Endeavour and Atlantis Achieve Lift-Off at Spring Branch Middle School

On the first day of school at Spring Branch Middle School, approximately 100 sixth-graders began a year-long adventure in school redesign. They are part of the middle school’s Endeavour and Atlantis programs, a kind of school-within-a-school that focuses on personalized learning for all students.

The programs are the result of a full year of thoughtful work between the campus and community. Over time, effective elements of the redesign may be expanded throughout the Hedwig Village middle school. 

This is also a live-action example of The Learner’s Journey, the strategic plan that commits Spring Branch ISD to “designing learning environments and delivering learning experiences that value and build on the individual talents, needs, interests and aspirations of all learners."

Spring Branch Middle Principal Bryan Williams described the programs as “a process, a beginning, rather than a destination.” Planning for all learners, Williams also said, began with an innovative concept called Design Thinking, or human-centered problem solving that stresses empathy with stakeholders in finding solutions that meet their needs, goals and motivations.

“This work is intended to be community work – actively engaging our communities to create the best possible learning environments in our schools,” Elliott Witney, Associate Superintendent for Research and Design, explained. “Empathy work – actively listening to parents, students, teachers and other community members – helped the school’s core design team learn what was working and should be preserved, and what could improve to better meet the needs of children.”

“The experiences built by that team in the spring and summer and by a growing number of faculty members now are intended to more broadly address what they learned through empathy,” he also said.

Over the last year, Principal Williams said, a group of administrators, teachers and parents analyzed the feedback from community, educational and workforce trends, new research on learning and motivation, and then determined three goals for program learning: rigorous academic skills, habits of success and a connection to self and the world.

Endeavor and Atlantis programs embrace these goals.

Divided into two program cohorts each, Endeavor and Atlantis students are a good cross-section of the middle school’s population: on-level academics, pre-AP and Gifted/Talented. Students learn in a variety of instructional formats, including face-to-face instruction, small group learning, technology interfaces and interdisciplinary projects. 

All program students also have a district-issued laptop they are expected to bring to school each day, fully charged.

Endeavor students spend part of their day with Carla Pace, science, and Akeem Perkins, math. Another block of time is shared with Jeff Walsdorf, English and language arts, and John Eskew, social studies.

Atlantis students move as cohorts through their four core courses following a schedule that mirrors the rest of the middle school: English/language arts, teacher Sarah Bohlen; social studies, Jennifer Taylor; math, Tiffany Gless; and science, Shana Saucier. Bohlen said working as cohorts has fostered collaboration. “Students quickly learned teamwork and mutual respect.”

Students assume more control over their learning. A pre-test determines each student’s mastery of a specific unit, and also helps children understand their own mastery of specific objectives before the unit, or specific learning topic, begins. Bohlen said the pre-assessments work well. Students are “motivated to self-direct and improve before the pre-tests,” he said.

“That information helps [teachers] determine how to build on what students already know. How can we go beyond? We meet kids where they are and go deeper,” Pace said. “Our kids hear the term ‘dive deeper’ a lot. To meet the district’s T-2-4 goal, students must be prepared to think critically, solve problems and collaborate. Personalized learning does that.”

Endeavor class time includes blocks of humanities (language arts and social studies) and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math). Students self-direct their learning in two ways. In addition to self-directed content, they determine subject matter topics they want to explore further and receive additional support or executive coaching.

For all students, much of the learning is student-centered and interactive as well as project-based. The more interactive, the more learning takes place, the teachers say. Projects allow students the freedom to ask for help as needed – and to have fun applying their new knowledge.

Bohlen and Taylor are enthusiastic about their first joint project for Atlantis students. As they read and discuss The Giver in language arts, they are planning and building a utopia in social studies. For an upcoming project, students will write a fractured fairy tale, changing the setting of Cinderella to another country.

Endeavour students engage in daily community time that focuses on behaviors of academic success: habits (organization, study skills), perseverance (grit, self-control), mindsets (“I can do this”) and social skills (cooperation, responsibility). These topics are built into class time for Atlantis students.

All sixth-graders share lunch periods, electives and service-oriented experiences. This was an important design component since it provides time for program students to interact with peers who are not in the same cohort. It also builds school-wide spirit and community.

Perkins is confident personalized learning will better prepare students. “Though we have leeway in teaching the TEKS standards, every standard is addressed. The difference is that students process the information in a different way. They begin to make connections and gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter.”

The teachers expect many “light bulb moments.”

Parents are eager to watch the school year unfold. Kate Pernoud is excited her son, Jonathan, is part of the program. As a former teacher, she likes the idea of personalized learning. “The biggest thing is preparing for the rigor of high school. I think this will fill the gap.”

Spring Branch Middle teachers are up for the challenge. As a matter of fact, they love challenges. This year, Walsdorf began his 28th year of teaching and his 18th year at Spring Branch Middle. “I never teach the same thing two years in a row,” he said. “I’m always looking for something new.”

Perkins introduced the Flipped Learning concept in his math classroom last year. He videoed his lessons, which students viewed on YouTube, allowing him more one-on-one classroom time.“I saw improvement in scores and concentration,” he said. “It was good preparation for this project.”

Pace said Endeavour and Atlantis take “the lessons learned in piloting a project ten steps further. That’s the reason we became educators – to change the world and empower students to become amazing adults.”