Warsaw Schools To Double Number Of STEM, DLI Schools
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Of Warsaw Community Schools’ eight elementaries, one is a Dual Language Immersion (DLI) school and one is a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) academy.
Those numbers will double over the next few years as Leesburg Elementary looks to become a DLI school and Madison Elementary will become a STEM-focused school. Eisenhower already is a DLI school and Washington has been a STEM?academy for a number of years.
Nathan Polston, Leesburg principal, told the Warsaw School Board Wednesday that being bilingual will open many different doors for his students.
“We’re continuing to look at increasing cultural sensitivity and empathy, helping our students be proud of where they’re coming from. We want them to be proud of their native language, and help them develop that native language,” he said. It also would help the other students to accept the English Language Learners (ELL) from other cultures and as people. “It’s going to help our students in a lot of different areas: developing cognizant skills, memory, attention, problem solving, language skills. Learning that second language really helps our students in all those areas.”
Polston said Leesburg’s ELL population is about one-third of its student body, with a majority of that population being Spanish speaking.
Leesburg’s DLI will be a balance of native and English speakers, allowing students to play multiple roles. “At times they’re going to be language models, and other times they’re going to be language learners,”?Polston said.
He said research shows that proficiency in a student’s native language increases long-term proficiency in the student’s second language.
“We’re never getting that proficiency in the native language because they were so focused on learning English, their Spanish got left behind. They weren’t able to read it, they weren’t able to write it, they didn’t speak it.?It started becoming a broken Spanish,” Polston said, noting that helping students be proficient in their native language will help them become proficient in a second language.
This school year has been Leesburg Elementary’s exploratory year in DLI. It will begin implementing the DLI program in kindergarten during the 2018-19 school year, and every year after will add a grade level.
He said he already had a waiting list of parents interested in it from as far away as Fort Wayne.
Chief Academic Officer David Robertson said Leesburg’s and Eisenhower’s programs will differ in that Leesburg is a two-way program. Two-way immersion combines students from two language groups for instruction in both of their languages instead of in just one language.
Ben Barkey, Madison principal, said his school has already done a few things to get going on becoming a STEM school, including creating a STEM council, hosted parent meetings and conducted a staff survey.
In the survey, 53 percent of staff said they were familiar with the STEM curriculum. Only 38 percent of the staff had some STEM professional development over the last few years.
Some of the concerns the staff had in transitioning to a STEM school included training, time and planning.
A list of wants for Madison to become a STEM school included a full-time STEM coach, specialized paraprofessional hours, professional development opportunities and curriculum dollars.
Barkey said it takes three to seven years for a school to become STEM certified. It’d take three years if there was an instructional STEM?coach at the school, but seven years if it was left up to the principal, staff and slow training, he said.
Some of the STEM activities Madison has already been engaging in have included a robotics club, a partnership with Science Central, Project Lead the Way curriculum, a kindergarten to sixth-grade robotics focus, SNAP circuits (electrical engineering curriculum) and the creation of new partnerships with Rolls Royce and the Air Force Association.
Madison would model its STEM?program after Washington’s with the same pillars, though not necessarily the same projects, Barkey said.
In the survey when staff were asked if they supported Madison becoming a STEM school, 53.8 percent said highly support, 26.9 percent said they support it, 15.4 percent said they were neutral, with the remaining not supportive.
Barkey said there were only a couple of loose ends, but “I think our staff is determined to see this through, to decide basically on when we would apply for STEM certification based on our growth as a school. It’s something that won’t go away. I think the staff would drive it if I sat back anyways.”
He said Madison will roll with “whatever happens.”
Barkey was the STEM coach at Washington for a number of years before becoming an assistant principal at the high school and then principal at Madison.
Robertson said the STEM application was a pretty involved process so there’s a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid before it can become a STEM-certified school.
Barkey said the application is over 50 pages.
“I think to be successful on the STEM application, we need a full year of being like a STEM school like Washington was that first year, then do that application and rubric,” Barkey said, adding that Madison wasn’t ready yet because of “resources and instructional coach to get in there.”
