If you walk into any EVSC classroom, there will be parts of GAIN that you can see, and parts you cannot. You will see students up and moving around, you will see students working together to solve problems, you will see teachers facilitating student learning rather than being the center of instruction and learning. You might see students practicing techniques to refuel and return to a calm, focused state for learning to continue.
What you may not see is the background work that it took to get to that point. This includes hours and hours of professional development for staff, and making changes at the foundational level of how we think and what we do as a district.
While our classrooms are different, it’s the mindsets, beliefs and systems that are truly different in the EVSC. As a district, we are intentional about staying consistent with developing lessons that take into account brain development, being intentional about teaching techniques to manage stressload, being intentional about giving students the opportunity to develop and practice executive functioning skills, being intentional about getting kids moving and then putting all that together to ensure that it is happening in every classroom ensures students are successful and that’s how the EVSC is different.
In EVSC classrooms GAIN allows teachers to prime the brain for learning to take place. Once the brain is primed, our teachers can present more advanced, complex curriculum because students have the skills necessary to persist, problem solve, etc. These experiences provide students with the opportunity to excel later in life because they have the neurodevelopmental foundations to use their knowledge for more complex thinking, problem solving, collaboration and more.
GAIN can take years to implement because the groundwork has to exist before any higher order learning can take place. GAIN allows our students to create the foundations they will need for future success. That’s why we say, futures start here.