|
Ramping Up STEM in Your District
By Susan McLester
The past couple of decades have seen U.S. education shaken awake to the reality of its slipping global rank in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), areas key the our economic dominance since the early 1950s. Calls to action such as the National Academies report, “ Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which in 2005 forecast a U.S. economic spiral alongside the rise of China and other nations, set off alarm bells that have spurred a range of programs and initiatives designed to address the problem. Now that STEM is on the radar of every school in the country, district leaders are faced with the challenge of deciding what kinds of STEM programs or approaches to implement and how best to implement them as they strive to meet the needs of students, the nation, and the 21st century workplace.
Innovative Programs
The good news is: there are plenty of successful models administrators can look to when planning their own STEM programs, including many public school implementations from districts across the country. Established in 2006, the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) is a magnet school comprising a partnership between the School District of Philadelphia and the historic museum, the Franklin Institute. SLA is a one-to-one, laptop high school with a rigorous, college-prep curriculum that focuses on science, technology, math and entrepreneurship. Serving a largely economically disadvantaged population of inner-city students, SLA boasts a 93 to 95 percent graduation rate compared with the district’s average of just under 60 percent. Also, 97 percent of SLA graduates go directly to college as opposed to a figure closer to 35 percent for district graduates at large.
While technology plays a central role in the learning strategy, says Christopher Lehmann, SLA founder and principal, it is the process of inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation and reflection that forms the true core of the school’s STEM approach. “School leaders should note that a successful STEM implementation is not just about content,” says Lehmann, “but about an approach that lets kids do hands-on, authentic, project-based learning (PBL), which can apply to any classroom or subject.”
SLA students spend Wednesdays at the nearby Franklin Institute taking mini- courses from engineers at companies like Lockheed Martin, and doing real-world work with museum scientists. In a recent project, students were given a backstage look as a museum curator from Milan unpacked Galileo’s telescope in advance of a new exhibit. Students then created an informational walking tour for the exhibit that visitors can download to their iPhones. Lehmann, one of NSBA's "20 to Watch" educators in 2006, says partnerships can be key to great STEM programs only if those partnerships are the kind that empower kids. “Putting kids in the world of adults is incredibly important,” he says.
McKinley Technology High School in Washington D.C. is another inner-city STEM school that has significantly increased student achievement despite a nearly 30 percent increase in economically disadvantaged students over the past six years. Principal David Pinder says benchmark test scores have shot from around 50 percent in math and reading, to above 90 percent since 2006, and in 2012 the school received a national Blue Ribbon award.
McKinley offers four learning pathways, including Aeronautical Engineering, Mass Media, IT and Biotechnology, which students opt into by 10th grade. Corporate, association, and institutional partnerships with Cisco, SRI International, Microsoft, Carnegie Science and others play a strong role in McKinley’s STEM planning and implementation, ensuring current industry standards are addressed in curriculum design, and providing field trips, mentorships and grants to students.
Gideon Sanders, McKinley director of STEM partnerships and internships, says “meaningful internships,” which place students in authentic workplace positions that relate to their fields of study are also key. Recent examples of such internships have students acting as lab assistants for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), web site managers for the Department of Education, and media and community outreach liasons for the local police department.
Like Lehmann, Sanders emphasizes the importance of real world experiences that encourage kids to acquire or reinforce workplace skills . “Anything with a competitive element will motivate American students,” he says, citing a recent robotics contest his students participated in against other schools, where kids not only learned mechanical and engineering skills, but also relationship-building and collaboration.
Pinder also says hiring teachers with real industry expertise has been another key to the school’s success. Currently on staff at McKinley are teachers with veteran industry experience in an engineering, biotech research and software development, and plans are in the works to recruit more.
Beaverton Health and Science School (HS2) in Beaverton, Oregon, is a grade six through 12 rural-suburban STEM school that focuses on engineering design and biomedical sciences. The 700-student HS2 is unique within the district’s four “option schools,” for its inclusive policy which actively recruits minorities, girls and other populations traditionally underrepresented in the STEM workforce. In operation four years, the school boasts an 85 percent graduation rate, as compared to the state average of 65 percent, and a student body comprised of 50 percent females and a greater representation of minority students than other area schools, says principal Steve Day.
The HS2 curriculum is supplied by Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a national non-profit organization which offers free, project-based biomedical curriculum to high schools and engineering curriculum to both middle and high schools. Now working with 4,700 schools in 50 states, PLTW crafts curriculum founded on the fundamental problem-solving and critical-thinking skills traditionally associated with career and technical education (CTE). Affordable for many districts on tight budgets, the only costs associated with the PLTW program are class resources, such as robotics kits, and the two-week summer STEM professional development sessions which teachers can take at one of several universities across the country.
Day says the motivating nature of the authentic, project-based curriculum is one reason the school has a lower dropout rate and fewer discipline problems than many others in the state. With the help of partners such as Intel, and Vernier, HS2 can stock school labs with the industrial- grade equipment real corporations and businesses use so students can work on such authentic problems as comparing flu strains, which biomedical students are currently doing. In the engineering lab, a 3D printer lets students actually “print out” in plastic polymer objects such as puzzle cubes, they’ve designed to test out their accuracy.
Space and Design Considerations
For districts considering building or renovating current structures to make them more STEM-friendly, there are a host of practical space and design considerations says Bob Moje, president of VMDO Architects and designer of more than 36 schools.
Large classrooms that can accommodate traditional labs, computer research areas, and large project storage spaces in addition to classroom instruction areas, lend themselves best to a seamless hands-on inquiry-based method of instruction, says Moje. Schools should also re-think the traditional subject-specific dedicated hallways. Instead of having a separate lab for each subject area, schools can consolidate space by using the same lab for math, science and engineering, for instance, leaving more space for classrooms.
Moje also suggests incorporating an outdoor space that can be used for hands- on experimentation. A recent elementary school his firm constructed included landscaping with channels that collected rainwater running down to a pool to form a wetland area where kids can use mobile science tools to measure pH levels of water, collect soil data, study the water cycle, and more. Other options might include streams, gardens or just open spaces where basic experiments can be done.
Some other new STEM school construction elements include soundproof glass walls so students can observe others at work without disturbing them, and flexible furniture configurations, such as modular tables that can be broken down to accommodate student groups of different sizes.
For districts who don’t have the luxury of undergoing major construction, some cost effective steps they can take to begin a STEM program include identifying and co-locating teachers willing to work in cross-disciplinary, team-teaching collaborations that allow students see how different disciplines inter-relate in the real world, says Moje. Basic materials, such as plywood 2x4s, string, and clay encourage the critical hands-on learning that can take subjects like math out of the theoretical and into the physical realm. Ideally, schools could also find spaces, such as a neighborhood warehouse, where students can have the kinds of wood or metal shop experiences once so common, says Moje.
Tips for Getting Started with STEM
Awareness is key to getting stakeholder buy-in for any program, but a comprehensive list of STEM facts and statistics on the PLTW site can help district leaders convince doubters. Examples include:
· the U.S. will have over 1.2 million unfilled jobs in STEM-related fields by 2018 (U.S. News STEM Solutions Summit, 2012); and
· the World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. as No. 48 in quality of math and science education.
Think big picture, says SLA’s Lehmann. Don’t just institute a math class here or an after-school program there. Consider a comprehensive strategy that can apply to all district schools. Lehmann also advises administrators and school board members to do their homework and learn from others by visiting or reading about innovative programs such as the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) and the High Tech High School programs across the country. He also advises attending conferences, such as SLA’s EduCon or other industry events where STEM best practices are on the agenda. The PLTW web site is another great resource, pointing visitors to districts and schools arcoss the nation who are implementing STEM programs they might learn from.
Finding the right partnerships is also a good place to start, says Day. Districts should identify and reach out to local business and universities to begin discussions about partnerships and what a STEM program should look like. Job skills should be embedded into the curriculum and businesses have a vested interest in long –term, high quality programs.
Pinder says perhaps the most crucial piece of advice he would give district administrators is to start young getting STEM on the radar of students.” In high school, students will find they have a knack for STEM, but can be discouraged because they feel they have so much catching up to do,” he says. Districts should run campaigns for STEM programs using local athletes or celebrities and targeting kids even in the primary grades. PLTW’s director of communications, Jennifer Cahill, says this is also a mission shared by her organization and that educators can expect an elementary-level curriculum within the next few years.
Says Day, “If STEM is an urgent need in this country, and it is, then it should be the core of what every student is doing and learning in school. There are millions of students who would not know to aspire to a STEM career because they’ve never been exposed to it. It’s up to our schools to create a culture that allows that to happen.”
Susan McLester is an ed tech journalist, and education industry marketing, PR and content consultant. She can be reached at susan@mclestercontent.com.
|