Decatur City Schools Foundation

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,...