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Monrovia Schools Work to Prepare Students for the Future
Education Aug 31, 2016
Selena Gomez is leading the next generation of Latina stars - at only 22 years old, she already has over 35 million social media followers and a net worth of $45 million. - Photo courtesy Facebook
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“Mission Possible” was Santa Fe Middle School’s team. The students were getting ready to compete at the Science Olympiad at Occidental College. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it and that is exactly what the teachers at Santa Fe Middle School and Monrovia Union School District encourage their students to do … think way outside of the box. – Photo by Terry Miller
By Susan Motander
This is the first in a two-part series regarding specialized programs in the Monrovia Unified School District.
There are a myriad of programs in the Monrovia Unified School District, all designed to aid students as they prepare for their own futures. According to Superintendent Dr. Katherine Thorossian, the district has worked hard to develop, not just one program, but many pathways to future success and careers beyond high school. There are programs as diverse as painting murals at the elementary schools to a math and science academy at the high school.
“We need to prepare our kids for whatever comes next,” Thorossian said. “They need to be ready for a changing world. What may have worked in the past, will not work in the future and we are working to prepare our students for that future.”
Not every student will be inclined along the same pathway. To that end there are a number of different programs available. Starting in the elementary schools, different schools focus on different areas.
At Plymouth Elementary there is a Mandarin dual-immersion program and at Monroe, a Spanish program. These programs work not to educate the students who already speak those languages, but to immerse other students in those languages, as well as they include native English-speaking students with native speakers. Students are taught in both languages with the goals of developing bilingual skills, along with academic excellence and cross-cultural understanding.
At Plymouth and Mayflower Elementary Schools all students are concentrating on computer science by learning to code at every grade level, starting with kindergarten. According to Thorossian, this will create new challenges for the students as they find creative new ways to problem solve. The program, called Code to the Future, is one of the first of its kind in Los Angeles County.
“Our teachers have gone through specialized training and they will continue to train in coding and in teaching coding, throughout the year,” Thorossian explained. “They are learning so that our students will have that competitive edge, giving them the skills necessary for the future.”
In addition to these programs, Wildrose and Bradoaks Elementary Schools have earned Costen Foundation Grants. This highly-competitive, million-dollar grant is dedicated to taking good teachers and making them great ones. The foundation supplies additional training to teachers to help them better their own skills in order to become better teachers themselves and mentor other teachers. The foundation even supplies trained substitutes to allow the selected teachers to attend their specialized training.
“Costen grants are not awarded to failing or even struggling schools,” Thorossian explained. “They are earned by schools that already have good and even great programs. The grants are made to supply our teachers with even more skills and tools.”
Not all the programs are focused on these more academic fields. The creative arts are not being neglected. The California Dance Institute, in conjunction with the Boone Foundation, has been providing weekly dance instruction to all fourth grade students at Plymouth Elementary. Every elementary school has murals painted by the students with the assistance of a trained artist.
At Wildrose Elementary the fifth grade students have made these murals an annual tradition – for the last three years have completed copies of Winslow Homer’s “Snap the Whip,” Lawrence’s “Pinkie,” and Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy.” The last two “hang” on the front of the school. The exciting part of this is that the Huntington Library has offered the students free visits to the library to view the originals of their murals. According to Director of Performing Arts Patrick Garcia, “They respond to the painting with the excitement you might have when you greet a relative who lives across the country.”
At Mayflower Elementary, a program called Technology Enhanced Arts Learning (TEAL) has been in place. This program encourages teachers to use the arts to reach students. Garcia has said, “Teachers have remarked how incorporating the arts targets several standards at once which is a win-win for students and teachers.”
This is merely the beginning. There are plans to expand the coding program to the middle schools next year, and the middle schools have even more programs. Clifton garnered a Northrop Grumman grant for $100,000 to create a “Fab School Lab” with planning being completed for the use of those funds. And then there are the robotics programs at the both middle schools (the robotics team from Clifton was awarded a spot in the First Tech Challenge competition in Shanghai last year).
These middle school programs and those at the Monrovia High School will be examined in greater depth next week in the conclusion of this two-part article.
Parents interested in learning more about the new computer science schools or any of these educational programs can contact Jennifer Maljian, instructional coach with the Monrovia Unified School District, at (626) 471-2039.
