Giving Compass' Take:

• Teachers from Roosevelt Elementary School share how their students stepped up to take the lead on a new tech initiative at the school, taking pressure off of teachers and enhancing learning for themselves and other students.

• How can schools take advantage of their students' curiosity and passion to create better learning experiences? How can philanthropy support and empower student leadership?

• Learn how to give students room to lead school culture.

Maggie is a fifth grader at Roosevelt Elementary School in Park Ridge, Illinois and in Fall 2017, she was trained to become a “TechXpert” at her school so she could coach fellow students daily during the tech lab at the LRC. The TechXpert program wasn’t something we had initially planned to build. It came about because students like Maggie were willing to help us solve some problems we encountered when we started our journey to roll out a collection of new tools we didn’t know much about.

In January 2016, the parent teacher organization at Roosevelt Elementary generously purchased a number of new tools for our school. The problem: there wasn’t a plan for implementing these new tools.

Our teachers had full schedules with loaded curriculum and they lacked the time to learn to use the tools or to figure out when to visit the lab.

A small group of fifth graders had taken a deep interest in the program and started asking to come on days when their class wasn’t scheduled. They were allowed to visit the lab, but they were asked to help out while they were there. This group set the robots and tools out before classrooms arrived, did small demonstrations for visiting classes and made sure the materials were put away after each class.

What would tech lab look like when the dedicated set of student helpers moved on to the middle school? Fortunately, after an initial survey, it was clear that the upcoming fourth-graders were eager to take the lead. We planned a one-day summer training for them and the TechXpert program officially launched.

Read the full article about students taking the lead by Taryn Handlon and Tiffany Costa at EdSurge