cheers erupt throughout the school as she reads off the names of students who have recently accomplished individual goals.

This is the way nearly every morning begins at Evansville: with school-wide celebration.

The pre-K through fifth-grade school prides itself on creating a sense of community, where each student is empowered to personalize and stretch his or her education in a supportive environment.

“We celebrate forward progress all the time,” Mathern said. “We believe that little steps equal big steps.”

As the school looks into the future, when it may be eligible to construct a new building, it hopes to extend that community to a broader audience, creating a space where children and adults have an opportunity to connect and grow through learning.

Daily 5

On a recent Thursday morning, second-graders in Tiffany Meisinger’s class spread around the room for Daily 5, a technique the school adopted from Paradise Valley Elementary School.

Students break into small groups for reading, and by rotating through the groups, each has a chance to read alone, read to a group, listen to someone reading, write and work on vocabulary.

Meanwhile, Meisinger showed off some of her students’ goal notebooks, part of the school’s Goal Busters program. The program is a model for the district, as it moves into goal-setting as part of the district improvement plan.

Students are assessed constantly and work with teachers to set their own data-based goals throughout the year. Each time a student meets a goal n- no matter how big or small -n the accomplishment is recognized in morning announcements and in the school’s weekly newsletter.

Meisinger’s class recently received results from an assessment, and each student updated goal notebooks accordingly.

“We talk about where they’d like to be and why they want to meet that goal,” Meisinger said, displaying the pages in one student’s book. “She told me she wanted to move one step so she’s somewhere that’s not too easy but not so hard that she struggles.”

“Kids learn by doing”

Setting personal, achievable goals helps personalize each student’s education and is one part of giving them the power to succeed, Mathern explained. The other part is giving students an opportunity to learn in an environment where education is hands-on and meaningful, she said.

“We really want to get kids thinking,” she explained. “How are they constructing meaning?”

In one fifth-grade classroom, for example, students work through a series of lessons using the school’s math curriculum, Bridges.

Students start the day with their “calendars,” which are posters with a new problem for each day. Students sit on the floor around the calendar while one of their peers holds up the geometric pattern for that day’s shape.

Students take turns making their way forward to draw symmetry lines on the shape. After each attempt, students in the class vote whether they agree and whisper their opinions to a partner.

When the answer is right, the entire class hisses, “Yes!” and claps in approval.

“We try to develop a community of learners,” Mathern explained. “Kids learn to say, ‘I like your ideas, but I respectfully disagree.’”

A little later in the morning, the lessons continue with a rousing game of geometry riddles. Each student has cut out a variety of shapes, and clues revealed on the white board help them select the right one to answer the riddle.

“It is so danged awesome,” Mathern said. “Kids learn by doing. They do math, they don’t have math done to them.”

Incorporating the community

Mathern said that Evansville staff members would like to take the successes of their “community of learning” even further in the near future.

Evansville is one of several schools in the Natrona County School District hoping to get a new building in the next several years. Mathern has high hopes for how the new building could support the nature of the school’s learning community.

“This building was built in another era,” she said. “We’re tied to squares and desks, but we’re about active, interactive learning.

She said she sees a future school where students can spread out to work in teams and individually through hands-on lessons. She’d like to see the nearby river incorporated into the school design to provide an enhanced opportunity for science education.

And, she wants a school that speaks to both the students and the broader community.

“This building is being built for the kids who will really live in the 21st Century,” she said. “I want a building where kids are inspired when they come here, and the adults, too.

“I foresee the school as a place of learning for whoever might come. Maybe we even have adult learning. Maybe we have lectures in the evenings. It isn’t just a school for pre-K through 5. It’s a community school.”

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