Mrs. Laurenzi just returned from a week in Miami, vying for topic honors in the Yass Prize Award. You’ll hear from her the rest of the week about that.
Before she left, we had a representative from the Yass Prize Team visit for an hour to tour our school. This is nothing new because as you know we invite experts and professionals into our space regularly. However, this guest got to see just why countless families and professionals who believe in what we do have been voting daily to help us win a bonus prize of $100,000.
Anytime local professionals walk through the front door of our school, they are immediately struck with how different it is. This past Thursday was no different than any other day. Here’s a taste of what he saw:
- Every morning kids of all ages are gathered in our inspiration room discussing, sharing, respectfully disagreeing, and getting to know each other on a deeper level.
- Local experts in their field were interacting with our kids to help them practice their communication skills and interacting with professionals through our quarterly Community Connections event.
- Some of our middle school students were present to model and support our younger students for this event, this is one example of how our kids take a leadership role and collaborate regularly.
- Some students were working on their inquiry projects where they chose topics of interest to study, research, and were preparing to present what they learned on stage with our Indi-ED families.
- My cohort was busy creating models out of play dough using a ratio of celestial bodies that represented an accurate scaled down version, for example Earth and the moon or binary asteroids, predicting and then measuring the actual barycenter as a part of our unit on astronomy.
- My students were paying close attention to how I was incorporating a variety of learning styles into the lessons I taught that week as they prepare to research, create, and teach their own astronomy lessons in a few months, allowing them to solidify what they have learned by teaching others and practicing their presentation skills.
Each time professionals come into our space and observe our kids in action, they share with us that they see our kids demonstrate skills that are currently missing in the applicants they meet as they try to fill positions with people who can help their business grow in ways that transform our community.
We know that this vision of ours is one that entrepreneurs, parents, and experts all have in common, so we continue to share what we need to make this vision a reality with as many people as we can.
We are incredibly grateful for everyone who has stood strong by our side each step of the way for the past 8 years as we work hard to grow what we know so many families and businesses are hungry for in education.
We are hopeful that the Yass Team will help us all reach the goal of providing the education that all children deserve here in St. Petersburg and beyond.