Innovative learning program helps kids thrive despite classroom uncertainty

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Since 2004, Mia DeLaRosa has been teaching at the Alhambra School District, near Phoenix, where she’s learned a thing or two about helping all children succeed. As the eighth-grade science and engineer instructor, she has seen firsthand how kids thrive – and even surprise – when given the proper tools to explore. 

This was most evident over the past year when her students received tablets and internet access through Verizon Innovative Learning. This education initiative from Verizon supports Title I students through nonprofit partner Digital Promise. The program addresses barriers to digital inclusion and is a key program under Citizen Verizon, the company’s responsible business plan for economic, environmental and social advancement. 

While the pandemic presented new challenges to DelaRosa’s students, especially for those who didn’t have reliable broadband connections or devices in their home, the Verizon program created learning accessibility that DeLaRosa equates to students finding “their superpowers.” 

Thanks to Verizon Innovative Learning and support from Digital Promise, students were able to have their own tablets at home. Now, they didn’t experience resource scarcity – and they didn’t have to worry. Gone were the days of sharing their devices with parents or siblings and trying to find places in their house or community where they could get online.

“It’s no secret that under-resourced kids struggled badly during the pandemic,” DeLaRosa said. “But our kids were not only able to continue their learning trajectory, they were able to thrive in ways, such as doing research, presenting ideas to community leaders and collaborating from one school environment to another.”

Technology helps foster partnerships

Students worked on researching, creating and presenting plans for a future park renovation and used their individual skills and passions to develop ideas that were near and dear to their own hearts. In addition to creating presentations with their unique ideas, they had the opportunity to share their plans with changemakers in the community. 

The most amazing part about this project, however, was that these kids did all of this from their socially distanced pandemic worlds, explained DeLaRosa. 

“Everybody was learning from home,” she said. “So, we were able to pivot on the pandemic and actually create a club, in partnership with Arizona State University and Bioscience High School.”

DeLaRosa said that the cultivation of these partnerships had been happening for over a decade, but the Verizon program gave them a way to act on that strong foundation and leverage technology to fuel students’ ideas. 

Advice for other teachers

Participating in an education initiative, like Verizon Innovative Learning, can certainly be a game changer for learning communities, but DeLaRosa was clear about what to expect going in.

“When you’re guiding young people, the best thing we can do is stop talking down to their ways. Sometimes, adults think that we have to know everything, and we have to be on the center stage, and we have to take up all the airtime,” she explained. “And really, that’s not the way this works, to get kids to believe in themselves, to understand that they have a fire inside of them.”

DeLaRosa said that learning facilitators and teachers have a job to “stoke that fire” with tools and supports. The role of a teacher, she said, is to equip students with what they need to shine. Then, she said, “get out of the way and, and time and time again, they’ll outperform what you can even imagine.”

Helping kids find their superpowers

Today’s teachers must maintain a delicate balance of supporting students’ needs while also allowing them to take the lead. This can be especially challenging in fields that use STEM, as some children may not feel they are a good fit.

DeLaRosa shares that if kids aren’t comfortable and excited about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) by around sixth grade, it can be hard to attract them after that time. While they could pursue other paths, the opportunity to engage younger learners through hands-on experiences won’t just introduce those students to new possibilities – it can have a positive ripple effect in underserved communities, changing lives and igniting a passion for learning.

“They just might find out that they’re good at STEM, and they might go into a STEM field and mentor other kids. They might go into education,” she said. “To inspire under-resourced kids to go into education is very powerful.”

Because many of the students in Verizon Innovative Learning are under-resourced, this may be the best way to see real changes in representation. 

DeLaRosa said she hopes to see these students go on to teach others. “What would happen if we inspired a whole bunch of brownish kids like me, who came from nowhere, and they actually went into STEM industries and mentored other brownish kids or went into teaching and said, ‘Hey, I get it because I was there.’ What would happen 10 years from now?”

For now, today’s students are seeing amazing outcomes, ones that will reach far beyond just what they’ve created in their virtual classrooms, said DeLaRosa:

“You can’t unring that bell. You can’t undo that efficacious moment where they realize their superpowers.”

Learn more about Verizon Innovative Learning and how it helps children in underserved communities discover their talent – and potential. 

Members of the editorial and news staff of Paste BN Network were not involved in the creation of this content.