The start of the school year brings all sorts of new things for students: new friends, new classes, new teachers. For seven schools around Indianapolis and in Pennsylvania, this new school year also kicks off new technology for the Building Dreams program. One of the main programs offered by the Fight for Life Foundation, founded by former Indianapolis Colts player Marlin Jackson, Building Dreams provides classroom activities and curriculum to help students with social and emotional learning: understanding the virtues, values, and character traits needed to be successful in school and in life.
Back in February, Counterpart kicked off the project with Fight for Life to create a mobile-friendly platform that enables teachers to access and deliver lesson plans and track each student’s progress. We wanted to provide a solution that would be interactive for both teachers and students, as well as provide reporting for administrators.
Teachers juggle a lot of responsibilities throughout their day. It was important that we create a software solution that would be easy to navigate so that teachers would be able to efficiently integrate Building Dreams lesson plans into their daily learning.
We also wanted to get the students excited about what they were learning, so we designed pages to be interactive and visually appealing. We incorporated a fun gaming element where students and teachers are able to see the yards they have earned and even celebrate first downs with a congratulatory animated screen. On their profile page, students display badges they earn for modeling values and character traits they have learned about.
Providing reporting functionality was also important. Teachers and administrators are able to see a layout of class standings, including their total yards, first downs, flags, sacks, and red zones by student and by class.
We are really excited for teachers and students to engage with the software and incorporate the Building Dreams curriculum in the classroom. We are so grateful for the opportunity to partner with the Fight for Life Foundation and will continue cheering on the important work they are doing in the community.
Posted in Software Services, Youth Mentoring
