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Foreign Language Academy in Kansas City builds student confidence through adaptable, tech-forward lesson plans.

Verizon Innovative Learning Schools Coach Abigail Thompson collaborates with colleagues at Foreign Language Academy, teaching them how to implement Verizon Innovative Learning HQ lesson plans in their classrooms using available technology. Photo credit: Nicole Bissey

When Abigail Thompson joined Foreign Language Academy in Kansas City, Missouri, as the Verizon Innovative Learning Schools Coach, she made it her personal mission to inspire teachers and students with technology and share ways that classroom tech could reshape learning.

“I had already been a teacher in Kansas City Public Schools, and I was really interested in technology and how it’s best used in the classroom,” Thompson says. “I like that I still get to work with kids in some capacity, but I love that I get to help other teachers be great.”

In her role, Thompson has helped teachers successfully implement lesson plans from Verizon Innovative Learning HQ, which offers free to all educators more than 450 tech-based lessons, created by partners like McGraw Hill, Discovery Education and Arizona State University. The lesson plans cover subjects from game design to biology and beyond.

Occasionally, Thompson finds an appealing lesson plan that suggests using a tool or app that the school doesn’t have. “The reality is maybe we don’t always have that exact resource,” she says. But because the lesson plans on Verizon Innovative Learning HQ lay out exactly what is needed for each course of study, Thompson says she easily finds smart substitutions. “Exploring what tools we have and can utilize instead has been big for us,” she says.

One of the most popular Verizon Innovative Learning HQ resources at Thompson’s school, for example, is the Stop-Motion Animation lesson, which gives students a fun, hands-on way to be creative while learning core STEM principles. The lesson plan recommends using the Stop Motion Studio app, but Thompson found a substitute app already available on school tablets with the same capabilities.

Students find the technology both easy-to-use and engaging. “After I take all the pictures, I go to the app where you can edit and add effects,” says fifth grader Gabriela. “I feel like I’m learning when I use it. You’re expanding your brain to learn about editing photography and video together.” The lesson also teaches physics (understanding motion and gravity), engineering (designing sets and props) and math (measuring time and frame rates).

Thompson said another lesson plan that’s a favorite across all grades levels is Emoji Design, which recommends using a graphic design software program that the school doesn’t own. Thompson identified five alternate applications that worked with the material, however, giving students several options for creating their designs.

The resulting emojis are as different as the students are. Kevin, a sixth grader, made a sports-themed emoji to symbolize his love of soccer and basketball; eighth grader Maria Jose taught herself how to create a gradient background to use in her design.

The flexibility of the lesson plans on Verizon Innovative Learning HQ brings creative energy to the classroom, giving students the freedom to explore and innovate during lessons, which in turn builds their confidence. For some lesson plans, the students can choose which tools they will use to complete their work, and students will make selections based on their own interests and comfort level. “One of the kids got so excited about [a popular music production app],” says Thompson. “He said, ‘I’m really good at keeping beats, so I’m working in percussion.’ I just love that.”

Having agency and authorship of their learning experience gives the students the confidence to develop new skills. “Using technology for creation rather than consumption in the classroom is so important,” Thompson says. "It helps students see technology as a tool and gives them so many options to show who they are and what they know. Creating choice has given voice to the students. It helps them gain both knowledge and confidence, so I just think that’s awesome."

The students think it’s awesome, too. “We integrate our own ideas into our work,” says Gabriel, a seventh grader.

Leo, also in seventh grade, puts it more simply: “The lessons are more fun.”

Tim Nash, a STEM and robotics teacher, says that his students are repurposing skills they learned in the Verizon Innovative Learning HQ lessons and bringing them to other subjects. “We have a journalism class that does weekly video announcements using [readily available video production apps],” Nash says. “It’s something new that we’re doing, because the kids now know how to use the tools in ways that can be implemented outside of the classroom.”

Those video announcements are shared school-wide. And, as Nash points out, it’s “pretty cool” that middle-school students are stepping into these kinds of roles, inspired to branch out and apply what they’ve learned in real-life scenarios.

For her colleagues, meanwhile, Thompson fosters ongoing creative usage of Verizon Innovative Learning HQ lessons at the school by sharing resources, lesson examples and project ideas with teachers, partly through a monthly newsletter and partly through one-to-one calls with her co-workers. And just like their students, the teachers are taking the ball and running with it, with creative and engaging results. “The teachers see the resources and take them and they make them their own,” she says.

Verizon Innovative Learning is a key part of the company’s responsible business plan to help move the world forward for all. As part of the plan, Verizon has an ambitious goal of providing 10 million youth with digital skills training by 2030. Educators can access free lessons, professional development, and immersive learning experiences to help bring new ways of learning into the classroom by visiting Verizon Innovative Learning HQ.

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