Talawanda to expand STEM education

The Talawanda School District will roll out an expanded STEM curriculum this fall with a focus on getting students ready in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

“We’re preparing kids for careers that do not even exist yet,” said Ryan Barter, the district’s STEM instructional leader. “They will design the next generation of technology.”

The expanded STEM curriculum reaches down to the elementary schools, where a new teaching position has been created to work with teachers at that level to use innovative teaching tools that not only get students to learn the science and math concepts, but to also work together and communicate to reach goals.

Sarah Roche, a former fourth-grade teacher, will now be the Elementary STEM Instructor and spend time in the classrooms with teachers to help them use those new tools.

Roche attended a workshop on STEM education at the University of Cincinnati and brought back to her fourth-grade classroom the idea of the spaghetti and marshmallow challenge. Given pieces of spaghetti and one marshmallow, the students must work together to create a tower in 20 minutes.

“They can break the spaghetti and can tear the marshmallow in half but half of it must be at the top of the tower. They can use the other half to bind the spaghetti and they can hold the tower in place until it’s time to measure it but then they must let it go and leave it freestanding,” she said. “It’s interesting to watch the different approaches. Some would jump right in and some would think about it first. They must work together. They were communicating. There were lots of skills they did not realize they were using.”

Talawanda Middle School already has an engineering course, which is popular, but the high school does not, since the discontinuance of the industrial arts program.

Changes are coming in both schools. With the expanded emphasis on STEM work in the elementary schools, the middle school course is going to need to be upgraded so as to not repeat concepts already learned, and an engineering course is being added at the high school to expand on that interest fostered in the lower grades.

Barter praised the work of middle school teacher Eric Schlade, who has done a lot to add to that program and build student interest in that area. He cited the example of a 3-D printer used to create a tuba mouthpiece for a student who needed one.

The high school course is going to be taught by a faculty member already on staff, Brad Mills

“Both Brad and Eric are engineers by trade,” said district Curriculum Supervisor Joan Stidham. “I feel really lucky to have two professional engineers teaching.”

The high school digital media class taught by Andy Zimmerman gives students classroom work on media and digital production as well as practical experience. Students provide the school’s morning announcements done in a television news format complete with green screen behind them and prerecorded interviews.

That process will be even more professional and versatile this fall when a second green screen is added, thanks to a grant from the Oxford Community Foundation that was applied for by the students.

Stidham sees great potential for students to prepare for their future careers with technology. The 1:1 program will continue to put a ChromeBook laptop computer into each student’s hands, which will further expand their use of technology for education and the future.

Plans call for Roche to spend time in each elementary building a month at a time in the 2015-16 school year for two-hour blocks at a time to set the stage for more classroom-level work.

“There will be a learning curve for teachers,” Barter said, but added they hope students will become more comfortable with the learning process by starting at an earlier age. “Kids feel they need to be perfect the first time. No matter what field they go into, they will need to work together and know how to communicate. We will start in the third, fourth and fifth grades when kids are fearless.”

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