Breakout EDU Spotlight: Heather Bridges of Craig Elementary
Heather Bridges
iNSTRUCTIONAL tECHNOLOGY & iNNOVATION at cRAIG Elementary School
What is your favorite thing about Breakout EDU?
I love how Breakout EDU makes my students THINK! We talk about making their brains grow and Breakout EDU really exercises all the right brain 'muscles' that make their brains grow and develop.
What do your students say about Breakout EDU?
When I go into a classroom, the first thing students ask is 'Are we doing a breakout?' and if I say "Not this time" the response is usually a groan.
What SEL skills have been fostered as your students take part in Breakout EDU games?
There are so many SEL skills fostered, but a few that we really focus on are: active listening, encouraging others, cooperation, taking turns. We also always work on shared leadership because groups rarely are successful or enjoyable for everyone if one person takes over and does everything.
Can you give an example of how your students have shown grit using Breakout EDU?
I give students at least one hint card for a breakout but my rule is everyone in your group must agree to use the hint card in order for your group to turn it in. This 'rule' frequently makes groups refocus and review before they just turn it in. There's always one person who wants to keep trying and can usually convince the group to keep working through the problem instead of using their hint card.
Describe how Breakout EDU aligns to your school or district strategic plan.
Gwinnett County Public Schools has long provided an education that is student-driven, equity-focused, and future-driven. Gwinnett recently joined Learning 2025 to help sharpen its focus and to collaborate with other school districts to ensure we are “preparing students for their future, not our past.” GCPS’s strategic plan focuses on four areas: empathy, equity, effectiveness, and excellence. Empathy is key to our understanding of others and to creating a powerful sense of belonging in our GCPS culture. Empathy is the path to equity – ensuring that each and every child has what they need to reach their full potential. Effectiveness is our ability to achieve the results we desire. Equity and effectiveness form the bridge from empathy to excellence. The guiding point, or ‘north star,’ of our strategic priorities is our ‘Portrait of a Graduate.’ This portrait was developed with input from the GCPS community stakeholders over the course of 4 months. The Portrait includes the skills, competencies, and attitudes our community believes are vital for students to possess when they graduate from GCPS and focuses on six core competencies our students need for successful 21st century learning. These core competencies are adaptability, collaborative leadership, resourcefulness, empathy, critical thinking, and communication. When overlaying these strategic priorities and competencies with the skills utilized in Breakout EDU, the correlation between the two is easily seen. Breakout EDU fosters all these priorities at all grade levels and in multiple ways. It is another tool in the toolbelt to world-class instruction and learning.
What are you most interested in using Breakout EDU for at your school?
The Breakout EDU digital platform and physical kits develop students' critical thinking skills as well as their collaboration skills. What I notice happening when given a scenario is how students begin collaborating with each other to help solve the problem. They don't wait for me to tell them to begin to work together but instead, this type of activity encourages natural and organic collaboration to happen. I would like more classes and students to have the opportunity to experience this type of collaboration and to add another tool into our SEL instruction. Right now, my scope of influence is the specials (elective) classes taught by myself and the Media Specialist and the occasional class or grade level who will sign up for a seasonal Breakout with me. However, I have a limited number of physical kits which only allow for a few classes to participate at once. With the onset of the 22-23 school year, Gwinnett County Public Schools made the move to 1-to-1 with Chromebooks. Now that all students have devices, the digital platform of Breakout EDU is much more accessible for all students and all classes. We are no longer limited by the computer lab schedule. This grant would allow the technology team at Craig to expand the scope of Breakout EDU to reach all students at Craig Elementary and to further support our county technology initiative and our strategic priorities.