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Welcome to Spotlight Chat, a conversation with leaders. Our special guest today is Chrissy Rowley. She is the communications director for Sonoran Schools. They're based in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. Krissy, what is Sonoran schools? How is it different from any other school?

Sonoran schools are public charter schools in the state. Arizona and public charter schools are just like traditional public schools. There's no fee structure. They're open to anybody who wants to enroll in the community. And the difference in terms of charter versus traditional public is we're allowed to declare a focus, and in our particular case, our focus is STEM education.

And what exactly is stem? I hear this name, STEM steam. I feel stupid for not knowing what it means.

That's a great question. And actually, most people, unless it's your sphere of experience, you have no real reason to know what STEM is. STEM actually stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. And again, as I said, this is our focus at Sonoran Schools. The reason it is our focus is those four disciplines are critical to an individual's future in terms of being able to obtain a career in the 21st century world. It's important to our nation's economy. It's important in terms of our role as innovators in global arena. So STEM education is critically important. That's why we have that as our focus. In addition to college preparation, we want to make sure that we're graduating students who have the proficiencies and the skill sets not only to be employable in the 21st century world, but also to be able to be productive members of society.

What else does your school do differently from typical public schools? And how would a parent know if this is a good fit for his or her child?

That's a really great, great question. I think one of the wonderful things with charter school education is it's opened up an area in education, means parents have school choice. So one of the things that we do differently and may be appealing to a parent is we have a small school size, which means not only a small school size across all of the grades, but small class sizes. Again, our focus is STEM education and college preparation. That's integrated into our curriculum. Kindergarten through 12th grade, which means that we're focused on those areas right from the earliest time that your student enters our organization all the way through 12th grade. And what that looks like at the end of the day in 12th grade is our student are graduating not only with a high school diploma, but also with a STEM diploma.

And what do your students like about your school, especially if they've had perhaps less Than ideal experiences in other schools. What do they say that's different about your school? What's better about it?

I think what the students find attractive when you talk to those that have been with us for a long time is they do like the small school environment, which might be surprising that especially with high school students, you think that they're looking for a very broad experience with cheerleading and wrestling teams and football. Those are the things that we're not able to provide. But the upside that is really appealing to students is in the small school environment, they develop a relationship with their peers. They become really like a family unit, and they also develop that relationship with their teachers, which is very important to them. They not only receive the academic component, but they get that nurturing, mentoring component in being in a small school environment.

How do you recruit your teachers? What's different about a teacher at Sonoran versus the regular public schools in your communities?

We have very high expectations of our teachers. So when we're recruiting teachers, we have a very honest conversation, not only about the academics that we expect in the classroom and their classroom management, but also their commitment generally to our philosophy in how they are going to work with their students and work with their families to not just during the school day, but outside of the school day and on the weekends. That appeals to a certain kind of educator, an educator who really is looking to make a difference and also to effect change. I think what makes our organization attractive to teachers is they can be very participatory in the process. So it's a very. It's a group where everybody has the right to bring opinions and information and suggestions to the table. And if they're a appropriate and if they're productive things and they have value to us in terms of improving our education environment for our students, then we're going to go ahead and do that. And teachers really like the ability to have that input.

What is expected from parents, because the one thing you do hear from a lot of public school teachers is if the parents don't care, don't do anything. It's very hard to really help a student.

Parental involvement is key. All the data will tell you that. The challenge, I think, in all of our schools, and we have a very diverse population across all of our schools, is to how to engage those parents while being respectful and understanding of their circumstances. So we have, for instance, a home visit program, and that's an integral component in the Sonoran schools philosophy where we go out to the family and visit with the family Instead of making the family come to the school, it creates a totally different dynamic. It allows for different conversation. It allows us to be clear with the family that we want to be a partner in their child's education and a close partner in that education. And the way we involve our parents is using programs like the home visit as a different way of figuring out how they can be involved. What they don't know that we need to help educate them so they can support their student at home. And when they're not able to do some of the things that ideally we would like our parents to be able to do, what can we do as an organization to close that gap?

What else is unique about Sonoran schools? There's, you know, every school is different at some level, but there's obviously similarity. What else really stands out is different from the second you walk in from the typical day to day classroom experience?

Culture. I think it all boils down to culture. The moment you walk into our schools, you get a very clear feeling that from the administration downward that we're a very open door policy type of organization where we encourage people to come and comment on our programs. Our relationship with the community is very strong. As charter schools, we're not the feeder schools in your neighborhood. So it's really important to us because our parents come from a very wide geographic area. At schools, we may have students who come from just around the corner and we may have students who come from 50 miles away and their parents are driving them to the school each day. So I think that the feeling that you get when you walk into our campuses really resonates from our strong commitment to campus culture, that we are a community in and of ourselves.

In some public schools, it seemed almost nerdy, uncool to be into science and math. It's the dweeb. How do you make science cool and how do you make it fun? Let's face it, learning the periodic chart, it can be memorization and hard work. It's not quite as much fun as producing a musical in theater school or a school that's focused on theater. How do you make it fun and cool?

That's an interesting question. And I think that that's also where people have a misunderstanding about STEM education teaching science, that it operates in isolation. So part of our focus and philosophy with STEM education is to really generate a generation of critical thinkers. That means that STEM is integrated across all of the disciplines. It doesn't just mean that science is taught in isolation. It means that science and math are taugh of as part of drama can be taught as part of you know, social studies, that it's literally integrated. And the way we make it fun, I think, is by the diversity of extracurricular programs that we offer to our students. We really look at our students holistically. We want them to grow academically, intellectually and emotionally. And so in addition to the classroom environment, we have a very vibrant extracurricular program after school and at the weekends. And I think that the way that we really open students up to through play, in those experiences, through play, we're hoping that they're going to find their passion, particularly something in the STEM field, and then we help translate that passion into purpose.

What's the next step for parents or students who say, this sounds interesting, but I don't even know if I'm in the right district or if this applies. What do you recommend to them? If they're interested in exploring this more?

I would recommend that they reach out to the school and schedule a visit. I think that's the best way to get information and get your very specific questions. If you're a parent, you will have some very specific questions, not just general questions, and that's the best way to get those questions answered. They can certainly go to our website, they can certainly check us out and follow us on social media. But I think ultimately school choice, we're not a one size fits all. No school is a one size fits all. And I encourage every single parent. Whenever I talk to a parent, I have a prospective parent. The first thing I say to them is, I'm so glad that you're out there looking for the right place for your child. We hope this is going to be the place, but if it's not the place, that's fine. I hope you learned something in the process of visiting with us that lets you evaluate the next school that you visit and find the right place for your child. Because education is not a one size fits all. It's a unique experience for every individual student.

And for more information, you can go to the website sonoranschools.org we have that listed in the Show Notes as well. That's S O N O r a n schools.org Chrissy Rowley of Sonoran Schools, thank you for being our guest today. Thank you for listening to Spotlight Chat, a conversation with leaders. Sam.