It’s Thursday afternoon and after the final bell rings and all her kids leave, Ms. Sujata Bhatt is finally blessed with an empty classroom. She sits down at her desk, looks at the clock and starts to pack her bag. “It’s nice to have a moment to yourself,” Ms. Bhatt says looking across the deserted classroom.

After only 20 minutes of relaxation, Ms. Bhatt gets up and walks from her 4th grade classroom to a room across the playground. Patiently waiting is a group of kids, sitting on the ground, eating Skittles. As they see Ms. Bhatt walking towards them, the students enthusiastically jump up from the ground and eagerly wait at the door.

What awaits inside is a room full of computers, something just recently installed at Grand View Elementary. Ms. Bhatt’s day is barely over as she now teaches a program called the Alumni Academy, a course she started earlier in the school year.

The Alumni Academy is an opportunity for some of her past students to come back to Grand View Elementary and work with current 4th and 5th graders in a technological setting. Together they brainstormed a project idea, which has resulted in the making of a video yearbook for Grand View Elementary, something to sell to the community in order to help raise money for the school.

The students quickly pair up, open up iMovie and continue to work on their individual assignments. They shot their own footage, interviewed faculty members, and edited their own videos, something that some first year journalism students don’t know how to do. Even though the kids have already put in a full day at school, the room is filled with excitement and eagerness as the students, whether they know it or not, continue to learn. A result that cannot come from a textbook.

“Look, they’ve been in school all day yet their happily working away,” points out Ms. Bhatt, “Anything that gets them out of the enclosure of their classroom and actually be involved in the real world, these days is technology based. It takes them out into the world.”

Ms. Bhatt’s passion for teaching grade school didn’t come until she had a child of her own as her initial plan was to become a university professor. Her maternal instinct is what makes Ms. Bhatt a great teacher as she is aware of what keeps her students interested in the curriculum. Through songs, games, projects and technology-based learning, Ms. Bhatt makes learning fun, a word not commonly associated with school.

“What I really like about Ms. Bhatt is she’s not one of those teachers who focus on text books,” explains 6th grader Jackie Lopez, “She has a lot of projects and put all our projects on ThinkQuest. When we were working on dinosaurs and fossils we could make fossils online and we excavated like real scientists.”

Jackie attended Grand View Elementary from pre-kindergarten to 5th grade and was in Ms. Bhatt’s class for three years. Recently Ms. Bhatt helped Jackie obtain a six year scholarship to Wildwood School, a private school down the block from Grand View.

Although Jackie can no longer attend the Alumni Academy, she has been able to take and use all the tools Ms. Bhatt has taught her in the class.

“Right now in Wildwood, I have to do a presentation on Power Point during science and it’s great because I know how to use Power Point already, Ms. Bhatt taught me. I remember my friends were asking me how to use Power Point and it was really fun because they kept on asking me stuff I already knew,” Jackie excitedly explains.

Harvard-educated, Ms. Bhatt’s commitment to teaching is obvious to anyone who watches her but she hopes to make the biggest impact through the use of technology.

“I hope we can become a technology academy, where we infuse technology into a real project based learning environment. Where kids have the freedom to control how they want to display their learning, which is more than just a test, and to me that’s more applicable in life,” states Ms. Bhatt.

A modestly built school in the heart of Mar Vista, Grand View Elementary is a Title 1 school that faces more challenges than other schools as the majority of their students come from low-income communities and are english language learners. According to the Los Angeles Times School Guide, almost 88 percent of the student body is Latino, 61% are English leaners and 82 percent use free and reduced-price meals.

The USDA Food and Nutrition Service states that a family of four must have an annual income of less than $29,000 to qualify for free meals. This statistic is particularly interesting considering that the US Census shows the annual medium household income for the surrounding neighborhood is $62,611. Many studies have shown a high correlation between economic status and educational attainment and although Grand View has an Academic Performance Index ranking of three, it is important to note that the school has continually improved over the past three years in national standardized test, most recently jumping 45 points from 2008 to 2009.

“I think the results reflect the work that we’ve put in because we have tremendously grown. We have four National Board Certified Teachers, Ms. Bhatt being one of them and I think it does reflect the effort these teachers are putting in with the kids,” explains Mr. Alfredo Ortiz, principal of Grand View Elementary.

Coming to America as an English learner from Nicaragua, Mr. Ortiz has a particular interest in the success of his students because he sees himself in his kids. With a career spanning 22 years in the LAUSD, Mr. Ortiz agrees with Ms. Bhatt in that the best way to increase the learning capabilities of their students is through the use of technology.

“I’d like to get caught up in the technology aspect of educating our children. I feel that people tend to speak about the achievement gap as being something just in reading, writing and math but it’s also technology because now it’s all about access to information. I feel that’s one area that our children are behind,” explain Mr. Ortiz.

J. Wang, writer for The Journal claims that technological skills are particularly helpful for language learners because they can practice the language by writing emails or conducting online research. The only computers Grand View has is restricted to one classroom that can only accommodate a small group of students and budget cuts have hit the school hard and they don’t have the funds for additional technological equipment. In order to get the gadgets Ms. Bhatt wants for her lessons, she has had to write grants.

“Technology helps students absorb information better, it’s real life, it’s lived, not just book knowledge. The challenge every day is to take book and abstract knowledge and make it real for them. That’s why I wrote the grand for the GPS systems because longitude and latitude are really abstract concepts but if you take it and walk around and see the elevation changes, it makes it real,” Ms. Bhatt explains.

This commitment to better educating her students is what parents say, makes Ms. Bhatt a great teacher. “She’s energetic, she gives the kids enough work and she pushes them a lot so they do well in school,” states Martiza Bautista the mother of Arturo Vasquez.

One parent who could not stop gushing over Ms. Bhatt was Graciella Lopez, who is forever grateful that Ms. Bhatt was able to help her daughter Jackie get into a school that could provide an atmosphere more suitable for Jackie’s learning capabilities.

“Ms. Bhatt is more than a teacher, she was a friend. She really cares for her students and doesn’t give up. She’s one of those teachers who doesn’t mind staying late to tutor in order to help the kids catch up to the other students. She’s very invested,” explains Lopez.

After nine years of teaching, Ms. Bhatt sees nothing but potential in both her school and her students. She doesn’t need fancy equipment to teach, it’s a tool that she believes works best with her students.

“When they get excited about an idea and what they get excited about learning, that’s a nice feeling. When people want to participate it’s sweet, it means you’ve hooked them. That’s all you want to do, you’ve hooked them into learning so they will go learn on their own and the next year and forever.”

See Aja Dang's slideshow on Grand View here.

See our entire series on LAUSD teachers here.