Applications and School Choice

Five Star STEM Schools

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Five Star STEM Schools are a national blueprint in STEM education using Problem Based Inquiry

Ethos - Guiding Beliefs

Authenticity. Through inquiry-based, STEM, student-centered classrooms, students authentically engage with real-world problems while strengthening their employability skills.
Partnership. Five Star STEM serves as a bridge between education, community, and industry. These partnerships keep all systems relevant in a rapidly-evolving world.
Distributive Leadership. Students, teachers, and community members collaborate utilizing an ongoing process of collective inquiry, reflection, and analysis of instructional practice through iteration and data to achieve improved outcomes and innovative solutions, while building empathy.
Equity. STEM Classrooms prepare all students for success by providing equitable opportunities in and out of the classroom.

Problem Based Inquiry

Problem Based Learning

Transdisciplinary Lenses

Career Connected Learning

Engineering Design Mindset

What it IS & What it IS NOT

All students have a right to be STEM literate.

With a content-centered, rich problem, students use transdisciplinary lenses to analyze, research, and design solutions to the problem.

Students primarily direct the learning by working collaboratively as researchers, investigators, and problem solvers.

Cross-pollinated across disciplines and content areas.

Reserved for the top percentages of a population.

Forced integration into theme-based units or a favorite unit (ie dinosaurs); coating disciplines with each other (doing math in social studies).

Teachers primarily direct learning mostly through lecture and other types of direct instruction.

Isolated to namesake content areas (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) or a single "event" (science fair).

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