A new charter school opened inside Alma d’ Arte to teach kids science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics and provide them with a bilingual education.
According to the New Mexico Public Education Commission, Inspira STEAM Academy was approved unanimously in August of last year and joins seven other charters in Las Cruces.
Public Education Commissioner for District 7 Pattie Gipson said unlike traditional public schools, kids don’t have to live in the neighborhood to attend, doors are open to anyone geographically located within the Las Cruces Public School zone.
She also pointed out a common misconception many people have that charter schools are private.
“There’s this great misconception that charter schools aren’t public schools and don’t have to comply with all of the requirements that a traditional public school does, because they do,” Gipson said.
While Inspira will eventually be a kindergarten through fifth grade school, enrollment this year is only open to kindergarteners and first graders. This is to give the children the best possible chance of success in learning what, for some, will be a new language, said executive administrator and lead founder Julia Rivera-Tapia.
“Our model is an 80/20, which means that in kindergarten and in first grade, you will be receiving 80% of your instruction in Spanish, and then we will add the English component to it until we reach a 50-50 split in fifth grade,” she said.
Amari Clinton is a mother of two daughters, and her eldest will be attending Inspira for kindergarten. She’s looking forward to the bilingual curriculum, she said.
“I just think it would be the best way for her to get submerged into the language versus her trying to learn it another way,” she said. “It was always an elective with Spanish; it wasn’t really something that people pushed. So, I see an area where they could grow.”
Rivera-Tapia believes pairing Spanish and STEAM related curriculum will complement each other well.
“Spanish, since we know that a lot of those roots are Latin, is just a great investment in the vocabulary that the children will learn towards their future,” she said. “So, if they decide to go into the sciences or they decide to be engineers, they'll have that Spanish academic language in their repertoire.”
While there are other schools around town that offer STEAM, the bilingual charter school has more creativity in how they choose to teach, Rivera-Tapia said. As a mother of three kids who each attended different charter schools, she said there’s value in having this flexibility.
“It's very important because we don't all learn the same,” she said. “We don't all have the same needs. And the charter schools meet those needs. So, we're absolutely not a one- size-fits-all.”
Part of the Inspira curriculum includes science and engineering taught through free Lego kits provided to each student. There will also be a mathematics program taught in collaboration with New Mexico State University.
Also, classrooms will have stools, adjustable desks and desks equipped with stationary bikes for kids who like to move while they learn, Rivera-Tapia said.
“It's not just in one class, it's in every single one of our classes,” she said. ”We ensured that every class had those pieces of equipment available, because we understand that children learn differently.”
Success for them looks like having every seat filled, said Rivera-Tapia, and for every student to be bilingually efficient enough to speak to their parents and use what they’ve learned to give back to the community.
And for parents who may feel pessimistic about the state of education in New Mexico, Rivera-Tapia has one message.
“We are new, and if what you've tried hasn't worked, then give us a try,” she said. ”We really have support from the university, we have professional developments that we're going to be taking, and we have very, very passionate teachers.”
Inspira STEAM academy is located inside of Alma d’ Arte High School. Enrollment to the school is open until all seats are filled, at which point students will be waitlisted and later selected through a lottery system. Rivera-Tapia says each class will have both a teacher and educational assistant and no more than 20 students.
“We need to do something, and this is something,” Rivera-Tapia said.
More information at Inspirasteamacademy.gov.
Serena Johnson is a fellow with the New Mexico Local News Fellowships and Internships Program, which places emerging journalists in newsrooms across New Mexico. Learn more at www.newmexicolocalnewsfellowships.org.
