Continued Impact

EAST at Sonora Middle School refuses to break its tradition of changing lives through innovation.

While this year’s other Founder’s Award-winning programs accomplished the feat for the first time in their history, EAST at Sonora Middle School - part of the Springdale School District - won the award for the third time in the past six years.

Students entered the year with a focus on returning to the way their program operated prior to the pandemic and creating an EASTverse that was authentic and true to themselves. Consequently, they were not surprised to hear their names called as Founder’s Award winners.

“I actually wasn’t too shocked because we’ve been working really hard for this,” said Addy Seaton, a sixth-grade EAST student. “We have great students who have been creating awesome projects.”

This year, Addy’s project featured 3D-printed map stands for shopping carts at Harps, a regional grocery store in Northwest Arkansas.

“Me and my partner changed course a little bit though because we wanted to make sure this was for everyone,” Addy said. “So our next step is to interview some families that don’t use English as their native language and ask what troubles they have when shopping. We’ll work on making their shopping experience easier.”

Kate Ebby is a seventh-grade student in the program. Her hardwork, fueled by her incredible passion for EAST, propelled Kate to work on two projects with different groups this year.

“One of our projects was to create nameplates for special education students, so they have a visualization of how they can write their names,” Kate said. “For my other project, I work with Soldier

Song and Voices which is a nonprofit that helps turn the stories of veterans into songs to help cope with trauma, and we are working on promoting them through video interviews with soldiers they’ve worked with.”

Project sophistication and innovation is one of EAST’s three cornerstones, and seventh-grade student Madi Goss’ project embodies that trait to a tee with her project, “Keep Jude Walking.” “We are using Arduino and LED panels to create a sort of game for kids to use at the Prosthetics & Orthotics Associates,” Madi said. “It’s been challenging because I have never coded before and Arduino is super complex, but I’ve researched code that other people have used and that has helped me get close to being finished.”

Kate says that EAST students at Sonora Middle School are not only working with community partners in their area but also some that are outside of the state, including Florida and New York.

“We don’t say we are just going to go help one tiny organization,” Kate said. “The Prosthetics & Orthotics Associates works with the U.S. Paralympics Team. It is one of the biggest organizations of its kind in the world. We always push ourselves to go beyond who we are expected to work with.”

This year was Addy’s first year at Sonora Middle School, but she has plenty of EAST experience from her time at Sonora Elementary School. Even still, she says the middle school program has introduced her to more sophisticated technology for use in her projects.

“In elementary school, we used simpler things like TinkerCAD and focused on learning the basics,” Addy said. “Here, I’ve started using Autodesk Fusion360 which has been a challenge since there is so much more you can do in the application. But it’s been cool to have that new experience.”

While Addy will remain at Sonora Middle School, Kate and Madi will graduate to Lakeside Junior High School in Springdale. The older duo are laser-focused on one goal that’s never been achieved at Lakeside.

“My goal is to help Lakeside’s program win Founder’s next year,” Kate said. “That’s always my main goal, to work as hard as I can to help our program toward that cause. So even if we don’t win, I’ll know I did my best in working on projects and finding what’s right for our community.”

Miles Boomer*

Ellison Worthy*

Madison Goss

Hatty Galvan

Katherine Ebey

Addy Seaton

Hadley Whittle

Rebecca Biggs

Jetta Warford

Quinn Spurlock

*denotes member of 2023 EAST Leadership Team