Educators today are challenged with reinventing and transforming schools to meet the needs of today’s students — your children. If you attended the screening and panel discussion of Most Likely to Succeed, you know that we, as a school community, face questions such as:

 

How can we make school, the system created in the 19th Century, relevant for today’s learners? How can we best develop students’ ability to communicate, collaborate, critically think, and be creative? How do we prepare our kids for jobs that don’t even exist yet, in fields that may not yet exist?

Improving Education with SMARTLabs™

Over the past year and a half, we have investigated the possibility of integrating a SMARTLab™ into our library space. Shepard and Caruso introduced STEM and Communication Media Arts (CMA) labs last school year; those classes are the most popular electives in the schools. An elementary SMARTLab at Walden would offer an age-appropriate combination of STEM and CMA experiences for our students.

 

Walden staff members have toured other schools that have these facilities and use engaging curricula to inspire students. We observed that the labs:

 

• Facilitate a personalized learning environment – one in which all students can succeed.
• Increase self-directed, independent learning, by creating space for students to explore content from within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.  
• Promote collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and inquisitiveness.
• Provide an opportunity for our students to solve real-world, authentic problems.

 

Please watch the video about SMARTLabs, and hear from teachers, students and educational leaders who are excited to be able to work in these labs.

The Bottom Line

A proposed plan to renovate the elementary school libraries was discussed at the Board of Education Facility Development Committee on November 2nd. The Walden PTO Executive Board is making a generous commitment of $100,000, plus any money raised from a new fundraiser taking place in April, called a Fun Run, for this SMARTLab project. All proceeds from the Fun Run will go to our SMARTLab. In that fundraiser, students will seek out relatives, friends, and neighbors to “sponsor” them, pledging a dollar amount for every lap that the student can run around a track. It will be a fun, engaging, and high-energy event that students will love!

 

Our PTOs contribution is not the full amount needed due to their funding of recent capital projects, such as the new primary playground and drinking fountains throughout our building. We are $30,000 short of our needed funds to build the SMARTLab this summer.

 

Here are ways you can help:

 

• If your company has a sponsorship program, or a charitable contribution program, please put me in touch with them.
• If you frequent businesses in the area that you think would be interested in helping, please contact them.
• If you wish to make a personal donation of any size to help fund the SMARTLab, please contact PTO Presidents Dana Emering (danawithelite@yahoo.com) and Melissa Hafner (mbhafner29@yahoo.com).

 

Our goal will be to get full funding (or just the financial commitment) by December 14th to have this lab installed during the summer of 2016, ready for use next school year. The sooner we reach our fundraising goal, the sooner we can begin our path to becoming a 21st century school that engages, inspires, and empowers students to think deep, dream big, and reach their goals.