Ten Trails residents of elementary school age attend the nearby Black Diamond Elementary School where small class sizes, a whole-child based mission and focus on technology in the classrooms creates a robust learning environment for children. Read on to learn more about this brand new school located in historic Black Diamond, WA and their newest Principal, Tim Lee.

Black Diamond Elementary School Mission and Strategic Plan 

The school’s strategic plan incorporates a mission of Habits, Hands & Heart and Head, ensuring the equity of all students achieving at high levels. School staff aligns resources to support the students and community-based learning. Instruction focuses on the whole child, ensuring that each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported and challenged. The school maintains a focus on instructional improvement to create positive, powerful learning experiences for students, each period, each day.

Instruction to Focus on the Whole Child 

Principal Tim Lee, emphasizes that the school’s curriculum is focused on promoting the long-term success of students through an approach that treats each child as an individual with his or her own unique learning style and needs. Because of the schools’ small class sizes and relatively small student body, Lee and his educators can have one-on-one interaction with each child, and also quickly intervene when a child may need extra assistance both academically and emotionally. The school organizes small groups designed to help children with a wide range of life and family challenges such a grief, divorce and social and emotional skills.

Technology in the Black Diamond Elementary School Classrooms 

Teachers at the Black Diamond Elementary School embrace the use of technology in the classroom and offer students the use of Chromebooks as part of their daily work plan. Inside the modern classrooms in the new school, teachers’ instruction is conducted on projector screens versus traditional chalk or dry erase boards. The elementary students can be found sitting in non-traditional grouping of “pods” of desks or other configurations of groupings to encourage collaboration and small-group based learning. Lee emphasizes that this group-based learning helps prepare students for when they eventually enter the workforce where tasks are conducted largely in group settings. The school is also proud of their robotics program that allows students to work together to write code to make a small robot perform basic functions.

Emphasis on Literacy 

Black Diamond Elementary School places a strong emphasis on literacy with students taking part in a minimum of one hour of small group reading per day. The school library offers students access to a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts as well as life-skills programs to teach students about how to avoid plagiarism when writing, and how to navigate the internet safely. Black Diamond Elementary School is located just a few miles from Ten Trails at 25314 Baker St, Black Diamond, WA 98010. Keep up with all the latest news and information by following the school on their Facebook page. 360.469.4043 www.TenTrails.com