Clayton County Public Schools: Relationships Building Success

As Georgia’s 5th largest school district, Clayton County Public Schools (CCPS) seeks to lead the way in the 21st century with a complete digital classroom refresh in partnership with Boxlight. Entering their second year, the success of the program has largely been built upon relationships. Upon completion of the first year, key stakeholders met to discuss areas for improvement, resulting in a complete restructuring of the program.  New staff members and expectations came as a result. With a new team in place, Boxlight is committed to providing outstanding training and support for all schools in the district.

In order to ensure the success of the newly restructured program, short term goals and clear expectations were agreed upon by both Boxlight and CCPS.  All members of the new team were properly trained and equipped with the necessary skills to provide each school quality support. At the beginning of the school year, team members provided amazing New Teacher Orientation training to 200+ new teachers in the district. In addition, our Digital Learning Specialists established contact with School Leadership teams at each school, including Principals, Assistant Principals, and designated Point of Contacts, before students began the new school year.

These initial points of contact laid a solid foundation to build upon as the school year progressed. The Digital Learning Specialist team is in constant communication regarding their days on campus through Google Classrooms dedicated to digital resources.  While on campus, DLSs are available for shoulder-to-shoulder appointments with teachers needing individual support. While not on campus, the team provides virtual support in Google Hangouts, giving teachers access to continuous support.  

In addition to in-person and virtual support, the DLS team offers high quality training opportunities for educators. These training sessions are tailored to the needs of the school and are focused around using technology to further support district initiatives. Each week, CCPS and the DLS team meet to address concerns as well as brainstorm ideas to continue to enhance the program as a whole. We have seen some success with the program.

Sharing Our Success

The success of this program goes beyond the partnership with Boxlight. It extends to the relationships of teachers and students and teachers to their peers. See the relationships and success in our shared stories below.

Lake City ES: Working with Ms. Thompson at Lake City ES on a S2S.  She wanted to learn how to create an interactive activity for her gifted students using pattern blocks on a graph. We worked together to create the activity. While I was in the classroom, we had her small group of students complete the activity.

Riverdale HS: The @GBI_GA loved using the #BoxlightIFP to help present valuable info about what they do and how they assist in the community to the CCPS students at #RiverdaleHS.

Marshall ES: Ms. Lynah at #MarshallES in CCPS has her students engaged and interacting with their Math curriculum by using the Collaborate feature in #MimioStudioNotebook and #MimioMobile.

Unidos Dual Language School: Mrs. Rivera at Unidos ES was using her MimioView document camera and interactive flat panel to model the assignment for her students. You can see a completed student assignment on the right. Great Job Mrs. Rivera and her 1st Grade Class. 

MimioStudio Educator: Over 200+ CCPS Educators have received their MimioStudio Educator certification.

Explore the complete Clayton County Public Schools' success story here.>>

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This blog was coauthored with Kali Gatlin:

Kali Gatlin is a Digital Learning Specialist for Clayton Count Public Schools bringing a wealth of knowledge and experience from K-12 education. Her experience includes four years as a public educator in the states of Georgia and South Carolina and as a director of a nonprofit on the west-side of Atlanta. She enjoys working with fellow educators and school administrators collaboratively to create resources and provide effective instructional strategies that can be implemented in the classroom.