Posts Categorized: Innovation Spotlight

Students Demonstrate Their Learning At Our Annual Pennington Street Showcase
You are invited to join us for our annual Pennington Street Showcase on Thursday, March 24th, from 5-7 pm at 37 E. Pennington in beautiful downtown Tucson. This community event is public demonstration of students’ project-based learning. Students from Paulo Freire Freedom School -Downtown, Paulo Freire Freedom School -University, and City High School will present […]

City High Students Recognized as Finalists for National NPR and NYTimes Podcast Awards
This week, four City High School students were named as finalists in The New York Times Student Podcast Contest. The students, listed below, created their podcasts in Sarah Bromer’s Radio Production class, where students learn how to write, record, edit, and produce their own radio stories. The class publishes a monthly podcast called “City High Radio.” Stay posted—The New […]

Five reasons to showcase our project based learning
Innovation Spotlight
This blog by Paulo Freire Freedom School-Downtown principal JoAnn Groh was published originally on the BIE website on June 7, 2017. One of the requisite design elements in BIE’s Gold Standard Project Based Learning is the need for projects to include a “public product.” This year our schools went all in on that element by hosting […]

On the ground with place-based education: Investigating city plans
Innovation Spotlight
This blog by City High School’s Annie Holub was published originally on the ‘Getting Smart’ website on March 22, 2017. It was probably the craziest field trip idea I’d ever had. I was sure my principal would say no. “Hey Brett,” I said casually, walking into his office. “This might be crazy, but I want to […]

CommunityShare ‘Seed Grants’ available to teachers
Innovation Spotlight
CommunityShare Founder/Director Josh Schachter sent out the following announcement earlier this month to the Southern Arizona education community … CommunityShare is sponsoring a spring round for its Seed Grants Program to help support innovative school and classroom projects with community partners. Grants of up to $300 will be awarded to teachers for projects taking place during the 4th quarter of this […]

Learning to make & making to learn
Innovation Spotlight
Check out our latest YouTube video highlighting innovative teaching and learning! Middle schoolers from the Paulo Freire Freedom Schools dive into an intensive day of hands-on maker activities. A video production crew from City High School capture the experiences of the Maker Day and interview students and staff to capture their reflections and insights about the connections […]

A CITY team heads to ‘Teach to Lead’ summit in Long Beach, CA
Innovation Spotlight
By Santo Nicotera Let me start by saying, what a great honor it was for our CITY Center team to be chosen to participate in the ‘Teach to Lead Summit’ in Long Beach, CA on Friday & Saturday, September 23-24. We sensed that our proposal was an important one, not only for advancing professional learning […]

PBL on PBL: Student-produced video showcases (and models) a best practice
Innovation Spotlight
A team of advanced video production high school students took on a real world project recently, working with Principal JoAnn Groh as their ‘client’ to create a short film about project based learning at her middle school. In other words, they used PBL to document PBL. The Buck Institute for Education outlines 8 key design […]

Getting our hands dirty: Farm to School programs in Tucson
Innovation Spotlight
Whenever I head out of downtown, driving east on Broadway, I glance over at the rambling gardens surrounding Miles Exploratory Learning Center. Sometimes when picking up my son at Davis Bilingual Magnet School I have a few extra minutes to sit and linger with him in shade of the school garden nestled into the nearby neighborhood; this is one of […]