“When students are engaged in their learning, they perform better.” —Amanda Livingston-Mejia, MSW student and PESA Intern
Seems like a pretty simple, common-sense statement that should be obvious to educational professionals and laypeople alike.
So why, then, do schools sometimes fall short in providing instruction that will engage students? That was the question posed by Livingston-Mejia in the capstone project to her studies at Azusa Pacific University. As a PESA master of social work intern, she had been assigned to provide individual and group counseling in the Wilsona School District, particularly at Challenger Middle School (CMS). “My specialization was in macro community leadership and development, so while I was at CMS, I spoke with the principal and vice principal and got a lot of feedback about the needs of students and possible programs that were available [to serve those needs],” says Livingston-Mejia.
It was decided that they would try developing instruction based on an existing career technical education class that CMS already had on hand. “Students had the opportunity to choose different modules such as a cooking module, a filmmaking module, and a construction module,” says Livingston-Mejia. “All very hands-on, specific fields.”
“We wanted to evaluate whether the class had a positive impact,” says Livingston-Mejia, which is how she began working on her capstone project. Former principal and District Director of Accountability and Continuous Improvement Rebecca Handzel provided the administrative and quantitative data, while Livingston-Mejia says she “went into the classrooms and did surveys with the students themselves to identify how they felt about that particular class.”
“What the research showed was that the students did better in that class than in any of the other classes, and that they really enjoyed the class overall,” says Livingston-Mejia. “They were engaged and doing well, as compared to any of their other courses.”
“Most of the time these types of programs are only offered in high school, so the fact that they got to see these things in middle school was a really encouraging experience,” she said.”
“I really liked how the modules were set up, and I liked the diversity and all the options we had,” one student in the survey said. Another praised the program for teaching students how to “work with another student on a project, knowing that you have to come to an idea you agree on while having communication.”
Livingston-Mejia even asked students in their surveys what they would change about the class, to which one student asked that they have “more time to do the lesson and activity at the end of the module,” and another said she “would add two teachers or a teachers’ assistant.”
Granted, the core curriculum will always need to be taught—and learned. But also give students courses in subjects that actually interest them? What a novel idea! ■
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