To: Dr. Monique Lewis 

From: Pedro Beltran

Date: February 8, 2021

Dear Dr. Monique Lewis,

This world has become more unpredictable and challenging than we could have ever imagined. These are times where tools such as laptops and Chromebooks in Education are more available than ever. However, students’ attendance, grades, and engagement are not improving. One of the big misconceptions is that giving students access to these devices will automatically develop/increment their desire to learn, explore, discover, and prepare them for the future.   

At Central Middle School, teachers and students have become more familiar with our new District Learning Management System (Canvas). So far, this tool has enabled us to deliver the content similarly as we used to do it before the Pandemic. Now that we have the technical means to provide education onsite and remotely, we must create an environment to push students to a deeper level of learning and cultivate a habit of exploration, development, and collaboration to prepare students for academics and life.

I propose to use our after-school Engineering Club as our pilot program to develop an actual Engineering Class on our master schedule. Students will have the opportunity to develop computational thinking, problem-solving skills, and exploration with Engineering. The Engineering Club will function as a Blended Learning model using variants such as Rotation, Flex and, A La Carte. This implementation will happen simultaneously with three components: Drones, VEX Robotics, 3D Printing, and using our LMS platform (Canvas) to facilitate these sessions online and on-campus to get hands-on experimentation and collaboration in a clean and disinfected environment due to Covid-19.

To make this possible, I will need time to meet with the Engineering teachers weekly for at least one hour to create, develop and identify the most effective blended structure for each component and create a curriculum and pacing that can replicate this structure into a yearlong course. 

I am excited to pilot this initiative and to share the results with our Leadership Team. Our students and parents have been looking forward to these types of opportunities. Please consider this proposal. 

Sincerely, 

Pedro Beltran

Director of Data and Technology 

Central Middle School 

Galveston ISD