Ecorse Schools Preparing Students for Excellence Following Graduation

Each person spends roughly 13 years of childhood participating in the process of a formal education. Often the excitement of graduation can end with a thud if a student has not prepared a plan for adulthood, which includes a plan for job or career. The Ecorse Public Schools District is doing all it can to make sure its graduates have a goal for life upon leaving school. Since arriving in 2017, Ecorse Schools Superintendent Dr. Josha Talison has kept the district moving forward by developing and adding new programs, working to meet the academic and emotional needs of students and staff, enhancing athletic, language, and music programs, managing the district's finances, and navigating the district and community through a pandemic. As a new school year approaches, Talison says, "We're just excited about all the different things that are taking place across the district."

New this year are upgrades and renovations to each of the district's schools, upgrades to the high schools' football field, and the addition of two new e-gaming/sports labs at Grandport Academy and Ecorse High School. Talison welcomes technology into the classroom and says e-gaming is becoming a widely-accepted, lucrative sport and can influence a career choice for young minds, including programming, game or web designer, game tester, software engineering, or even professional e-gaming/sports competition. "A lot of the kids are playing these games anyway, but to learn it in a competitive also social manner that can help them is good, because not everybody can be a football or basketball player so this is another opportunity for them to use that skill set. It also teaches them socialization because you're on a team at the high school with 10 or 15 other kids and competing against kids from other school districts, so we're really excited about that implementation. E-sports or on the football field, we want to make sure they have the best at all times," he says.

STEM-based curriculum will now find its way into all grade levels in Ecorse. STEM is an umbrella term used to group the related fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. "A lot of times when you see STEM, it's at the secondary level, grades 7 through 12, so we have a new K-12 STEM initiative," explains Talison. "At the kindergarten through 4th grades level, they'll be doing Lego robotics and creating simple machines. At the middle school level, they'll be integrating science more but also they'll be doing drone activities and at the high school we'll have a more advanced drone class with the e-sports, and our mechatronics feeds off that because it's the engineering aspect and the science integration. We're really making sure we have a continuum of growth for the students as they come from the smaller age

groups through 12th grade." To make sure it all succeeds, teachers and support staff are receiving additional training to guide students through STEM activities and lessons. Wayne RESA donated two drones to the district for student use. Talison adds, "It's just really making science and technology alive for them and they're going to become more abstract thinkers and the by-product will be high performance on state assessments and things of that nature."

Talison is also proud to announce that between 2020 and 2022, the district had the third highest growth in reading comprehension for grades 3 through 8 in Wayne County. "That's a testament to the teachers and to the students for their resiliency and making sure they were focused. Even through the pandemic we were able to increase reading comprehension scores and growth," he says. The district has placed a myriad of reading intervention and supports at all grade levels to ensure students succeed at reading.

Also new in Ecorse Schools this year will be a full-time School Resource Officers through the Ecorse Police Department. Also new will be a full-time nurse on staff, rotating to all school buildings. The district's partnership with Wayne County Community College District promotes the Promise Program, which is still going strong and offers students dual enrollment to earn college credits before graduating high school.

Talison says he is looking forward to all the new school year-which begins on September 5- can bring. He says, "We're continuously moving the bar higher, we're not complacent in anything we do. We just want to make sure we're giving the kids the best no matter what. I'm excited that the board, myself, and the teachers, and administrators are all lock-step on making sure that we meet the needs of our student population."