Decatur City Schools Foundation

3M has awarded a grant to Decatur City Schools Foundation that will provide resources for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education f ocused on career-­ and college-­readiness for more than 500, 6th­– 12th-grade students. The Foundation is committed to working with Decatur City Schools to ensure that students graduate ready to enter the workforce or continue their education. In August, Decatur City Schools combined the Career Technical Education (CTE) efforts of Austin and Decatur High Schools at one center on a portion of the campus previously occupied by Austin High. The center is known as The Career Academies of Decatur. The center provides students the opportunity to explore the type of career or secondary education that they may want to pursue through the use of CTE pathways. STEM career pathways, such as Engineering and Machine Tool Technology, are popular with area students. Introducing students to a variety of career pathways beginning ...

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,...

When you think of learning math and science, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? For many of us, it’s the image of an open textbook, or maybe it’s a teacher leading lecture at a whiteboard full of numbers and figures. But that isn’t always how STEM learning has looked, and it isn’t the most effective way to inspire students to want to learn. Long before the rules of theorems were written in textbooks, people were using math, science, and engineering because we, as humans, wanted to understand the world around us. The thrill of discovery drove us to learn more and more about how the world works. Luckily, the Maker Movement is inspiring that type of learning again, and it’s happening right here in the middle schools of Decatur. The Maker Movement “embraces innovation, creativity, and learning to improve our communities and create a better future.” It’s a grassroots movement toward inspiring invention among DIY enthusiasts and reconnecting students with why they’ll want ...

Students use their skills to work on repairing this small engine. The Kinder Morgan Foundation awarded a grant to Decatur City Schools Foundation that provides funds for updated tools and equipment for the Decatur City Schools Automotive Technologies Program. Students from both Austin and Decatur High School participate in the program currently housed at Austin High. The program provides four levels of courses focused on automotive maintenance and light repair. Beginning next year, the program will be part of a system-wide career tech center, set to open in August 2018 on the current Austin High School Campus. Currently, students travel from Decatur High School to Austin High School to attend classes in the program. The centralized career tech center will combine the complementary programs that already exist at the two high schools, allowing students to spend more time in classes and less time traveling to the campus that houses their program. Michael Funk, teacher of the Autom...

When you walk in to the library at Benjamin Davis Elementary, one of the first things you’ll notice is how Jenipher Patterson uses everything in sight to make the most of what the library has. The seats are covered with homemade covers to make them last longer. Art made from re-purposed library cards hangs on the walls. On the shelves, dog-eared corners and bindings reinforced with tape tell the story of keeping much-loved books in circulation for young readers. But today, the tables are covered with a collection of brand-new books. They’re lovingly arranged to tell the story of why they’re needed in this library. Mrs. Patterson explains as she holds up a copy of Believe Me, I Never Felt a Pea, “This set is great because it teaches the kids about point-of-view by telling well-known fairy tales from the perspective of a different character from the story than you normally hear it told from.”   Another table is full of books arranged in pairs so that it’s easy to see the ...

Decatur City Schools is starting 2018 with new tools to support reading among our elementary school students! Earlier this month, the BBVA Compass Foundation donated $5,000 to buy Leveled Reading Libraries for elementary classrooms. This donation is just the latest example of BBVA Compass’ commitment to excellence in our schools, shown by a lifetime of giving that totals over $67,000 since 2009. Chris Kern, Senior Vice President of BBVA Compass, says, “One of BBVA Compass’ priorities is to identify and address pressing K-12 education needs to help bridge the achievement gap, and we couldn't be more proud to team up with Decatur City Schools in support of those efforts.” BBVA Compass’ support for the Decatur City Schools Foundation to buy Leveled Reading Libraries aims to increase reading ability and reading interest among our elementary students. Students at Banks-Caddell Elementary use their Leveled Readers. L...

DECATUR, Alabama (January 11, 2018)— The “Starting Strong Pre-K” initiative is donating $42,000 to Decatur City Schools Foundation to support Decatur City Schools Pre-Kindergarten classrooms. Schools will use the money to purchase tools and supplies that will make Decatur’s early learning opportunities better for years to come. This donation will give Pre-K classrooms across Decatur access to better teaching tools, allowing our teachers to create engaging learning spaces for young children. Studies show that children who participate in Pre-K are more likely to succeed throughout elementary school. Early success in school is the foundation for long-term school success in individual students and for higher graduation rates in our community. Representative Terri Collins, a leader of the initiative states, “Starting Strong was formed to help all Morgan County children start school prepared to learn.  Each year since 2012 Pre-K has been funded in some way, many years startin...

As a longtime supporter of Decatur City Schools programs, 3M has generously given over $26,000 for middle and high school Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) projects. These projects include tools for middle school robotics, Decatur Austin Robotics Coalition (DARC), and middle school engineering. Superintendent Michael Douglas says, “With these funds, Decatur City Schools will be able to provide more students with materials, tools, and equipment needed to participate in project-based learning that will expose them to careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.” The first of these projects funded by 3M is Middle Schools Robotics. 3M funding will be used specifically in our three middle schools to provide robot kits, robot expansion kits, and other high-tech resources to spur imagination and learning in robotics. Middle school students in this program build robots using Lego parts and program the robots using the EV3 Mindstorm software. They also bui...

This Fall, Decatur’s high schools started their second year using John Baylor Test Prep to help students get ready to take the ACT. For the past three years, every 11 th -grade student in the state of Alabama has taken the ACT as a way to measure the effectiveness of education among the state’s school districts. While the test for standards is changing this year, the ACT remains an important exam for many students in our district. Often a student’s ACT score determines whether or not the student is eligible to attend the university of their choice. After acceptance, their score will help the scholarship office decide whether or not to grant the student scholarship money to attend. With the high cost of attendance for both two- and four-year institutions, scholarship money can be the deciding factor in whether a student will seek post-secondary education. John Baylor Test Prep provides students with online access to test-prep sessions for the ACT, Pre-SAT, and SAT—all of whi...

This fall we’ve been celebrating the generosity of our community over and over again. Lately we’ve been celebrating because Indorama Ventures has funded exactly $20,000 for materials, tools, and equipment for the Middle School Engineering and Robotics courses. Donna Cooper, Engineering and Robotics teacher at Cedar Ridge Middle School says, “STEM is the future of our children.” Cooper is privileged to make careers in technology accessible to her students. “Students participating in these courses explore a whole new world of thinking while developing hands-on skills for college and future careers,” Cooper says. The new courses will be well-equipped with many of the latest developments in robotics education. Indorama has funded robot kits (with expansion kits and parts), tools, iPads, and a digital projector to use throughout the course. In addition, they have made it possible to purchase 3D printers (with supplies) and an interactive document camera to take...

Imagine the frustration of having 120 students on your class roll, being required to have all of them improve in standardized achievement tests, and then discovering that 3 kids don’t speak English well enough to answer, “What is your name?” But they aren’t exempt from taking the test. Now imagine the frustration of being handed a test in another language, having to sit in a quiet room for hours with no idea what you’re looking at, and watching other kids around the room working as if there’s no problem. This situation is one that our teachers and students are facing every day, across the nation. But in Decatur City Schools, we have a group who are changing that. At the Expanding Children’s Eagerness to Learn (EXCEL) Center, Ressa Chittam and her faculty are changing the game for our school system and changing the educational experience for each individual student they work with. Secondary students in need of language support spend anywhere from half of their day to almo...