Educators put cultural shift front and center at evolving Jefferson Elementary

It’s been a year since the Cape Girardeau School District announced an ambitious plan designed to revitalize Jefferson Elementary School, and by extension, the entire surrounding community.

While one half of the plan included plans to build a $6 million aquatic center at the school to function as a community hub, the other half is to utilize STREAM curriculum (Science, Technology, Research, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) to improve student outcomes at Jefferson.

Students show off artwork featuring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Jefferson Elementary school principal Leigh Ragsdale during her morning rounds Friday in Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

“We were underperforming. There were a lot of discipline issues,” Jefferson Elementary principal Leigh Ragsdale said of the school’s past. “There was a big survey, and [we found] the culture of the school and the relationship with the community was a little rocky.”

Halfway through the first school year of the plan’s implementation — which has also been Ragsdale’s first year as principal at Jefferson — Ragsdale said there’s still work to do before the bulk of the planned STREAM curriculum can begin. Teachers at Jefferson have so far used field trips and “short sprint” service projects on top of traditional curriculum to introduce students to the principles of STREAM-style projects, which Ragsdale said will begin in full next school year.

Affirmative decorations adorn a classroom door Frdiday at Jefferson Elementary School in Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

“We will actually, as Jefferson Elementary, develop our own framework of project-based learning and make sure the STREAM acronym are all embedded into our projects,” she said.

But in the meantime, she said, students and their families have enthusiastically embraced the staff’s efforts to build a culture of inclusion and excellence.

No detail is too small when it comes to Jefferson’s culture-building push, she said. Lines on the hallway floors have been replaced with paw prints and affirmations. Faculty emphasize words such as “family” and “community” instead of “parent” to avoid marginalizing students who may live with a grandparent or other guardian. And every morning, students of all ages participate in mindfulness exercises to help start the day off right.

Jefferson Elementary School principal Leigh Ragsdale, right, mingles with students during her morning rounds Friday in Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

“If you can reach students through relationships first and build those, then the sky is the limit,” she said.

And the students aren’t the only ones keen on the new culture. Families too, she said, appreciate the outreach efforts. In October, the school saw 94 percent participation in family-community-teacher conferences, which replaced parent-teacher conferences.

“I think that right there speaks volumes,” Ragsdale said.

A big part of STREAM learning, she explained, is being able to engage students’ curiosities to help them learn in a way that suits them; meaning, part of the process is basically meeting kids where they are. And the culture being built at Jefferson incorporates a similar ethos: meet people where they are.

Sometimes, that’s as simple as livestreaming an assembly to reach families who can’t attend in person because of work schedules, but other times, it means putting in extra time and effort. After a recent snowstorm, Ragsdale said a third-grader called the school to say the family car had a flat tire and she and her siblings still wanted to come to school. Ragsdale happily arranged to get them a ride.

Jefferson Elementary School principal Leigh Ragsdale laughs while rummaging through shark decorations and shark-themed gifts she's received in her office after completing her morning rounds Friday in Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

“It takes a village,” she said. “We say that all the time around here.”

And that approach, it seems, is proving effective; so much so the school district opened Jefferson’s enrollment a month ago for the upcoming school year.

Ragsdale said her hope is by instilling positive values in young students, the culture will become even more cohesive as the kindergartners progress through the school.

“Maybe then we can take a breather,” she said with a smile. “But probably not.”

tgraef@semissourian.com

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