By Javeria Salman
When alpine ski racer Andrew Kurka won the gold and silver medals at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, a group of U.S. students half a world away were among his loudest fans, urging parents to let them stay up so they could “watch Andrew race on the TV.”
It wasn’t just because Kurka is a famous Olympic athlete or because he hails from Alaska, their home state. It’s because of the students’ personal relationship with Kurka. For an entire school year, he had been a mentor in their classroom, working virtually alongside the teacher and engaging with students on a personal level.
“The most letters and the most congratulations that I've ever gotten were from my classroom, and were from my champions,” Kurka said.
The champions, as he calls the elementary school students he works with, are part of a program called Classroom Champions that pairs Olympians, Paralympians, student-athletes and professional athletes with students and teachers in high-poverty schools in the U.S. and Canada. At the heart of the program is its social- and emotional-learning-based curriculum and mentorship experience.
Social and emotional learning, or SEL, emphasizes soft skills such as self-awareness, self-management, communication, social awareness, and decision-making. While social and emotional learning has become a buzzword of sorts in education circles, low-income and rural schools often face barriers to bringing in and trying innovative models due to lack of opportunity or funding.
That was one of the reasons U.S. Olympic gold medalist Steve Mesler co-founded Classroom Champions with his sister Leigh Parise, a senior research associate at MDRC, a nonprofit education and social policy research organization. When Mesler toured the country visiting classrooms and businesses during his time as an athlete with Team USA, he talked to students about fitness and goals, and to adults about leadership, persevering, and overcoming obstacles.
“I always felt like, why are we talking to our kids differently than we were talking to adults? Like, let's give kids the credit that they can understand these concepts,” Mesler said.
Students paid attention when athletes like Mesler visited the classroom. Mesler and his sister wondered if there might be an opportunity to expand this model. The concept: use athlete volunteers to mentor students and teach kids the kinds of skills that many Olympians develop throughout their training – including goal-setting, self-discipline, resilience and perseverance. The two piloted the program during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, where Mesler won gold in the four-man bobsled.
When they launched Classroom Champions the following year, Mesler and Parisi incorporated a fully developed SEL curriculum based on the nationally recognized structure established by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). The aim of the curriculum, Mesler said, is to make SEL skills “operational” in a classroom setting. “What does it mean to help them build those skills? You can't give a kid self-discipline, but how do you help them build those skills?”
According to Mesler, the program is now being used in more than 2,000 schools. In an internal survey of program participants in the 2016-17 school year, 94 percent of teachers reported that Classroom Champions enabled them to better engage their students.
The athletes help deliver the SEL K-8 curriculum through monthly lessons covering goal-setting, emotions, community, perseverance, teamwork, feedback, healthy living, and leadership. The program includes resources in Spanish, hands-on activities, videos from the athlete mentors, and family outreach materials. Before offering the program in any classroom, volunteer athletes are trained on the curriculum and how to work with the students and teachers.
Jennifer Regruth, an elementary teacher in the small town of Seymour, Indiana, has been using Classroom Champions to engage her students since it first launched. She likes it because of its emphasis on life skills, which, she said, “kids will be using for the rest of their lives, that maybe they hadn't come across and parents hadn't talked about.”
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 The Shortlist |
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1. Technology is driving a shift toward student-directed learning. A new report examines how remote instruction, required after Covid-19 shuttered schools, is fueling a shift toward student-led learning. The report, part of a larger series looking at the impact of digital learning during the pandemic, revealed teachers and administrators had conflicting views on the value of students’ use of technology to take ownership of their learning. While the report found that 72 percent of principals and 63 percent of teachers said that mobile learning resulted in students taking greater responsibility for their learning, only 18 percent of K-12 teachers said they were “very comfortable” with a learning environment in which students choose their own learning path. The findings also suggest that digital tools will continue to be a part of the learning process after students return to in-person instruction. Over 137,000 K-12 students, parents, and teachers were surveyed for the report, conducted by Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up Research Project, an education nonprofit, and Blackboard, an ed tech company.
2. Possible tech solution for students affected by the digital divide. While schools have attempted to bridge remote learning’s digital divide by supplying kids with laptops and Chromebooks, millions of students across the country still lack access to high-speed internet. In addition to this lack of student access, some schools are also struggling to provide STEM education via distance learning. A new app for Chromebooks from Thinking Media provides a possible solution to both problems. The Learning Blade Backpack app offers students with limited or no internet access at-home interactive STEM and computer science lessons, hands-on activities, project ideas, and parent-led exercises. The lessons, designed for grades five through nine, include both online and offline resources. The app was originally designed to require students to download the lessons while connected to the internet at school, so it is not a perfect remedy, but does provide a stop-gap solution, allowing students to engage with STEM lessons remotely. Students need to access the internet only once to download hours of lessons which they can work through at their own pace. They can then access the internet a second time to upload their results for teachers to view. Teachers in rural Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee have said the app has been helping to engage students who would otherwise be left behind because of the digital divide. Learn more here.
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