The Winslow Unified School District has had many new initiatives this year with many of them being very successful while others need a bit of tweaking to better help students. The district is committed to providing students with a well-rounded education that meets their individual needs and helps them to succeed in the future.
One of the district’s most innovative initiatives that has been put in place this year is the Focus Rooms program, which is available to students at the elementary schools. The focus rooms are designed to provide a safe and supportive environment where students can take a break from the classroom setting when they are misbehaving. Instead of punishment, the focus rooms are intended to address the reasons behind a student’s behavior, allowing them a moment to calm down and reflect. This approach has been found to be much more effective than traditional disciplinary action, which can often take students out of the classroom for an unnecessary amount of time.
The focus rooms will help students build skills to regulate their own emotions, rather than just punishing them for not having those skills. The district hopes that by reinforcing this practice from kindergarten to sixth grade, students will have the tools they need to self-regulate their emotions by the time they reach junior high. By providing students with a supportive environment to manage their emotions, the district is helping to build a strong foundation for their future success.
Another exciting initiative in the district is the freshmen cohort program, which took 50 freshmen from across the academic spectrum, including accelerated students and those with individual education plans (IEPs). The program is based on a project-based approach to education, where students will complete more hands-on projects and teachers will have a “whole student” approach. This means that teachers will communicate heavily with one another to ensure that each student is on track in all subjects, rather than just focusing on their performance in their own class. The project-based approach puts students in groups in which they have to decide how to use their group’s strengths and weaknesses to their projects advantage.
The classes in the cohort program will be more connected, with all teachers working together to plan schedules and assignments that support the standards and grades of multiple classes. This collaboration allows teachers to adjust the schedule as needed to meet the needs of each class on a given day. For example, if there is a big project in science, the time spent in English or math classes may be reduced to accommodate it.
The students in the cohort program are held to the same state standards as every other student, but they are given more of a voice in how those standards are taught. Last semester, the students were asked to design an island, which fulfilled requirements from multiple classes, including writing, 3D modeling, science, math, and presentation skills.
According to Winslow High School principal Sal Hernandez, “Kids change, and as educators we need to change our approach to education to account for that change. Students are not engaged in the typical classroom like they once were.” Principal Hernandez also notes that students in the cohort program are much more engaged, with higher attendance and a faster rate of comprehension. He also said students in the cohort are also much less likely to have disciplinary action than the students in regular classes.
This program is not perfect, any teacher in the cohort will tell you that, which is often the case for new experimental types of programs but they are all dedicated to finding what works best for students and the cohort program is showing incredible promise for the future of education.
WUSD is also making a number of important infrastructure improvements to support students and families. One of the biggest projects is the replacement of the lights at Emil Nasser stadium with LEDs, which will also be in color, so they will be able to program the lights to change colors for certain things like a touchdown or field goal, but also they can program color routines for marching band or cheer with the lights, any event held there could use the color in interesting ways to add more depth to the performances and enhance school spirit.
The district is also resurfacing the track this summer. All elementary schools received new playground equipment, the last of which was installed at Washington Elementary School last week along with a new slab of concrete for their basketball court.
In addition, the district is upgrading the heating and air conditioning in the high school gym and replacing the carpet in the elementary schools. There are also several roof repairs in the works around the district, the junior high and high school both are waiting till the weather permits to finish their roof, it needs to be consistently above 40 degrees for the glue to be able to stick. There is also a couple of other roof projects at the district office and transportation that have also been approved.
The district is also discussing possibly investing into an electronic door scanning system for the schools that would allow law enforcement to enter the building without having to be let in. For instance, in the case of an active shooter a teacher wouldn’t have to leave their classroom to open the door for law enforcement, the officers would have a key card that would grant them access. The system they are potentially considering would also allow them to summon emergency services with a press of a button.
WUSD has a dedicated staff of people trying to make the district as wonderful as they possibly can for their students, and with how expensive many of these construction projects have become they feel lucky they are able to have so many things in development all at once for the students.
