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OUR STORY: FUTURE FORWARD REGIONAL IMPACT
FROM EARLY BEGINNINGS

ANNUAL REPORTS

For 2024, ABC CREATE took a new approach in its annual reporting—shifting from a snapshot of the prior year’s progress and experiences to a focused, in-depth exploration of the transformative work made possible by its PAsmart Advancing Grant: ABC CREATE L.E.A.D.S. (Leveraging Education to Accelerate Diversity and Success).

This year’s annual report—crafted by external assessment consultants—delves into the two-year L.E.A.D.S. initiative (June 2022–June 2024). The report synthesizes a wide range of professional development, events, and achievements into a comprehensive narrative highlighting how ABC CREATE, with the influx of additional funding support, intensified its focus in five key areas important to the ABC CREATE districts:
  • Increasing support for elementary CS/STEAM classroom integration to reach ALL learners
  • Extending CS/STEAM learning into communities to enhance access for underrepresented populations
  • Developing and enhanced community, education, and workforce relationships
  • Expanding CS/STEAM across the region and state by sharing the pathways and actions that lead to the initiative’s successes

“Through the consolidation and interpretation of the data and information gathered for the report, the impacts of the L.E.A.D.S. initiative are clear: providing the right mix of training, exposure to new tech tools, community partnerships, and network-building can build confidence and enthusiasm in otherwise technology-hesitant educators. ABC CREATE’s work has evolved into a virtuous cycle with its members, as educators who participated in L.E.A.D.S. training and events went on to become STEAM experts within their schools and among their peers.”
Each year, ABC CREATE works with an outside consultant to take a snapshot of the previous year. The purpose of this assessment is to gather data and hear directly from stakeholders, then provide a comprehensive analysis of findings, priorities, and recommendations. The 2023 annual assessment will present areas of successes and challenges, as well as opportunities to enhance the member experience and key areas for growth. The report synthesizes information gathered via surveys and workshops during the period of December 2023–April 2024. It is divided into two main sections: Educators + Administrators.  

Educators: Based on the collected feedback, 2023 appeared to be a pivotal year for the ecosystem as a whole, but particularly for member teachers. Their commitment and dedication propels ABC CREATE’s mission forward and truly fosters a sense of community within the districts. Educators are the most integral part of fostering technology-fluent students. With an influx of new educators from pilot districts and hundreds more that have been with ABC CREATE for more than three years, data shows how these two groups require different strategies of engagement. Utilizing these insights, ABC CREATE can meet teachers where they are and equip them with the tools they need to not only be familiar with tech concepts, but enthusiastically incorporate them in the classroom.

Administrators: Close to half of the participating Administrators have been associated with ABC CREATE since its early years. Their role or District may have changed but their relationship has been a constant. This offered a unique opportunity to “put them to work” on helping to express the value-add to their Districts or the “Glows” and helping to envision the future “Grows”.
ABC CREATE’s most recent annual report to the collaborative, Advancing STEAM and Future-Ready Learning Across the Alle-Kiski Valley, elevates key themes across districts with regard to their accomplishments, priorities, and challenges as they find ways to advance innovative STEAM and future-ready learning across the region's schools. In addition to presenting findings and recommendations, this year the report also includes a robust set of nine stories of impact from across the collaborative. 

"STEAM and future-ready learning is not just happening across the ABC CREATE collaborative; it is active and flourishing in schools nestled in this hybrid rural and suburban education ecosystem. While the specifics look different in each school and district and there are certainly opportunities for improvement to acknowledge and address, the notable continuous progress in exposing students to STEAM and new technologies is exciting and promising. Technology integration, coding and computer science, project- and inquiry-based STEAM learning, engineering and making—every one of the 14 districts in the collaborative is putting these learning opportunities into action.

Each year, ABC CREATE steps back to assess the current state of its work, check in with administrators and other district educational leaders to understand successes and challenges, and consider what the next steps and priorities should be toward realizing its vision. Ultimately, the goal is to equip students in the region with the experiences and skills they need to graduate with technological fluency and readiness to thrive after high school in the workforce and as contributing members of their local community. As the culminating product of this year’s annual assessment, this report synthesizes learnings gathered from engagement with district stakeholders during a four-month period from December 2022 through March 2023." 

STORIES OF IMPACT FROM ACROSS THE COLLABORATIVE

These stories offer a glimpse into this work from the perspectives of students, classroom educators, school leaders, and district administrators. They reflect a diverse range of both classroom and system-wide practices across grade levels and subject areas.


ABC CREATE + Penn State New Kensington’s NextovationTM

While ABC CREATE gained traction, Penn State New Kensington continued to convene collaborative partners and to build a more expansive ecosystem to amplify the collective impact. Led by Penn State New Kensington, NextovationTM is an initiative focused on transforming a rust belt community through innovation, entrepreneurship and preparation for the digital age. NextovationTM efforts are centered around the city of New Kensington and designed to serve as a pilot testing ground upon which revitalization models may be built. 

Phases of Nextovation thus far include various revitalization efforts supported by the Foundation of Westmoreland County and the City of New Kensington.The most well-known is the Corridor of Innovation, a five-block stretch of Fifth Avenue, which has been transforming since summer 2017. A facade improvement mini-grant program for business owners and organizations helped revamp and upgrade 18 buildings. Artist murals and several colorful bike racks and benches can also be found along Fifth Avenue.
A brand new corner parklet was an added feature thanks to the work of volunteers from the campus, Arconic and the City of New Kensington. The Corner LaunchBox and Co-working Space garnered support from a range of funders and collaborators bringing in entrepreneurialism, idea generation, and creativity; opportunity accelerators, free tax and legal advice, deeper access to resources - spawning ideas and collaborations.

In 2019, ABC CREATE was awarded a PAsmart Advancing Grant through the Pennsylvania Governor's office to further its work and alignment with the campus' promotion of innovation, entrepreneurship and essential skill sets in the Alle-Kiski Valley region. In addition to ABC CREATE’s ongoing initiatives, the PAsmart Advancing Grant allowed ABC CREATE to integrate future-ready skills in K-12 STEAM education through the development of Learning Pathways, to prepare a cohort of middle school teachers to teach computer science through code.org’s CS Discoveries, to  equity ….

The Digital Foundry lands on the scene in 2022 existing to help improve lives and strengthen businesses in the region through access to digital technologies and future-ready skills. As an initiative of Penn State New Kensington and the Economic Growth Connection of Westmoreland County, the mission of the Digital Foundry is to partner with manufacturing companies, educators and the workforce to accelerate economic growth and competitiveness using digital technologies and data-driven decision making.

LEARNING AND GROWTH

The ABC CREATE Leadership Team tightened the collaborative’s focus to the mission of “connecting teachers across school districts with professional learning communities, tools, and best practices to develop competent and technologically fluent students” centered around the core values of equitable access, collaboration, technological fluency, and innovative teaching and learning in all its initiatives. ABC CREATE educators expanded their understanding from S.T.E.M. which focused more on siloed and specific disciplines to STEAM that honors the development of a range of technical, creative, and humanistic skill sets necessary for thriving in rapidly changing environments. Educators become familiar with and embraced approaches to learning that emphasize hands-on, relevant, joyful learning with opportunities for learner agency and for integrating essential, technical, and future-ready skills into existing content. 

ABC CREATE also recognized the value of a collective impact model as well as the role it can play in revitalizating not only K-12 education, but also in breaking down barriers and redesigning systems to better support opportunities for learners within a community in the midst of revitalization. Over the next few years, ABC CREATE’s reach grew from 36 educators at the first Fall Convening in 2015 to a community of over 750 - with educators from K-12, higher education, Intermediate Units, out-of-school time (OST) and stakeholders from business, industry, and government.

THE EARLY YEARS

ABC CREATE’s first steps were to help districts to develop a shared understanding of ABC CREATE’s program objectives, to build relationships across districts, and to identify the educators who would become early adopters of STEM classroom integrations. At the first ABC CREATE STEAM Showcase in 2015, educators explored a range of educational technologies and project ideas, ultimately selecting the Arts & Bots projects with Hummingbirds from BirdBrain Technologies, GigaPan, and Speck air quality monitors as the first technologies to introduce to STEM “teacher advocates” as the first rounds of educators to experience ABC CREATE’s professional development were dubbed.

Over the next few years patterns developed of providing professional development throughout the school year to include workshops and training for STEM-based technologies and related pedagogical approaches, to create space each fall for cross-district work sessions to solidify and reinforce districts’ STEM work, and to provide a STEM Showcase in the spring to share best practices - highlighting the ideas, projects, and processes that educators successfully implemented during the school year.

HOW WE STARTED: Coming together and finding tech

Around 2010, building upon the success of a collaborative endeavor in the region called WEDIG (Westmoreland Economic Development Initiative for Growth), Penn State New Kensington convened leaders from school districts in its service area who were eager to work together to find ways to strengthen STEM learning for their students, to support teachers grappling with engaging in STEM subjects, and to create a regional reputation for STEM strong graduates ready to enter the area’s thriving workforce.

After a couple of years of trial projects, a few promising ideas emerged over early morning breakfasts at a local Kings restaurant. With encouragement from The Grable Foundation, education leaders from the Allegheny-Kiski Valley connected with a team from Carnegie Mellon University’s Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab (CREATE Lab) who were seeking school district partners for further research and development of their their educational technology projects. In August 2014, with funding from The Grable Foundation, the Alle-Kiski Best Practices Collaborative soon to be known as ABC CREATE was born.

Connect with us:

 Melinda Spampinato
ABC CREATE Educational Consultant
​[email protected] | ​724-334-6138
Penn State New Kensington
3550 7th Street Road
New Kensignton, PA 15068