Education is like a car. With acceleration, comes shifting gears. Without shifting, you’ll sit in park. As new technology emerges, schools are pushing in the clutch and shifting into high gear to give their students a top-notch learning experience. For a rural Arizona school district, moving the car forward means putting the focus on STEM.
“Everything we do relates to STEM,” explained Dr. Stephanie Miller, Congress Elementary School Superintendent and Principal. “We are a rural community with 77% of students on free and reduced lunch, so we need to provide as many opportunities for them to be successful as we can. It’s my mission to create an environment where students can thrive, become global citizens and explore a world of careers in STEM.”
To further the Congress Elementary STEM focus they also offer a STEM drama club, an after school robotics programs, and a community garden for students to manage. Though extremely different activities, they all have one common emphasis, STEM. While applying their education, they’re also working with their hands and using cross-curricular skills—like learning to drive a car, many students are taking the wheel—and getting hands-on experience for the first time. The teacher is right there in the “passenger seat” to keep a watchful eye on the learners and ensure the “drive” is a smooth one.
Dr. Miller adopted, Defined STEM Performance and Literacy Tasks to supplement the curriculum so teachers could provide content with depth and breadth to excite and engage their students. Defined STEM builds tasks from the UBD (Understanding By Design) framework and presents real-world problems within the context of a career/industry.
“Defined STEM was the driving force behind our STEM integration,” said Dr. Miller. “They were the catalyst providing tools for change and our teachers would not be as successful without it. The Defined STEM lessons align with my vision of supporting classroom education with real world projects, and mirror my goal of teaching students interdisciplinary skills while promoting STEM.”