K-12 Educational Development

HSLDA Compassion’s New and Used Curriculum Sale isn’t quite like any other book sale. Instead of focusing on cookbooks or comic books, the organization — the charitable arm of the Home School Legal Defense Association — takes donations of math and history books, lab materials and the like and makes those educational materials available to the home-schooling community. It’s an event sponsored annually by K12 Educational Development, which continues to wrap its arms around the home-schooling community.

There’s a national teacher shortage, a numbers problem GCU is helping address. GCU’s K12 Educational Development hopes its webinar training on teacher certification tests adds up to a solution. Wednesday’s training was the first virtual session on a subject tough to so many across the country trying to pass the certification — math.

Lynette Stant grew up on a Navajo Reservation. She remembers being at her mother’s side to make tortillas, only later realizing that through those experiences she was learning fractions. That came in handy as the Arizona Teacher of the Year and GCU alumna helped teachers this spring find ways to reach students who faced online barriers during emergency remote learning.

The Technology Department continues to help build the nation’s cybersecurity community, thanks to a $100,000 grant awarded by the National Security Agency and National Science Foundation. The GenCyber grant will be used to support a free summer camp on the GCU campus in 2021 designed to help high school educators teach cybersecurity. “We’re in trouble if we’re not creating the next generation,” said Dr. Heather Monthie, Associate Dean of Technology in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology.

With coronavirus-prompted school closures becoming a reality, it also became an inevitability that educators would have to teach in a different way. They would have to turn to online instruction in this new era of distance learning. That’s when GCU’s K12 Educational Development Department started to think of things it could do to support teachers. “We just leaped into action and said let’s put it on a YouTube Channel; we know we can do this,” said Corinne Araza, the department’s Director of STEM Outreach and Program Development. It’s where educators can find webinars and Tip-of-the-Day videos, and where parents can find educational tips, too. The department is also supporting teachers through various social media outlets.

What do you get when you combine the Milwaukee Brewers and GCU’s Honors College? The Brewers STEM Crew after school club. The program for middle school students, who were led by students from the Honors College, highlighted the STEM involved in baseball through an active, engaging approach.

Hundreds of students from almost 50 middle and high schools toted along their robots, solar-powered model cars and disaster relief engineering designs to the University on Saturday. They were competing in the Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) central regional event, which featured nine design challenges. GCU also will be the site for the state competition in May and the nationals in June.

How does GCU make a private Christian education accessable and affordable for it’s students? That is the question that was answered at this year’s Cracking the Code CCSC Leadership Forum for Leaders within the K-12 Christian education level. “It was a great event. It was a remarkable group of leaders,” said Ryan Bredow, Assistant Vice President of K12 Educational Development. “We invited them to a conversation. The conversation was built around a concept that we refer to as cracking the code.”

The Association of Christian Schools International’s first international job fair at GCU brought representatives from 28 countries to campus Tuesday. “We have a variety of job fairs and career fairs, but mostly they’re local and national. This is opening up the door in a large way to the number of professions in that international sphere,” said Dr. Tacy Ashby, Senior Vice President of K12 Educational Development. “The College of Education is really excited about this because it affords incredible ministry opportunities while allowing their students the opportunity to serve in Christian schools abroad.”

Dr. Ryan Melillo, who teaches anatomy and physiology at GCU, wanted to make sure his son, Evan, was in an environment where the Christian worldview was prominent in his education. So his family chose to move Evan to a private Christian school — a choice being supported by GCU and GCE employee-giving program Allocate to Elevate. Allocate to Elevate just launched its eighth year this month with a new name — it was previously called Donate to Elevate — and a new pledge goal of $3.2 million.