Before becoming a Verizon Innovative Learning School in 2022, technology at Highland Middle often meant little more than a digital replacement for paper and pencil. Today, thanks to Verizon Innovative Learning Schools’ professional learning and intentional shifts in school structures, technology fuels student agency, curiosity, and collaboration across disciplines.
In our first year as a Verizon Innovative Learning School, the Digital Collaboration learning track helped teachers focus on tools that actually build meaningful connections. For example, culinary arts students worked across classes and grade levels to create a Highland Cookbook featuring family recipes from diverse cultures. With digital tools, the cookbook reached an authentic audience, and students became creators, not just consumers.
The next year, the Transformative Technology learning track pushed teachers to design lessons where technology amplified real-world relevance. As a result, sixth graders learning surface area in math teamed up with engineering students learning about form and function to 3D-print bubble wands that produced the most bubbles. Suddenly, abstract math became concrete, creative, and connected to design and play.
Professional learning doesn’t end after a workshop. At Highland, teachers engage in daily professional learning communities (PLCs), monthly embedded professional development, and recurring coaching cycles that keep technology integration meaningful. These opportunities give teachers the time and support to design authentic, student-centered learning experiences, and as the instructional technology coach, I help keep the focus on student-centered, purposeful learning, not just tool use.
As the instructional technology coach at Highland, I provide teachers with hands-on guidance, model innovative practices, and offer just-in-time support as new digital tools and instructional strategies are introduced. By acting as a bridge between professional learning and classroom implementation, I help ensure that professional development turns into meaningful practice. This ongoing, personalized support has been key to building teacher confidence and consistency, allowing our school to sustain and deepen its vision for powerful learning.
Verizon Innovative Learning Schools practices have transformed technology from convenience into a catalyst at Highland. Students now create, connect, and collaborate in ways that extend far beyond the classroom walls. Student choice and collaboration are at the heart of our learning culture. In the environment and agriculture program, for example, students research agribusiness concepts and work together to design and manage supervised agricultural projects—hatching quail, building coops, and planting crops for seasonal harvests.
What makes these projects truly dynamic is the digital collaboration behind them. Agriculture and culinary arts teachers co-plan lessons using shared digital tools, aligning crop production with culinary recipes so that students grow the ingredients they later cook in class. These interdisciplinary projects blend hands-on learning with purposeful tech use, showing students how digital planning, communication, and problem-solving connect directly to real-world outcomes and careers.
“It’s not just about growing food,” said Adeline, a consumer science student at Highland. “It’s about growing ideas with each other.”
Family engagement events showcase these projects where students are not only consumers of knowledge but creators of content, products, and presentations. These events celebrate student agency while highlighting the collaborative work of teachers to make learning relevant and authentic.
At one such event, an eighth grader proudly led his younger sisters to the school garden to show off the chicken coop he and his classmates built. In agriculture class, he had incubated baby chicks and then partnered with engineering students to design a coop that fit perfectly in the school garden. That evening, he explained to his sisters how incubation works, how agribusiness concepts generate revenue, and why this project mattered. His excitement was contagious—his sisters couldn’t wait to come to Highland and take the class themselves.
Moments like this highlight how professional learning and intentional school systems give teachers the tools to create authentic, relevant projects. And when students take ownership, they not only learn—they inspire others.
In other words, teacher growth fuels student success. At Highland, investing in educators has created the conditions for students to flourish as creators, collaborators, and innovators.
The journey at Highland Middle School demonstrates that when educators are given time, support, and the right tools, professional learning becomes the catalyst for transforming instruction. Intentional investments in teacher growth—first in digital collaboration, then in transformative technology—have created classrooms where students are no longer passive recipients of information but active, curious participants in their own learning. As the instructional technology coach, I support this progress by helping our teachers translate new strategies into practice, troubleshooting challenges, and modeling innovative approaches. The Verizon Innovative Learning Schools partnership strengthens community, fosters innovation, and gives students authentic agency and purpose. It is more than an initiative; it is a living example of Powerful Learning.
Learn more about Verizon Innovative Learning Schools.
Thanks to Dr. Nicole Adell for her contributions to this blog post!
