HeART-Full Digi- ASL

K-12 STEAM education

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

LAUSD is the 2nd largest school district in the country and they do not have a consistent, funded art program for students with disabilities. Disregarding the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, art is not a high priority for all students specifically, students who are low-income, systems-impacted, Black or Brown or those whose disabilities intersects any of these. Secondly, the detrimental effects of digital/social media on the mental wellness of K-12 students is heavily documented but Deaf students are particularly susceptible because it's used as a escape from the hearing world that alienates them. The ableist answer to the overstimulation of social media on kids is to limit their usage. That approach does not work with Deaf students because this is a way for them to share their stories and learn about the world around them. How then, can Deaf and Hard of Hearing students scroll safely?

Our program simultaneously addresses the lack of art programming for students with disabilities and dissecting the negative effects of digital/social media. This program takes place at Marlton School for the Deaf, the only public, day-school for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing K-12 students in Los Angeles. Daily integrated/elective, non-digital art courses will be implemented by grade level in 8 week rotations that will explore different arts' discipline and how they can enhance core-curriculum classes. At the same time, students will begin the Digital Life Skills/Mobile Media Bus weekly curriculum giving them an opportunity to collectively unpack their social media behaviors while sharing their creative goals and aspirations. Art themes to be explored based on our current art programming at Marlton are: painting, sculpting, theater, drumming, Hip Hop dance, creative writing, and music visualization. Digital themes will be: video editing, graphic design, monetization strategies, creating content with an audience in mind, software analysis, and copywriting. All content will be adjusted for grade-level appropriateness and high school students will participate in paid arts internships and gain training to become mentors to the elementary and middle school students. Staff and family engagement activities will accompany all courses so that adults receive the same arts exposure and digital life skills benefits and there will be quarterly community exhibits by the students.

Until this school year, we created all of our programming through an ableist lens and made adjustments for our disabled students. This program is designed for the Deaf and those with multiple disabilities which we hope will be the standard for creative programming in LA.
1-3yr Goals: 1. Expand the HeArt-Full Digital ASL program to the LAUSD sites that have Deaf classes. 2. Design HeArt-Full Digital English/Spanish programs for our current service area 3. Design PDs for administrators/faculty for students of all abilities, parent/community engagement workshops in English, Spanish, and ASL.
4. Update the Mobile Media Bus to be fully accessible
5yr Goals: 1. Design virtual Sessions in multiple languages for all HeArt-Full Digital programming
2. Create downloadable Toolkits for Caregivers, Teachers/Coaches for Digital Life Skills curriculum
3. Mobile Media Bus for each school that it is fully accessible for all abilities and equipped with the technology that best aligns to each site.

Student Opt In Rate and Attendance: Analyze attendance data, we consistently find that students have a higher attendance rate on days that we have programming compared to non Pulse Arts programming days.
Engagement Rate: Evaluate based on questions asked, discussion contribution or active engagement in the day's learning activity (capturing video/ graphic work/ editing etc.), and projects completed.
Social Media Usage: Introduce non-invasive social media monitoring tools to allow students to track their usage of social media and start to unpack how they use it. Program influence will be also evaluated via pre and post student/staff/parent surveys.
Intentional Social Media Usage: Acknowledging the reality and perils of ‘doomscrolling’, we will look to track and decrease time that students self-describe, non-intentional social media use and also identifying what their intentional time was used for. We completed an 8-wk arts pilot in spring '24 and this is based on student feedback.