Texas Voices: Igniting the Spartans’ spark

It all began one fateful autumn afternoon. The results from the Fall STAAR Interim administration had been shared with my 4th grade reading language arts team, and although we had earned the highest results across our peer grade levels, we knew that our students could achieve even greater gains. We just didn’t know how to make that happen. Following two years of interrupted learning due to the coronavirus pandemic and a significant lack of student interest, our campus was experiencing the same challenges faced by other schools across the country: engagement.

As a former classroom educator and, at that time, an instructional coach, I understood the challenge my team was up against and just how severe the ripple effect would be if we couldn’t find a way to resolve the problem. The sustainment of student engagement is the most impactful means to positively address campuswide frustrations ranging from student mindsets about behavioral compliance, daily attendance, and academic ownership to reducing the contributing factors of teacher burnout and retention outcomes. Simply put, nothing good can ever be expected to happen when students are disengaged.