TUSD Elementary School Reinventing Itself, Stabilizing Enrollment Via Technology Overhaul 

TUCSON – May 28, 2009 - Wrightstown Elementary School may be small, but it has big ideas. One of its most ambitious plans— to become a First Choice school emphasizing computer science and information technology as a teaching and learning style—is taking shape.

This spring, it outfitted its first classroom with an interactive white board, a document camera and a projector – the trio of technology tools the school considers essential as a starting point for its technology overhaul. Wrightstown plans to duplicate that $3,000 equipment investment in its other five classrooms for the next school year.

By emphasizing technology, Wrightstown hopes to stabilize its enrollment, and possibly see it increase. After Wrightstown, 8950 E. Wrightstown Road, escaped closure last spring, its Site Council and faculty identified technology as its focus.

“We knew to keep solvent, we had to build an identifiable program, something special to help us compete,” said Principal Jon Ben-Asher, who this year also took on the principal’s job at Henry Elementary School. “We wanted to do something that would be great for our kids and draw students throughout the city.”

To fund its initial technological purchases for its classrooms, Wrightstown needed to raise $18,000-$30,000 for each of the five classrooms. The funding pot began with $6,000 in Civic Center (school facility rental fees) and Gifts and Donations funds; $6,000 from the Site Council via tax credit donations; more than $3,000 from the community and a little help from Tucson Unified Schools.

Amanda McCarthy’s combined second- and third-grade classroom received the first infusion of equipment. As the key teacher leader who initiated many of the grants, she drafted the school’s five-year technology plan, First Choice School Proposal and chairs the school’s technology committee, the driving force behind Wrightstown’s “revolution.”

In McCarthy’s classroom, most of the students raised their hands to color in two-thirds of a box on the interactive board during a review of fractions.

“This engages the kids, makes them want to pay attention,” McCarthy said. “They’re not wasting time copying and recopying. Kids get up there at the board and they feel like the teacher.”

To prepare for the AIMS tests in April, McCarthy used the document camera to display sample AIMS tests.

“We know kids need multiple avenues to access learning,” McCarthy said. “Technology offers so many paths to learning—audio, visual and kinesthetic.”

Her students have been pleased with the new additions to their classroom. Second-grader Katie Davis said, “It’s really cool. We don’t have to use markers and erase, and we’re learning how to use technology. It’s important because a lot of jobs use computers and if you want a job, you have to know how to use them.”

Second-grade classmate Gavin McCormick agreed:  “Writing on the white board is better. …The document camera is good for learning math and reading and writing and science. I like to get picked to go up to the white board. I always raise my hand to go up.”

With the infrastructure in place, Ben-Asher said Wrightstown would next develop its scope and sequence of curriculum using new state technology standards incorporated into the school’s standards. By the end of fifth grade, Wrightstown would expect its students to know how to build and program a computer; be proficient with applications such as Power Point, Word, Excel and Publisher; experts at digital storytelling; fluent with multiple Internet capabilities, such as social networking Wikis, and blogs, e-mail and instant messaging; and effectively use search engines.

There will also be a focus on ethics, values and safety with technology. The big picture here is to develop a program that will engage and challenge the 21st Century learner, Ben-Asher said.

Plans for the future include supplying every third-, fourth- and fifth-grader with a laptop, setting up a new computer lab, and locating small banks of computers in the classrooms.