Students with Disabilities Thriving through STEAM

K-12 STEAM education

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit) City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit) LAUSD (select only if you have a district-wide partnership)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

STEM education has never been more crucial than it is today: in addition to the numerous soft-skills it helps develop (critical thinking, teamwork, creativity, etc.), STEM jobs now comprise 24% of the US workforce - a number that rises each year. Unfortunately, many students with disabilities, especially those in low-income public schools, are not provided appropriate access to STEM learning. This creates compounding problems, putting them at a lifelong disadvantage:
Students with disabilities perform an average of 3 years below grade level and have a graduation rate 15% lower than their peers.
People with disabilities make up only 3% of the STEM workforce, despite representing 13% of the overall adult population in the US.
The unemployment rate for people with a disability is more than double the rate for those with no disability.
LAUSD is home to more than 78,000 students with disabilities, and they all deserve access to high-quality, culturally-responsive STEM learning.

“Students with Disabilities Thriving through STEAM” uses the intrinsic power of the Arts to help students develop Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math skills through classroom instruction, educator professional development, and family workshops. We leverage the principles of Asset-based Learning: Instead of trying to fit students into lessons that aren’t designed for them, we begin with what the students CAN do, and build from there.
Our approach for serving children with diverse learning needs is to increase student engagement - if students are engaged in the material, anything is possible! Once we have their attention, we can teach any curricular concept, so we create inclusive and dynamic arts activities that are inherently engaging for students of all abilities and experiences. Our California Common Core standards-aligned curricula utilizes dance, movement, music, and visual arts teaching strategies that have been proven to improve academic performance and social skills.
An award from LA2050 will allow us to implement programming at two public elementary schools, each of which will receive:
72 classroom visits, where our Teaching Artists facilitate hands-on STEAM activities for students with disabilities
3 Professional Development workshops to train educators and staff in the Everyday Arts methodology
1 bilingual community-building family event where youth and their caregivers can participate in accessible STEAM artmaking together

Our immediate goal is for students with disabilities to participate in fun, relevant, inclusive STEAM activities, and for their teachers to develop new ways of engaging their students in STEAM learning. Arts inclusion experiences from a young age help students develop self-efficacy and self-motivation, which in turn leads to academic success and personal flourishing. They are supported in graduating and are able to bring their full lived experiences and contribute to society in ways that will enhance not only their individual lives, but also creative industries throughout LA and beyond.
In order to reach our long term goal of leading an industry-wide shift in how students with disabilities develop STEAM skills, we plan to partner with an independent evaluator to gauge the efficacy of the program and document its impact on STEAM learning. We can then scale the program and expand our model to serve as many communities throughout LA County as possible.