• Category 3

    Selected in 2020

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 478,221
    Student Enrollment: 560
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 15%
    White/Caucasian: 25%
    Hispanic: 47%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 2%
    Asian: 3%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 7%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:24
    % Reduced Lunch: 60%
    % ELL Learners: 10%
    Founded: 2003
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Kim Easdon
  • CONTACT:
    4710 Harrier Ridge Drive
    Colorado Springs, CO 80916
    719-540-4000
    keasdon@hsd2.org
Soaring Eagles Elementary School
Colorado Springs, CO
We strive to lay the foundation and provide tools for students to be inspired to create their own future in our rapidly changing world."

Describe specific programs in place to ensure that families are involved in the success of your school and students.
Communication is one of the best ways we connect with our school community. We vary our communication methods to ensure that all families can interact with our school community. With the benefit of messaging that can be translated into 35 different languages, Class Dojo has been integral in keeping families involved and informed through its messaging and virtual student portfolios. At the beginning of the year, we also give all students a planner to track daily assignments, behavior, and important events. These events are also communicated through a monthly newsletter and our school Facebook page.

We have many opportunities for families to be welcomed into the school and involved in their children's education and be a part of the Soaring Eagles family. Literacy Night, the Art Show and STEM night are evening events hosted by the staff and are attended by hundreds of students and their family members. Literacy Night provides families with strategies and resources to work with their students at home. The Art Show has grown to include a display of student art, a scavenger hunt of art vocabulary, hands-on crafts, a silent auction, and the book fair. STEM night was introduced more recently and is focused on hands-on activities to inspire students and their families to explore hands-on science, technology, engineering, and math activities. Families also participate in our annual Color Run, which helps raise money for our school and the technology we use while fostering a sense of community.

Knowing a sense of community is what builds our success, we rally around our families in need during the holidays through a nontraditional food collection called Jars of Hope. Students bring in loose change and money for one week. The funds collected are used to provide a Thanksgiving meal or Christmas dinner to families in need. We also partner with community members and local churches to provide gifts and gift cards for these families.
What is the single most important factor in the success of your school that others could replicate?
The single most important factor that other schools can replicate is our flooding model. This model allows us to meet the needs of all students, from our emerging to gifted readers. At the beginning of the year, we assess every child’s reading ability using a combination of DIBELs data and other reading inventories. Within each grade level, students are assigned to a reading teacher based on their reading abilities. Students are with their reading teachers for 60-90 minutes, receiving targeted instruction at their ability levels. The classroom teacher who works with the most emerging readers is flooded with push-in support that includes our Special Education teacher, English Language Development (ELD) teacher, and our paraprofessionals. Recognizing the importance of having qualified staff working with our highest needs kids, we pride ourselves in training our paraprofessionals in research-based interventions such as Lindamood-Bell LIPS or Heggerty. We are also beginning implementation of a Plan-Do-Study-Assess (PDSA) model to target and track needs and growth for all students. Reading groups remain fluid and students are transitioned to an appropriate group as needed. This flooding model allows our most at-risk readers to receive maximum support and proper interventions while remaining in a classroom and also challenges and advances our gifted readers.
Identify the critical professional development activities you use to improve teaching and student learning.
Whether formally or informally, Soaring Eagles staff are continually learning and growing to provide the best education for students. We believe in giving our team competency-based, on-demand professional development opportunities that support our core instructional design. We commonly utilize our talent within the building to provide these opportunities. Teachers who have demonstrated mastery in various skills and research-based curricula are asked to develop and lead activities. These professional development activities include cooperative learning strategies, higher-order thinking and questioning, and dyslexia dynamics. All paraprofessionals and teachers participate in training and are expected to implement learning in their classrooms.

We acknowledge the success of our building is dependent on the abilities of our paraprofessional support. They are the backbone behind the interventions that are assigned by the teachers. The training they have received in targeted, research-based programs is a critical component of our students’ growth. Our paraprofessionals are trained in programs that focus on building a conceptual understanding of math, as well as phonological awareness, phonics, and sight word instruction.

In addition to having staff lead professional development, our teachers also participate in peer observations. Twice a year, the administration provides a full-day substitute to cover classes throughout the day while classroom teachers observe another staff member in action. Following the visit, the observing teachers reflect on their learning through further questioning and a written reflection. This practice truly enhances our culture of collaboration.

Finally, teacher’s schedules are designed to include blocks of collaborative planning time in the school day. Each week, time is also dedicated to professional learning communities, allowing grade-level teachers and their support personnel to discuss student growth and data. This practice supports our belief that when teachers feel a collective sense of responsibility for student learning and work together to improve instruction, students will increase their understanding and performance.

Describe how data is used to improve student achievement and inform decision making.
Student data is used regularly to improve student achievement and inform decision making. Teachers conduct checks for understanding at the end of each lesson at the classroom level to evaluate the learning for the day and plan for the next steps for instruction, whether it be reteaching concepts or advancing to the next lesson. Using this data, teachers identify students who may need extra support, whether through small group reteaching or research-based interventions. In the intermediate grades, teachers consistently communicate student achievement with parents through weekly progress reports.

Student achievement is not the sole responsibility of the classroom teacher. We use a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), a data-driven, problem-solving framework to improve all students’ outcomes. Weekly Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and monthly data meetings are two components of MTSS. During PLC, grade levels and their support personnel discuss targeted questions related to student achievement and behavior. The questions relate to what concepts students need to know, indicators of student learning, and how to adjust as students either struggle to learn or are already proficient at those concepts. This information and data is also analyzed in our monthly data meetings. A team that includes administrators, our school counselor, our literacy coach, ELD and SPED teachers, classroom teachers, and paraprofessionals evaluate grade-level data for all students to guarantee student growth and achievement.
Describe your school culture and explain changes you’ve taken to improve it.
Soaring Eagles’ culture is centered around collaborative relationships between students, staff, families, and our community. These relationships are integral to student success. We strive to lay the foundation and provide tools for students to be inspired to create their own future in our rapidly changing world. Our mission is to educate all students through high expectations and rigorous instruction by fostering relationships in a safe and caring environment. Soaring Eagles integrates Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) where we hold a schoolwide focus on safety, organization, attitude, and respect (SOAR). We recognize that a safe and caring environment includes a commitment to meaningful student and staff relationships.

Our school has implemented a fundamental component that helps start healthy and collaborative relationships with new staff. Our new hires attend a three-week staff institute with seasoned teachers that train in our most essential programs. More importantly, this time spent together helps to build mentor/mentee relationships as well as forming bonds between the new teachers.

At Soaring Eagles, learning is an expectation. Through rigorous instruction, student engagement, staff collaboration, and frequent analysis of data, we provide students the pathways to build strong foundational skills in their academic careers. The implementation of weekly professional learning communities, monthly data analysis meetings, and individualized interventions allow us to differentiate at the student level and ensure every student can SOAR to success.
Stats
  • Category 3

    Selected in 2020

  • Grades: k - 5
    School Setting: urban
    Town Population: 478,221
    Student Enrollment: 560
    Student Demographics:

    Black/African American: 15%
    White/Caucasian: 25%
    Hispanic: 47%
    Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 2%
    Asian: 3%
    Native American: 1%
    Other: 7%

    Teacher/Student Ratio: 1:24
    % Reduced Lunch: 60%
    % ELL Learners: 10%
    Founded: 2003
  • PRINCIPAL:
    Kim Easdon
  • CONTACT:
    4710 Harrier Ridge Drive
    Colorado Springs, CO 80916
    719-540-4000
    keasdon@hsd2.org