La Villa ISD held a grand opening Wednesday for a new learning facility the district hopes to use to increase student engagement as a way to combat learning loss and attendance issues that cropped up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The district’s STEAM facility incorporates creative learning tools to help students engage with science, technology, engineering and mathematics, along with softer skills, like music and art.
The building was equipped for about $70,000, an investment made possible by federal ESSER monies. It’s decked out with painting kits, Lego sets, computers, robotics equipment, and — essentially — everything teachers need to make learning fun.
The facility is in many ways the district’s response to a disappointing TEA rating it received this summer. The district has particularly struggled with attendance since the beginning of the pandemic, Superintendent Robert Muñoz said, which has had an academic ripple effect.
“After we got the ratings and looked at our beginning of the year assessments, we’re so far behind that we needed to get this open and make this happen, so our kids can get engaged,” he said. “So it’s serving a dual purpose. It was originally for attendance purposes, now it’s for learning loss also.”
The STEAM facility, Muñoz said, is in part modeled on STEM-oriented learning programs and campuses at urban districts. Rural La Villa ISD can’t devote a whole campus to non-traditional learning, but Muñoz says the facility will give teachers an opportunity to expose their students to education that’s less based on PowerPoint presentations and worksheets.
“That kind of teaching’s not helping us,” he said. “We’re so far behind when it comes to reading and math, we have to figure something else out and give these teachers tools that they can use to try something different.”
Muñoz says classes have assigned times to use the facility, but teachers can take students there more often as an incentive or for a project.
So far, the district says, the STEAM center has been a hit with the kids.
“I mean, they’re just excited,” Ida Prado, the district’s director of student services, said. “They’re doing different kinds of activities. You can tell they want to be there, their eyes light up.”
Prado said that enthusiasm is translating to engagement, with a focus on critical thinking and problem solving. That enthusiasm is also sparking some big ideas.
Prado gave the example of one student discovering the video equipment in the STEAM facility. They were hooked almost immediately.
“He was telling our media communications specialist, ‘I think I wanna do video and communication,’” Prado said. “So it was bringing about career-type thoughts that maybe had not entered their mind before. It’s was bringing thoughts of what they could do in the future.”
That’s the goal, Prado said.
