2022 DLC Awards Recipients

The West Allis West Milwaukee School District serves just over seven-thousand students in nineteen schools. We have eleven elementary schools, three intermediate schools, two comprehensive high schools, a Project-Based Learning high school, a Charter School for School Aged Parents, and a Virtual Charter School. About sixty-five percent of our students come from backgrounds of economic disadvantage, and we are beautifully diverse. We have been on a journey to achieve equity through Deeper Learning for the last six years and have achieved some very promising results. During that time, we also overcame an enormous financial challenge and a complete overhaul of our district leadership team. We are very proud of the work we have done so far but are not yet satisfied. Given the last year and a half, we continue to have work to do.

Our Superintendent often says the phrase, "It's not about what's wrong, it's about what's possible." We have shifted our lens from seeing our learners as students with deficits who need remediation, to students who bring talents and assets to the table that deserve inspiration. We have students who have started businesses like a coffee cart, a snack shack, and a working bee farm (yes, an urban bee farm!!) to building aquaponics labs and bakeries in schools to learn about sustainable farming and community outreach. We have worked to embed the Social Justice standards into our work and have students and staff exploring their own identities so they can create a stronger sense of belonging in the classroom communities. We have hundreds of educators who keep a digital portfolio of their work and will have a PreK-12th grade digital portfolio for all students starting in 2022-2023.

In the midst of the pandemic, we figured out how to get a device, a hotspot, and access to food for every single learner within the first two days of the shut-down. We continued our project-based learning work during the shut-down and shifted all instruction to a 4k-12th grade passion project to capture what our students were learning and doing from home. They connected to local and world-wide experts to get advice on their projects and did online presentations of learning to share what they had learned. We used the time to increase our technology access and keep our learners connected no matter what the learning environment.

As we returned to in-person learning in 21-22, students are continuing their work on their passion projects as well as spending time reconnecting with one another. We encourage our staff to create connections before content and to meet our students exactly where they are knowing we would have the time to make up for the “learning loss” when we were all ready. We increased the number of social workers in our schools and continued to have access to a licensed mental health care provider in each of our schools that students can see during the day through their insurance. This allows our families to have a reduced barrier to high quality care. In addition, we continued our work around Mindfulness, using the Zones of Regulation to teach emotional regulation, and Restorative Practices.

We also had most of our staff continue to use the technology tools that we introduced during the emergency shut-down of our physical schools in March 2020. We now have many platforms that teachers are using seamlessly as a part of their instructional practice. Students have increased their skills in doing public demonstrations of their learning, including creating and participating in podcasts, creating videos, presenting at conferences, and sharing about their work with schools all over our area and our country.

We have opened our Project Based Learning High School to all grades, so we have ninth graders attending who opened the school year by doing a presentation to the Milwaukee Bucks. They pitched ideas to the Bucks marketing team on how the Bucks might want to get involved with Giving Tuesday. They created sample products, marketing materials, and created professional pitches. Students moved on from there to create their own projects that demonstrate their high level of skills in Math, Science, SS and English as well as skills in communication, problem-solving, collaboration, and self-direction.

Many of these students come from one of our learning communities at the intermediate level. Students in these communities participate daily in a cross-curricular, flexibility community that includes over one hundred students in grades six through eighth grades with five teachers. The communities are fully inclusive and serve students who receive special education services, students who receive gifted services and everyone in-between. The students have been finalists for National History Day, have pitched proposals to local businesses, have done fund-raising for local charities, and have supported one another through a very challenging time.

One of things we are most proud of is the way our learners support one another. We have Hope Squads at each of our secondary schools. These are a team of students nominated by their peers as people they would reach out to in a crisis. The nominated students get trained in identifying signs of loneliness, depression, and other mental health issues within the school so they can refer their peers to adults for help. This has been lifesaving in two cases and life-altering in many, many more.

As a school district, we are constantly looking to grow and evolve to meet the needs of our learners each day. We want them to be ready to live life on their own terms when they leave us with the skills to achieve their goals. Whether they choose college, military service, or jump right into the world of work, we want them to be ready to accomplish all of their goals.