Kindergarten Registration Information Each year, our 14 elementary schools have the honor of welcoming around 1,000 new students to their educational home. Our youngest students bring an eagerness and enthusiasm that is a daily inspiration to all of us at Elkhart Community Schools. Here is a run-down of the most important [...]
Steve Thalheimer, Superintendent of Schools I have always considered myself a teacher. In any role I have assumed in education, I have viewed it as an opportunity to work alongside students, staff, parents, school boards, community members, legislators, and policy makers to help all stakeholders understand public education, to strive for [...]
Elkhart Community Schools Announces Record-Breaking Graduation Rate For the tenth consecutive year, Elkhart Community Schools has demonstrated growth in high school graduation rates. ECS is thrilled to announce the highest graduation rate – 95% – in district history for the Class of 2018. In 2008, when 62.7% of students graduated and the local Elkhart [...]
Esports: A game-changer for Elkhart students In a computer lab along the science hall at Elkhart Central High School, a group of 20 students regularly gather for hours after school and on weekends. Under the word “Arkadia” – the name they’ve chosen for their lab – the students equip themselves with headsets and keyboards [...]
Perspective: Wes Molyneaux, Technology Integration As the Director of Technology Integration, my job puts me at the crossroads between instruction and technology. This is an exciting place to be! Historically, technology was used in the educational arena as a tool to increase efficiency rather than truly change how students learn and demonstrate what they [...]
Designing a Corn Maze Since the beginning of this school year, students in Britney Goff’s and Gio Ponciano’s fourth grade classroom have been using technology to re-imagine and redesign the corn maze at Kercher’s Sunrise Orchards. “As a Project Based Learning activity, our students have the task of redesigning the Kercher’s corn maze,” said [...]
Student Tech Team tackles real-world troubleshooting With over 1,700 electronic devices being used every day by students and staff at Elkhart Memorial, there are bound to be technical issues. For a group of 13 students at Elkhart Memorial, these issues provide opportunities for hands-on learning. Known as the “student tech team,” this group of [...]
Exploring the World with VR Technology While much of the talk around the district is focused on the one-to-one iPad technology, students in Jennifer Summers’ Environmental Science class at Elkhart Memorial are experiencing new worlds through a different type of technology: VR (virtual reality) technology using Google Cardboard and iPods. “Students are using VR [...]
When Music Theory meets iPad When we think of music and iPads, our minds likely turn toward YouTube and Spotify. For students in Kyle Miller’s orchestra class at Pierre Moran Middle School, iPads are a tool for building their knowledge of the very fundamentals of music through an interactive website and app, via musictheory.net. [...]
Bullying, Cyberbullying, and Youth Depression Speaker On October 7th, 2003, John Halligan lost his 13-year-old son, Ryan, to suicide. It was revealed in greater detail, after Ryan’s death, that he was ridiculed and humiliated by his peers at his middle school in Vermont and online. Just a few months after Ryan’s death, Halligan spearheaded [...]
