Preparing students for high school and beyond.
Sixth-grader Xavier Arce is a member of Sutter’s new, highly selective tech team, for which interested students must apply and provide teacher recommendations. Those selected help their peers and teachers operate devices and troubleshoot technical issues. It’s a position he relishes, explaining: “I’m really good at tech. It relaxes me, it calms me, and it makes me feel like a teacher.”
Like everyone on the tech team, Xavier got his tablet about a week before the rest of the student body. He immediately sensed it was a big responsibility, but one he was up for. “I feel like they must have trust in me,” he says. “It’s like a baby, you can’t lose it.”
On the day of the rollout, Xavier, 10, helps other Sutter students set up their devices. He is eager to show them some of his favorite applications, including one that makes math so much fun that he thinks even students who “don’t like math” will be sold.
For Xavier’s mother, who is selling donuts to support the parent-teacher association during the rollout event, Verizon Innovative Learning is preparing Sutter students for high school, for college and for the workplaces of the future. “That’s where we’re headed,” she says. “Everything is about technology now.”
Excited by the chance to create.
Just as some students are excited to show off the math applications available, Laura Adlay, 11, relishes learning how to create a multimedia book report using a storytelling application that her sixth-grade English class is learning hours after receiving their tablets.
It allows them to take still photographs, and bring them to life through animation. “Some kids don’t know how to draw, and now they don’t need to feel bad about it,” says Laura, an aspiring artist, teacher, and baker.
For her book report on “The Girl Who Swallowed the Moon,” Laura plans to take a photo of the moon, give the moon eyes and a mouth, and have that moon narrate the synopsis of the book, which imagines the lived experiences of the women of Greek mythology. She says she’s “most excited about being able to take home projects and finish them in my home.”
Helping ESL students learn English while giving them a voice.
Hazel Henriquez eyes the line in the library where the tablets are being issued. It is long, and the seventh-grader fears that by the time she gets to the front, the devices will all be spoken for before she realizes there are enough to go around. As soon as Hazel, 11, receives hers, she uses the device’s camera and editing software, and she begins to “make a scary movie before Halloween.”
Hazel arrived in the United States two years ago, from El Salvador, and is an English-language learner. She has no computer at home, and before Verizon Innovative Learning came to Sutter, Hazel and her sister shared a single tablet – making it hard when both had homework assignments that they needed to complete.
She’s optimistic that having a tablet of her own will make things easier on that front, and also that it will go a long way to boosting her language skills. “I want to learn English this year,” Hazel, an aspiring lawyer, says. “I want to do homework in English.”
Sutter teacher Evelyn Huerta says technology can make a big difference for students who are learning English as a second language. When they first come to class, many are very timid, and “the teacher doesn’t know if [they’re not participating] because they don’t know the answer or they don’t know a word,” Huerta says. But easy access to translation applications “makes them feel like they have a voice.”
With increased connectivity, “these kids are going to the moon.”
“I’m excited to see Verizon bring connectivity from class to home, from home to class, and from home to the rest of the world,” says Austin Beutner, in between engaging students, parents, and teachers on the morning of the rollout.
Beutner is superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school system. He says he’s gratified that many of the parents in attendance at the event seemed as excited as their children for the opportunities one-to-one technology provides.
“You see this burst of creativity in storytelling. You see students put together a portfolio of their own journey, and it’s more than just words and numbers on a page,” he says. As their access to information expands, it’s pictures, it’s music, it’s more.
“I think these kids are going to the moon,” he says.
