Decatur City Schools Foundation

This August, over 230 people from our community gathered for the Second Annual Dream Big Luncheon, featuring speaker Liz Huntley. Her story began in a way we see tragically often. Surrounded by drug addiction, abuse, and neglect, Liz should never have been able to become the nationally recognized lawyer, child advocate, author, and speaker that she is today. The course of her life changed when her first-grade teacher believed in her, saying, “Elizabeth, you’re going to be the brightest student I ever have.” Liz went on to explain that being able to read from an early age was key to her success. Because she was able to read before entering school in first grade, she was able to navigate the world around her, even when she faced challenges like registering for school alone. That experience fuels her support of childhood education. She was excited to see Decatur’s commitment to early education and early literacy, looking around the room at all of the individuals and businesses who ...

Boeing has awarded the Decatur City Schools Foundation a $50,000 grant to bring industry-relevant education to more than 360 7th-12th grade students in Decatur City Schools. The Engineering Green Power project will prepare students for high-demand, high-wage careers in engineering and advanced manufacturing by providing materials, tools, and equipment for 7th-12th grade engineering courses. This project addresses a local community need of responding to the increasing demand in   STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) job markets, specifically because of the heavy influence that North Alabama plays in defense industries, the space program, aeronautics, and aerospace industries. Graduates ready to work with STEM skills are highly sought after by industry in Decatur and the surrounding region. Engineering Green Power will help to bridge the gap from hands-on exploration to greater proficiency in math and science classes. Exposure to STEM skills in a...

Are your students suffering from Worksheetitis? Tired of learning their lessons through written work alone? Luckily, our elementary teachers learned the cure, and thanks to some help from Representative Terri Collins, they’ll be getting the tools to cure it in their classrooms soon. The Technology Department of Decatur City Schools hosted Professional Development for all DCS elementary teachers last month. The gym at Oak Park Elementary School became an escape room, where all of the teachers worked through stations to collect items they would need to escape. To complete each station, though, they had to learn some new things. At each one, they found a new tool or game related to coding, computer science, and technology. From simple tools like Coding Hopscotch that teaches sequencing, to Augmented Reality Cubes that let the user hold our Solar System in the palm of their hand to discover new facts about the planets, our teachers were able to see a wide variety of new wa...

This blog post was typed on a computer. It went from first draft to published all on a screen, having been typed out on a keyboard. I would bet most of the things you’ve read today were written the exact same way. In today’s world of digital communication, the skill of typing fluently is essential. It’s on par with being the importance of learning to write! The necessity for typing starts in school, where most standardized tests now require the use of a keyboard and are timed. Students in our district are equipped with personal computers in Grade Four, and assignments are written and turned in on those devices. The latest technology standards from the State Department of Education even require keyboarding skills to be taught to Alabama students. Keyboarding is an essential skill for life and work in the 21st Century. Lee Lott, a Business Tech Teacher at Decatur High School, has found that keyboarding skills are essential to students beyond school as well. She states,...

A few weeks ago, a group of teachers in the Austin High School feeder pattern attended professional development aimed at integrating strategic teaching strategies in their classrooms. Strategic teaching involves choosing methods of teaching that pair well with the planned material to keep students engaged and maximize what they actually learn. For example, in a class of students reading The Odyssey , Candice Cameron has used a strategy called Turn and Talk, where students are placed in groups to read together and talk about what they’ve read as they go through the story. Because students are expected to turn to one another and talk about what they’re reading, it’s much harder to get distracted from Mrs. Cameron’s lesson. The strategy forces students to constantly practice reading comprehension skills as opposed to zoning out while the teacher or another student reads aloud. Kenya Hall, who facilitated this professional development, focused on helping teachers across vari...

Jesslyn Reeves, Executive Director, listens to Paul Allen's explanation of  how his students use the new welding table. This year, a generous donation from J. M. Smucker made it possible for Paul Allen, Engineering teacher at Decatur High, to finally bring a welding table to his classroom. For the past five years, Decatur students have competed in Electrathon, designing and building battery-powered racecars from scratch. Students compete by participating in 60-minute races on various closed-loop courses. Each car is limited to approximately 1000 watt-hour of electricity, so students must design the cars to use energy as efficiently as possible. To make their high-efficiency designs a reality, they need to be able to achieve precision during manufacturing. A key part of that is making sure that parts stay in place while they’re being welded. In the past, the team has attached the parts they need to weld to a piece plywood to try and hold them in place. With that setup,...