Teachers at Ivywild Elementary School were training this week on building relationships with students and parents as part of a push to improve the Ivywild Community.
The $30,000 training was paid for my the Pikes Peak Community Foundation and is part of the Foundation's Strengthening Neighborhoods Initiative, which began in 2005.
The initiative focuses on the neighborhood in southwest Colorado Springs and the Colorado School District 11 school that sits a few blocks west of South Nevada Avenue.
An emphasis was placed on helping the school first, said Susan Pattee, project director for the Strengthening Neighborhoods Initiative, "because that's the heart of the Ivywild neighborhood."
On Thursday, teachers were excited to share what they learned about the nationwide "Schools Attuned" program and how it could affect those in the neighborhood.
Much of the training was about creating a partnership between the school and its students and parents.
"We want to make sure parents and students are equal partners," said Vallorie Buffa, Ivywild's library technology educator.
Teachers will become "attuned" to the needs of their students through observations and data-gathering, "but you also ask the parents to do that," Buffa said.
Parents might see behaviors at home that teachers will never see in the classroom, she said.
Parents help teachers catalog the student's strengths and weaknesses and also create ways to help the student.
"We have to build a relationship," Buffa said. "We have to be a community center."
Some of the training also discussed the importance of looking at a child's struggles and not immediately labeling a student as lazy or not paying attention, explained fourth-grade teacher Cherie Ward.
A student might have trouble remembering things, for example, Ward said. So teachers can help by linking information with something the student can remember or giving students a hook that leads them to the information.
The training gave teachers information about struggles students might have and tools to help students.
"It's making you aware of other struggles people have," Ward said.