"The energy and creativity of the first graders was contagious at Borton Elementary School. I had a blast sharing my knowledge and illustration projects with the students...I am still smiling!"

"CommunityShare provides opportunities for students to meet, interact and collaborate with experts in different occupations. These interactions help students create visions for themselves and their futures."

"This project helped students to express their concerns, learn coping mechanisms, and integrate what they learned through creating an art piece."

"I learned the importance of my social media appearance when I apply for jobs."

"I felt very honored that I was a part of the experience. I learned a lot about Mexico, art, and how to contribute to our community."

"Students who have struggled all year to complete lesson projects were engaged, creative, and thinking about how to solve problems in their community."

"The students who won first place on the project because of their unique design, attention to detail, and motivation to test their model struggled to complete projects in the past..."

"[I learned] ways to make our city a better place."

"I never knew how cool glass blowing could be. It was amazing to be able to be open to what the glass was doing. I also loved learning how to write a business plan for my own studio one day. I know what I want to do when I get older."

"I was so amazed to see how proud students were to show their parents and families what they’d created."

"The awareness of this project and how it relates to local history will be incorporated into my social studies and history lessons in the future."

"Working together with so many different groups from outside our school was very powerful. The product itself which the students produced was amazing!"

"...now I love plants and I love to see them grow!"

"I am inspired to compile a book of medicinal herb uses and recipes that families here at Ochoa [could] use."

"If you ever had any doubt about wanting to help people..., you should do it anyway."

"I wanted to hold out to [my students] a really appealing way of getting published, so as to propel their writing skills forward. I also wanted them to grow in their understanding of themselves as potential changemakers."

"Experience and access to this technology will also allow our self-driven students to explore other applications and projects with Raspberry Pis."

"It was more of like a fun thing, but it was also good for business, because we had to pitch our idea and sell it to the ‘buyers’. Now I have a better feel for if I’m trying to sell something to someone, I know what to do and what to put in the pitch."

"My students are new to this country, so I want to expose them to a variety of experiences that teach valuable life skills, and promote their social and emotional development."

"My family now has a garden!"

"I loved the way the artists brought together and created this magical, scientific project for the students. The end result was spectacular."

"When can they come again?"

"Our students will benefit from learning opportunities in the garden for years to come."

"Parents and community members will also have an opportunity to learn more about desert ecology, principles of rainwater harvesting, and the conservation efforts..."

"Creating tiered STEM lessons fosters the skills and confidence students will need in STEM careers in our community and in the changing world."

"I want to do this more; how do I get to do this more when I get out of school?"

"Students learn respect, awareness, history, and an expanded sense of textile art through a native perspective …."

"I can use different things from nature to create art."

"Nature has art everywhere."

"I loved watching how so many students were willing to dive in and explore things about their homes and communities."

"It’s not what you see when you take a photograph, but what you see in your artist’s eye that makes a difference."

"They’re painting desert landscapes and integrating their knowledge on riparian areas and watersheds. It’s really super cool."

"It’s fun. We learned about watersheds and plains and what the desert is called."

The students enjoyed working with Anna as an extension to their science/writing curriculum. They were proud of the final mural and were excited to see it displayed

Kate Hodges shows us a lot of things you can make out of art.

Mrs. Kate is very nice, creative and would love her come back.

Mrs Kate Hodges helped us learn about how nature is special.

Kate and Marvin were really nice to us - Marvin let me play one of his instruments and Kate by letting us do textile art.

Our visitor was incredibly inspirational and enthusiastic, they always shared positivity in the classroom and made everyone happy.

Vana was amazing to have with us; she was kind and smart, ...

#we are worthy

This has been a fantastic experience and will surely generate future collaborative efforts!

During our first visit to UA Library, students were awkward, shy and heavily reliant on teachers and librarian to find sources. By our last trip, students were indistinguishable from UA students and were working independently and confidently.

This project has launched a continuing relationship with UA Library, in fact we have plans to write a grant together to continue this project and provide this same opportunity to other schools and classes.

The visitor was very helpful and I learned things I will use when I go to college.

Thank you for the experience.

I just really enjoyed the help that was provided.

Bees are pollinators and help flowers grow and spread.

I liked looking at all the flowers at the Botanical Gardens and learning about bees.

Bees are good for our world.

My students were able to work with general education students. Because of the activities and ideas they learned, they have been teaching other [students in] classrooms at Drachman about pollination.

I really liked learning about the horses.

We noticed improvements in self-esteem, confidence, empowerment, purposeful exercise, overcoming fears, making good decisions, awareness of boundaries and safety and caring for themselves and others.

I want to keep Rune!

Rune, thank you for being the best horse in the world.

Ms. White can we take Sandy and Rune to school with us?

This was a cool project. Thanks for the experience.

The teacher was very nice and fun to learn from.

Thanks for sharing this technique and website with us, I hope I can use it in the future to help myself.

The project I took part in, was extremely fun to participate in; I would recommend this project to others.

This has been an exceptional experience for me and for my students. I will use what I have learned to inform my curriculum for many years to come. Student engagement was 100%. Thank you for this opportunity for me to grow as an educator and for my students to share their unique perspectives in creative ways.

I have one student who never participates in class.She is usually sullen and withdrawn. She loved this project and was the first one to complete it. She was also excited to share what she had done with others.

CommunityShare was helpful every step of the way. All necessary information was communicated well. I was supported throughout the process until the completion of my project.

Everything I’ve learned was fantastic, and I would like to do this again!

I really enjoyed working on the WeVideo. I liked it a lot; very interesting and also fun doing it because we have put our own thought into it. Thank you for coming!!

I have a senior who was completely disengaged in his education and has had many discipline infractions starting his Freshman year. He took the lead on this project with the community partner. He showed up early every Wed. Was in charge of getting the equipment and setting up. He ran the rap club. It has been outstanding to see him step up. He has not had a single discipline infraction since it started!

Thank you, and it was very fun. Hope others have the same experience as I did. It was fun and educational.

I had lots of fun meeting and learning from a new person.

This club helped me in ways that I can't describe. I was able to speak better English because of it.

The best thing about the project was seeing a small group of students become excited about working with a muralist to make this happen.

I was scared to argue with her (the muralist) at first, but then I realized it was our mural and our school so I started telling her what I thought should be in it. She was nice and she listened.

I never realized you could make money doing something like this.

I found that even though the partnership focused on one class specifically, the whole school was able to benefit from it. I look forward to finishing this project next year.

Working with Clare and Claudio from the Food Bank has given me some wonderful insight on how to build a wonderful garden for the students at DVHS. We are going to continue our partnership next year to complete the orchard part of the garden.

My favorite part of the project so far was having students argue about who was going to get to take the broccoli home.

Now I want to take the broccoli home.

I didn't know that carrots came from the ground!

Problem Based Learning gives students the opportunity to develop their talents and find their authentic voice through real world, relevant problem solving.

Magic happens when students discover their ability to accomplish what they thought was impossible.

It’s inspiring to see many young minds really think about real world problems and what they can do to help, and then apply it to my own life and what I can do. The Future City students feel more and more comfortable asking for help from different people with different perspectives and opinions.

Thank you for coming in and judging our model, Bonjae. Your advice allowed us to make the model better and gave me and my team a new experience and gave me and my team a new experience presenting in front of others. You helped us prepare for what was ahead which helped us pull through Future City competition. Thank you for your time.

Without your mentoring we would not have been able to win the Civic Design Award and Architectural Excellence Award in Future City. Your help made a huge difference and impact on our model. Thank you for your time and help.

Thank you so much for sketching our models, so we can have an ideal view of our model before constructing it. The sketch helped us a lot knowing where to put things before we did. The concept art for the model was helpful to us and the other teams!

Our mentor was the most helpful person in the project. Without our concept art, we wouldn't be able to build our Future City project!

Having accessibility to mentors and help is really useful, because you can learn new things as well as get other’s opinions.

The people that helped me can help others too. I hope they do; it is good to support programs like this, so all the people can learn.

Thank you to all the visitors and volunteers who helped this year!

Thank you for funding this; it was 'life changing' to have a lot more mentors.

I just want to say thank you to all of the visitors for helping us in this class.

Thanks to all of the mentors that helped plan out our project and give ideas on how to build it.

My students gained new knowledge in working with pottery, and they experienced this with their families. It was very special to see generations of families working together for a community project; their smiles and joy shined bright.

Wow, I really like how pretty our garden is and I was here to make it!

I really like having my Mama and Poppa here to do art with me, I am so lucky.

My dad is really good at making shapes, look at the butterfly he made.

I love working with art.

I learned to respect stuff that is not yours and that art and painting clay is about painting the top and not the sides.

Mistakes are ok.

I learned that we could mix up the colors.

We were lucky to have a grandpa come in and help us, it was great and his grandson was so honored and proud to have his grandpa be a part of our project.

...my students often ask if they can work outside in our garden. It has now become such a special place for our school and this is all thanks to Community Share.

Our garden is now beautiful and I often find students sitting on our bench reading, families looking at their clay art...

[Ms King] did a great job describing art and how art makes us feel.

[Ms King] likes rolling the clay and I do too.

[Ms King] is a good person because she helped us with our clay and we got to paint...

[Ms King] was nice and she brought us clay so we could shape and paint.

The students loved everything, especially the materials they could take home to share and eat!

The program is a fantastic classroom resource. I wasn't really sure how to get started and how to find partners, but it all worked out really well and benefitted the students in my classroom.

Delaney Thomas from the UofA Museum of Art came in to read to the class and teach an art lesson, followed by a trip to Sabino Canyon where docents taught about the desert. The students were so much more engaged in their learning and their trip because of what they learned from Delaney's visits to the class.

I liked learning to draw saguaros and cactus.

I liked [Ms. Delaney’s] stories and learning about patterns and drawing patterns.

You can make things yourself. Robots can be all sizes. Robots are cool. [Mr. Owen] made it in seven months and he's making a new one. His R2D2 is the same size as the one in the movies. He had to make things over and over and not give up.

[The visitors] were fun. They read stories and did art. We like robots and art. It’s fun to meet new people at school.

A highlight was students shopping for native plants and randomly running in to our community partner doing the same thing for a different project. The students and partner then shopped together to get what was needed and had a better understanding of the relationship between different plants rather than simply checking off a list of plants to buy.

Rain can be planted, soil is the sponge.

The greatest impact for the students was to realize how simple changes in infrastructure can have large impacts on shade, the heat island effect, access to food, and biodiversity.

Students learned “how topography, and infrastructure impacts policy decisions when building community resilience.

Students expanded their knowledge of emerging technology, which will assist them as they continue their education and explore careers.

I loved seeing students getting to meet community members with expertise in an area they are passionate about.

It was exciting to see students experiencing virtual reality for the first time.

It was fun using virtual reality.

I love when we can learn more.

I learned that there are many jobs that are in the military, like being a dentist.

I learned how to use a GPS to find my location and find other locations.

I learned I can be anything I want.

I learned new things about space and satellites. I even got to design my own satellite, and they printed it onto a magnet.

The visitors help me learn a lot about how things work in space.

I liked the hands on things because it was a more fun experience then just looking at things. It was a whole different experience.

Students loved leaving campus for the five trips to the STARBASE campus. They also enjoyed celebrating and have the STARBASE teachers visit us for our completion ceremony.

Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person, and often many, who have believed in him or her. We just don’t get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.

This was a great experience for me since I hope that for my future I will likely study things that have to do with biology and your talk gave me and imagery of how it would be.

Knowing this information and seeing what you do in your job makes me think that [mining engineer] could honestly be a good choice for someone like me.

You have inspired me to think about my future even if I don’t want to pursue a career as an Anesthesia Technician.

Hearing your story and path through your career has encouraged me to continue thinking up new ideas for my future career (hopefully an entrepreneur).

There was one student in particular, who has significant speech and anxiety, and during these projects are the only times during the whole year that he volunteered to share. The other students were so excited and patient while the student shared his experience. It was incredibly powerful for all of us.

Working with Renee has been a great experience for all of us. We look forward to her visits, kids don’t think of it as a writing assignment, and getting kids to love writing it always a win win. She brings out the best in all of us!

Thank you for bringing me on as part of this project!...I had a blast.

Dedicated to students, teachers, and parents who are the change.

I am so grateful to have been in the Future City class and had you as my teacher and mentor these past 3 years. It was impressive we made it as far as we did during this pandemic (4th place team award in Arizona Future City)!

I was jumping up and down with my family!!!!! (upon winning the project management award in Arizona Future City).

I didn't even know about STEM until I enrolled in your Future City STEM class in 6th grade.

There were times where we would have some arguments for no reason, but there were also the times where we had fun and cracked jokes together. Something that I learned about being in a team is that no matter how good friends you are or how much you get along, it won’t always be sunshine and rainbows.

The most valuable experience I gained from the Future City competition was that I am learning to be more open minded and get better speaking in front of a crowd and in a video.

The most valuable experience I gained from the Future City competition was working alongside so many critical and creative thinkers. With this competition, although we are competing against each other, everyone in my class bounces ideas off of each other like engineers to find and represent the best possible solution to many problems. I have learned so much from this class and have gained personal experience learning, improving, and innovating.

At first we (team) were all really shy but now we read each other's minds. We know that it helps to work on a team and to work with a mentor (Mrs. Howard) because we don't have to carry the weight of doing everything.

I noticed that the path I made was shallow then the water made it deep so that was cool. My favorite part was seeing if my materials that I chose to hold up the house worked!

Students who have struggled all year to complete lesson projects were engaged, creative and thinking about how to solve problems in their community through this CommunityShare project.

I never knew how cool glass blowing could be…I also loved learning how to write a business plan for my own studio one day. I know what I want to do when I get older.

Our goal is to close the representation gap for females and Hispanic youth in STEM fields. CommunityShare mentors help students begin to see themselves in those professions.

It was truly moving to see my daughter's eyes light up as engineering careers unfolded in front of her on our CommunityShare field trip to the design studio.

CommunityShare is an essential tool for curriculum planning. CommunityShare gives my students and me access to professional resources that make what they learn in school more meaningful, relevant, and memorable.

ComShare is the bridge we have been missing between educators and the vast resources of experience and practical knowledge available in the community. It gives people like me an opportunity to invest my years of experience into the next generation of innovators, creators and leaders.

Know that this is a work in progress and that there are no right or wrong ways to complete tasks in your project. Be bold, be brave and let your kids take the reigns. You will be pleasantly surprised with what they come up with.

Community Share opens the door for both teachers, community partners, and students. It gives teachers the ability to do a project that they wouldn't have been able to do without the community partner. It shows the students what working in the real world looks like. 

The Educator Fellowship provides the critical resources and infrastructure to support engaging, relevant, real-world learning. Magic happens when students are able to work with community partners and teachers to solve real-world problems.

These meetings are the best meetings that I attend all year long. It feels like a mixture of teacher therapy, an inspiring dose of sharing, and professional development all in one.

I am believing in myself as an educator – moving from I can’t do it to seeing the photos of what we’ve done and then saying we did it. I was about to quit my project but became inspired by others in the group.

Students learned about careers where they can implement math skills such as ecology and landscape architecture. They learned to collaborate with others and they experienced how community resources can support and enrich their learning.”

I’ve been doing community projects throughout my career. But CommunityShare opened up a whole avenue of resources for me. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I was an island - I was doing it on my own. Now, I’m not doing it on my own. I have a whole community of people that are connected to me.

I can bring experts into the classroom that have knowledge I don’t have. It has expanded program capacities and given my students access to knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to otherwise provide. Letting go of control of a lot of things has been eye opening - seeing what kids can do when you let them engage in the process.

Our goal is to close the representation gap for females and Hispanic youth in STEM fields. CommunityShare mentors help my students begin to see themselves in those professions.

“I’ve been doing community projects throughout my career. But CommunityShare opened up a whole avenue of resources for me. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I was an island, I was doing it on my own. Now I’m not doing it on my own - I have a whole community of people that are connected to me.”

“For us, this is an opportunity to facilitate community service for these students and help themselves develop hands-on learning and skills that they will use not just today, but in their futures. And it’s an opportunity to give back to a family in need for their community.... We're very excited to be able to tell the family that will receive this table and that some students did something bigger than themselves in building this table for your family."

"I had one student that never pictured herself smart enough or driven enough to want to go into the medical field until she heard the stats and the experiences of the Latina doctor that spoke to them. It gave her and other students a chance to see them in roles that they assumed were out of their league."

“I want them to have that confidence, to know you're not too young to make an impact,” Brinkman said. “Whether you're going to the YMCA or you're volunteering, planting trees, or picking up trash, you can always be an advocate.”

“CommunityShare helps bring your ideas into conversation with real people... there’s a good chance that something is going to click and it’s going to make your project that much deeper.”

“Students are realizing ‘When I see a need, I can fill a need in a way that I can use my skills.’”

“Students were very motivated with the CommunityShare project in ways that extended to all reading activities and academic achievement. At the start of the school year, 12% of my students were performing above grade level but by the end, 94% were performing above grade level.”