“Be Proud, Positive and Productive.”
That is the motto at Eastside Elementary School, where almost 600 students in kindergarten through fifth grade experience innovation inside and outside the classroom.
Sonia Caldwell, in her first year as principal at Eastside, said the school offers a variety of extracurricular activities for students to get them exposed to different ideas and help them figure out what interests them. Extracurriculars include a robotics club, STEM activities and an art and garden club run by artist Olivia Willard and Anna Ulam of Bloom Madison County.
Caldwell said students and faculty alike at Eastside do not limit themselves to what might be expected of them.
“Our theme here is, think outside the box,” Caldwell said. “I love wild ideas, I love crazy ideas, I love innovation. I tell my staff they can come to me with any idea and I will not say no. We might tweak it and say, how can we do this differently to fit into our school? But they know there is no wild idea that is off limits because we can make it happen.”
Eastside has a news program where fifth graders talk on camera and use a teleprompter. Some segments during the program include highlighting students who are showing positivity at school and doing good work, and announcing the “Word of the Week.”
Melanie Malott, a kindergarten teacher at Eastside, said the reading and literacy programs at the school allow students to receive lessons and gain experiences on topics they have not heard of before. She also teaches her students about topics in STEM and gives them projects on which the students can learn to work together.
“We have been working a lot with weather and I have shown them actual meteorologists giving a weather report,” Malott said. “If their parents or adults have the news on, then they know what to look for as far as snow, rain, anything like that. At the end of the quarter, we do some sort of project.”
Eastside has a high abilities program where students in third, fourth of fifth grades can take project-based classes. Those students participate in field trips and community outings as well.
There is also a classroom specifically for students who are on or above their grade level and who also have autism spectrum disorder. In the classroom, they learn about emotional and social skills.
Caldwell said the school has seen many successes with this addition.
For the past few years, Malott has had students in her classroom who are deaf or experience difficulty hearing, so she and her students have been learning sign language. She said it is exposing them to potential careers in American Sign Language.
“There is such a need, especially in our schools right now, for para-educators or teachers for ASL,” Malott said. “It is opening another door. I have one of my girls that is like, ‘I love learning new words in sign language,’ and I said, ‘That is something you may be later on in life. If you keep learning it, you could be a teacher that works with kids who cannot hear.’”
Malott said some of her students did not go to preschool, which means students are jumping into being in a full-day classroom and can easily become tired. When this happens, Malott will announce it is time for a “brain break,” so the kids can get up, move around, or do some exercises.
She also teaches them that it is OK to feel sad or mad, shows them how to regulate their feelings and tells them to close their eyes and to “go to their happy place.”
Another thing Caldwell said is unique about Eastside is that students can help determine what their long-term goals are.
“Our goal is to always see growth,” Caldwell said. “We think it is important for kids to be a part of their own growth plans.
“Every kiddo gets a folder that follows them from kindergarten until they leave, and it is their goals. We look at where they are, where they test and where they might gain and where they want to be. We have seen that when kids have a say and they are a part of that, they rise to the occasion.”
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin.