"I love watching the students work together to find a solution. We had a really neat project a week ago that required them to take tessellations and manipulate them together to make a quadrilateral with a given perimeter. It was neat to see how they would do trial and error to problem-solve together. Watching their creative minds come to light, I feel, is a success in itself."
Pre-Algebra Teacher
The North Posey Junior High staff is in year three of our journey to become a STEM certified school. In year one of the process, we saw a large amount of turnover in our staff, many of whom were on our STEM committee. This brought about many changes in responsibilities, and it also brought exciting new faces with great ideas and insight to our STEM team. As we began to communicate STEM information and updates to our entire staff, the enthusiasm for this important endeavor was evident, and the dedication of our entire staff to the incorporation of STEM for the betterment of our students was, and still is, a testament to our dedication to our students and their success.
Some of our earliest tasks as a STEM committee were to complete our self-evaluation, mission statement, and vision statement. Our initial self-evaluation scored us relatively low, but our collaboration time after this evaluation was filled with ideas and working together to make a plan to get us where we wanted to be. Many of the areas that we scored low in were areas that we already had the desire to work on and had had conversations about, but this initiative gave us the push we needed to put those desires into action. We all shared the same ideas in terms of our purpose, which led us to the creation of a mission and vision statement. As we worked in groups to create our mission and vision, it was remarkable how similar we all felt and how easily we were able to develop our mission statement that follows: "We seek to empower and equip our students with the skills necessary for success as productive members of society by engaging students in real-world, problem-solving, technology-infused, STEM learning experiences." This mission led us naturally to the following vision statement: "As a STEM certified school, we will provide a fun, engaging atmosphere in which all students are motivated learners and prepared to be functional citizens in a modern workforce." When our committee shared these statements with our full staff, everyone agreed and was excited about the opportunities ahead.
Our next steps were to analyze each domain individually and take an honest look at our areas of strength and weakness in each one. As a committee, we also looked at our strengths and weaknesses as individuals. As we looked at our plan moving forward and began to delegate and created to-do lists, we naturally made decisions and delegations based on these individual areas of strength.
As we worked through Domain 1 as a committee and extended conversations with the entire staff, we stayed committed to our plan and have been able to score ourselves at the highest level in each area of the self assessment. This domain was the largest and took us the most time to perfect. As we have worked to incorporate cross curricular STEM opportunities, we have learned a great deal about our colleagues and other subject areas that we might not have otherwise. As teachers, we are modelling the collaboration and problem solving processes that we hope our students will emulate. As STEM will continue to be at the forefront of our minds when planning classroom lessons and experiences, we will continue to grow as a staff with our students to develop the best curriculum to prepare our students for the modern workforce.
The time that we spent looking closely at Domain 2 started with exploring evidence-based, approved curriculum. In order to effectively implement the STEM curriculum, we wanted to ensure that we understood it ourselves. This allowed us as a team to decide on the best curriculum for our school and where we wanted it to be implemented to ensure every student had consistent access to it. Another very important aspect of Domain 2 is employability skills. This was an area that our teachers were already strong in, but many were not familiar with the standards themselves. Sharing and discussing lessons with these specific standards in mind only increased effectiveness and levels of integration. Another aspect of our work in this domain that led to enhanced collaboration was the area of assessment. As a staff, we have learned together how to actively seek different ways to assess STEM learning. Domain 2 is now a domain that we feel very confident in and have scored ourselves at the highest level in each area.
Domain 3 focuses around instruction. As educators, continually learning about best practice in instruction is something we are all used to and comfortable with in our content areas. Making STEM learning an integral part of our curriculum in all subject areas did take time, but we worked together as a whole at faculty meetings to collaborate and ensure success of all of our teachers. We also continue to meet weekly with teachers from the same and different subject areas in small groups to discuss and plan STEM learning opportunities. This integration obviously looks very different in each subject area, but the more we understand about each others' processes and curriculum, the more effective we are becoming at our own curriculum. Student collaboration has also evolved since we started our STEM certification process. All teachers provided opportunities for group work and collaboration, but our self assessment showed that assigned roles were not always being implemented. Adding this element to group work within our classrooms was such an enhancement. Our instruction has improved in many ways as we have focused on our STEM mission and taken a critical look at all areas of instruction. We are now confident that we have earned all of the points in this area of our self assessment.
Partnership and community are essential aspects of any process or undertaking that a school takes on. We started by having conversations with local partners that have partnered with our school for many endeavors. Having community partners was an area that our school already excelled at, so naturally we started with the partners we already had in place. Explaining STEM and what we were trying to accomplish with familiar faces who provided solid and honest sounding boards was the perfect way to begin building our STEM partnerships. As we continued through the process, our list of community partners continued to grow and develop. By the end of the process, we have branched out into seeking out new partners that our school has never partnered with before. Seeing the community come together behind such an important endeavor has been very encouraging. As students are able to see STEM careers on a local and regional level, they get to see options and examples for their futures first hand. Equity is crucial in all areas of education, and STEM is no exception. Even though we feel that we are not able to reach the highest level in our self assessment in domain 4 for equity, we have worked hard to establish our approaching status in this area.
The process that we have undertaken to become a STEM certified school means a lot to our team and all of our staff. We are proud of our most recent self-assessment, and we are so encouraged by the level of collaboration and progress that we have already seen since the inception of this endeavor. STEM is not only important to our students as learners, but it is important to every person in our school as individuals, both personally and professionally. We know that failure is an option in STEM curriculum, and many of us have already experienced it as we have attempted a lesson or experience, failed, tried again, and sometimes again multiple times as we maneuver synchronous and asynchronous learning. In many ways having the STEM mindset and having gone through this process has made our transitions to a more virtual experience due to COVID 19 easier and more transitioned. North Posey Junior High is a better school with better instruction because of this STEM certification process. We fully believe our students are more engaged and will be better prepared for the real world after they leave our school. This process has led to countless positive changes in ourselves and in our school, and our entire staff is driven to continue focusing on our STEM mission to accomplish our STEM vision.