Morris made tech easier for Carson City School District’s students, teachers

As Carson City School District’s Dr. LeAnn Morris entered the Oval Office to be congratulated by President George W. Bush as a State Teacher of the Year on April 30, 2008, the guard mispronounced her home state.

She recalled, eyes bright, the president’s reaction.

“The guard said, ‘LeAnn Morris, Ne-vah-da,’ and he turns and looks at him and says, ‘That’s not how you say it,’ ” Morris said. “And he stood there and told me about how he had mispronounced it and he says, ‘I don’t mispronounce it any more.’”

Morris has been honored as teacher of the year at multiple levels for enriching student and staff development through technology. She will retire from the Carson City School District in July after 33 years of service in its classrooms, its Professional Development Center and support services, and as an instructor for Western Nevada College.

“It’s all the people and all the different opportunities,” she said of the joy she’s received teaching others how technology can be a gamechanger in schools. “I joked at one time … I should just teach at every school. Now I’ve had the opportunity, not just full-time, but having the opportunity to work with every teacher in every school has been awesome.”

A CAREER IN TECH

Her focus has been on digital integration and collaboration at the elementary and secondary levels. Morris was hired as a first-grade teacher at Corbett Elementary School, eventually renamed Pioneer, in August 1990.

The Nevada Legislature had enacted the Class-Size Reduction Act to lower pupil-teacher ratios, and CCSD was recruiting for early childhood teachers. CCSD was preparing to open Mark Twain Elementary, and teachers were excited to move into the new building.

She continued at Mark Twain through 1994, team-taught and served as a technology teacher for Fritsch, Empire, Carson and Western Nevada Community College’s High Tech Center. Morris became the K-12 computer science and integrated technology computer curriculum coordinator in August 2012, a position she’s continued through today. She also took on the role of instructional technology coordinator for CCSD’s Professional Development Center.

“I was going back through some things, and we had a robotics class in ’94,” Morris said. “And we had this RB5X (cylinder-shaped robot) look like an R2-D2 in my classroom at Mark Twain. But while all that was happening, Fritsch had a fundraiser and wanted to buy computers to use. The lab that’s in the A building right now, they totally outfitted it. We gutted it, put conduit in the floor and hid it as far as the cabling, and it still is a functioning computer lab to this day.”

Morris has helped to identify safe digital and mobile resources for the classroom. She has led district-wide training in computer troubleshooting and helped staff members establish a one-to-one program to outfit students with their own devices in classrooms.

It took coordination to apply for the competitive grants with Nevada Ready 21 and for funding from the Nevada Legislature, Morris said, but both Carson City’s middle schools began seeing the results of grants director Valerie Dockery’s team by 2014.

Dr. LeAnn Morris, who was selected as State Teacher of the Year in 2008, received a flightsuit after attending NASA’s Space Camp. Her suit hangs in her office. In addition to her name and state, the badge shows her team name, “Leonardo.”

 

DIFFERENT SKILL SETS

While developing students’ skills, teaching adults to adapt to changing technologies was also satisfying to Morris because she could meet anyone at any level and improve their self-confidence.

“I have learned that you never assume anything because everyone comes with a different skill set,” Morris said. “That’s the beauty of it. You work with all different age learners. … Adults come to situations with a different background and a different mindset. … It always varies, but it’s not any different than a classroom full of 8-year-olds or 18-year-olds.”

Years ago, it would have been rare to have a Mark Twain kindergarten teacher sitting next to an Advanced Placement teacher from Carson High School and collaborating on digital strategies in each other’s classrooms.

But Morris made it so in a welcoming culture with her weekly Tech CAFÉ sessions, weekly gathering for small group support or one-on-one assistance. Staff members also could accumulate hours toward recertification. 

“That’s how I had the opportunity of knowing everybody in the district and checking in to see what their needs were,” Morris said. “We ran it for seven school years. It stopped when COVID hit, and we tried to do an online version. The impact was not there as it was with the face to face.”

Throughout the years, she led student technology camps at Fritsch to encourage young people’s skills. She became a technology teacher at Carson High School, which, along with Western Nevada Community College, established its High Tech Center in 2001.

Several years later, Morris would be named Carson City School District’s Teacher of the Year in 2007, and the following year, she was selected as the State Teacher of the Year, which qualified her as a candidate for the National Teacher of the Year program sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Morris said while she was in Washington for her State of the Year honor, she had the privilege of listening to the mother of former high school teacher Christa McAuliffe, the first American civilian chosen to go into space. McAuliffe died in the 1986 explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

“The state teachers go to space camp and would come out and do a couple of sessions and hear about her mission and carry on (Christa’s) vision,” Morris said. “That was touching to hear her story from her mom. When you think about STEM, with science and technology and how each teacher that goes as a State Teacher of the Year, they’re awarded a scholarship to give to a student, and when I came back to Empire that year, it was like, ‘How am I going to give a scholarship to just one student?’”

Morris said when she returned, the school held a fundraiser with the scholarship money to help three Empire students attend space camp, and the following year, the school did the same and sent four students.

“Those were life-changing experiences for those students,” she said.

THE COVID CHALLENGE

When COVID-19 changed how schools would operate in 2020, state officials called upon educators like Morris who could swiftly navigate the digital struggles once face-to-face interaction lessened with students. Morris became part of another project on a statewide level. While turning to distance learning, the Nevada Department of Education created its Digital Learning Collaborative. The NDE recruited a team of digital engineers representing Nevada educators to create standards-aligned curriculum and resources in response to the pandemic.

Gradually, Morris said, the engineers became ambassadors, and they were to emphasize responsible digital citizenship for students and staff.

Morris said it became important to guide learning and ensure student data privacy. Teachers needed to understand not just which resources to use, but why they were safe for everyone involved.

“I’m really proud of Nevada to have state regulations to keep student data private as much as possible, and we’re helping teachers to understand the answer isn’t always just ‘no’ because we don’t want to be bothered with it,” she said. “Many of our vendors … will work to bring their data … and their documentation up to the level it needs to be. And sometimes with Nevada having some very specific laws, they’re not even aware of the restrictions. They’re being educated as well, and I feel we’ve been a frontrunner with the 17 districts.”

She said she hoped school districts’ officials are taking precautions with recent trends in artificial intelligence (AI) to make sure students are staying safe.

“There’s an ed tech guru, Kevin Honeycutt, who’s coined a phrase about the kids on the Internet playground and nobody’s on recess duty, and I think the AI escalates that to a whole other level, and I want make sure we’re on recess duty,” she said. “We’re so lucky in Carson City that we do have certified teachers that build that foundation and help the teachers in their other classrooms with the core content levels.”

Morris said she officially retires from the district July 31 but will actively look for other employment.

She said she is proud of the district’s work in guiding students through its computer science standards and resources available to teachers to keep students safe.

“We’ve come so far,” Morris said. “When I just think about AI, it’s one little thing, but I think it’s a big thing and I think it’s a big gamechanger. If there is ill intent, others could be doing things that obviously we don’t want them to. We should be guiding our students and that’s ultimately the goal.”