Clarks Creek STEM Programming - Executive Summary

The STEM program at Clarks Creek Elementary is robust and thriving. As a school community, we have worked tirelessly over the last three years to increase our focus on STEM education. This work has encompassed our professional development activities, communications with parents, lessons in our classrooms, partnerships within our community, changes in building aesthetics, and additional curricular and extracurricular opportunities for students. The growth and development as a program has proceeded in a series of measured steps that will allow for long-term sustainability.

A Dream Realized - A Beginning

As a district, Plainfield Community Schools created a corporation-wide initiative prior to the 2018-19 school year. At that point, plans were developed to create a curricular experience for every student in a state-of-the-art facility with STEM materials and equipment that would allow students to work in ways that had previously been unavailable to them. It just so happens that The Imagination Lab facility is attached to Clarks Creek! While other schools in our district have to bus students over for experiences, our students walk through a hallway into the area that was once the natatorium (when our building was a middle school) into the transformed space. Named for the creek that runs behind our school, we are also able to use the creek and woods right out back both in experiences from the Lab and directed by our teachers. As this project in The Imagination Lab came to fruition and students were completing “odysseys” there every month, we looked for ways to extend that type of hands-on learning into our classrooms at Clarks Creek.

Moving STEM Into the Classrooms

The year after implementation of the Lab odysseys, we adopted a curriculum for use by all teachers - the Defined STEM (now Defined Learning) curriculum. This was of particular interest to us because of the strong connection to careers that the program fostered, and the real-world problem-solving that took place through the use of design thinking. Students took on roles as zoologists, backpack designers, engineers, and more, as they learned the design thinking process. Each and every student had a complete experience in this process every quarter. This required much professional development with our staff, including use of the online program, but also in discussion of our school expectations for the frequency with which we expected students to be able to work in these domains. Our staff took on the challenge of this without question and dove right in to create STEM experiences for our students in their own classrooms.

As “employability skills” began to dominate the headlines of business circles and research began to show that employers had expressed the need for a particular set of skills to be developed in our students, we looked for ways to bring this into our lessons. As we did so, we found many opportunities for this. Last year we had just begun “Morning Meetings” in each of our classrooms. As teachers began to formulate their plans for the topics they would cover in these conversations with their students, we asked them to follow a particular schedule that would ensure the employability skills would be covered. Using daily themes of “Mindset Monday,” “Toolbox Tuesday,” “We Care Wednesday,” “Thinking Thursday,” and “PRIDE Day Friday,” teachers broke down the skills into these categories and used them as springboards for the meeting topics.

The next giant piece of our “STEM puzzle” has been the addition of Project Lead the Way. Last year we wrote a grant and received funds to implement PLTW in all of our grade levels. Training took place last spring and summer and every teacher was trained. It was amazing to see them volunteer their time in the summer to get the training they needed to implement this extensive programming. In addition, two of our teachers became certified “PLTW Lead Teachers” and will be able to continue the training of new staff members going forward. We had hoped to pilot some units last spring, but with the changes to our school schedule as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, our staff and students will begin delving into these modules very soon! In fact, in one grade level, they have already begun because they have an extra “related arts” course they are using for an additional PLTW time above and beyond the work they are slated to do in each classroom.

To facilitate “time for STEM,” and to eliminate any idea that STEM is something we do during a particular block of time, we’ve spent time discussing integration of STEM into the classrooms. We have restructured our day to ensure time for the Morning Meetings and retitled other blocks during the day on our master schedule to emphasize the intention of integrating STEM throughout the day in multiple content areas. In addition, our related arts classes have even added the “language of STEM” into their classes and purposefully employ STEM strategies into their lessons.

Bring in the Partners!

As a school, we have been blessed with outstanding community support. Our community partners have been extremely helpful to us, having walked alongside us through these past few years of development of our programming. We had several of our partners attend our mission and vision creation sessions. Their perspective was valuable in the work that we completed together, and they continue to be an integral part of our team.

In addition to our business partners, we have developed other community partnerships which have greatly advanced our efforts to become a STEM learning community. We have partnered with Plainfield Community High School, with members of their HOSA Club (future health professionals organization). This partnership has yielded many different opportunities for all students to work alongside these high school students to learn detailed STEM concepts. We have also partnered with the Clarks Creek PTO. While always seeking to assist our students and teachers with anything, they have been particularly involved with propelling our STEM programming, even as far as to add “STEM activities” to the classroom parties that they help plan. They have also restructured their grant program to give priority to any teacher grants requesting items that would further our mission of STEM education.

STEM Provides School Unity

As a school, we always strive to find unity across the grade levels in our school community. Our STEM initiative has allowed us to build that even more. We have restructured several all-school events to coordinate with our mission. When our school worked together to earn an “all-school reward,” the reward was a chance to watch a “Chemistry is a Blast” program - which they all loved! We created a family event for all students that was completely based around STEM concepts related to popcorn. Unfortunately, COVID kept that event from taking place, but the plans are all done and we look forward to offering it again in the future.

Aesthetics - Live it! Show It!

We have beautiful facilities at Clarks Creek and we have found many ways to highlight the importance of STEM in our building from the moment people walk in. From the pictures in the main entry, to the display tables that are seen just inside the building, STEM is the first thing that visitors see. Display cases, bulletin boards, and classroom displays all also show the focus on STEM that each classroom and the school as a whole has. Students are invited to think about what STEM careers they would like to have at a spot in our large atrium area. Classrooms have STEM posters with the 4 C’s, and the design-thinking process. Students are constantly reminded to use these strategies to help them solve problems!

Communicating the Message

As we’ve continued down this path to becoming STEM certified, in addition to communicating with our students, staff, and community partners, we have also spent much time ensuring that our parents understand our mission. From putting information in parent newsletters to surveying them for their feelings about our practices, parents are important partners in this endeavor. We also continue to highlight STEM photos in communications and on online platforms. We want each parent to know and understand exactly what we’re doing and why.

Applying for STEM Certification

We know that being named a STEM certified school doesn’t come with financial incentives or other external rewards. Truly, the work that we’ve already done has been its own reward. However, our staff and students have worked tremendously hard to get to where we are. Knowing what we know about the design thinking process, we realize that where we are now is simply one iteration of the STEM program Clarks Creek will ultimately have. We’ve come a long way and will look forward to all the additional iterations to come as we continue to refine our processes and make our school better and better. We are proud to be Clarks Creek - A STEM Learning Community!