Washington Elementary School thrives on its strong partnerships with local businesses and individuals, which play a critical role in supporting the school’s STEM-focused initiatives. These community partners provide valuable guidance, feedback, and hands-on interaction with students, enhancing their learning experiences. Volunteers contribute to events such as the robotics showcase as well as giving feedback on student projects during the school day. Through live presentations and classroom studies, students are introduced to professionals in STEM-related careers who expose them to future opportunities and answer questions. The school is enriched with diverse STEM experiences integrated into the curriculum and extracurricular activities. During the school day, students engage in activities such as annual water testing trips to a nearby creek and grade-level animal dissections, ensuring hands-on learning at every stage. After-school STEM clubs, including Girls Who Code, Girls in STEM, Spring Robotics Club, and First Lego League, offer students a more in depth study of innovation topics they learn during the school day. These programs, supported by the dedication of community partners, provide students with a well-rounded, education in STEM fields.
4.1 Community Partner Feedback
Washington has been blessed to have a great relationship with several community partners in Warsaw. Being the Orthopedic Capital of the World, we have had several volunteers from DePuy, Zimmer Biomet, Medtronic, and Orthopediatrics support us either by volunteering at robotics events, giving students feedback on engineering projects, or supporting us through grants. Warsaw is also known as ‘Lake City’ because of the amount of bodies of water. We have a great partnership with the Kosciusko County Soil & Water Conservation District and the Lilly Center at Grace College. They offer outside-the-classroom opportunities such as water-testing in local creeks and providing environmental trips and activities. Through feedback sessions and surveys, we are able to gain constructive ideas on how to improve our STEM program, enrich the opportunities that we offer our students, and plan how our community partners can actively support our school.
4.2 STEM Career Exploration
Two of our district-adopted curriculums, Reveal Math and PLTW, have career resources included with each unit to intentionally introduce STEM careers to students that mirror the accompanying topic. As teachers have planned their PBLs and Engineering lessons, they purposefully include careers pertaining to the project to discuss with their class. Washington also has community career experts that come in to speak with students on their particular careers.
4.3 Additional STEM Learning Opportunities
At Washington, 100% of students have access to opportunities such as coding, animal dissections, and field trips. Our school also offers after school clubs such as Girls Who Code, Girls in STEM, Spring Robotics Showcase, and First Lego League. In all four of these clubs, students are engaged in hands-on experiences learning specifically coding and robotics but also problem solving, decision making, and how to work through challenges. The clubs are offered to more than half of our student body. Our school district also offers a STEM Summer Challenge program where 4th - 6th graders attend a 3 week session taking on 2 separate STEM challenges. Washington is committed to providing students with rich STEM experiences outside the traditional classroom.
4.4 Access and Opportunity to STEM Experiences
Washington STEM Academy worked with Grace College to develop a Girls in STEM club a few years ago to promote experiences in engineering and coding for 1st and 2nd grade girls. The goal was to encourage girls to seek STEM-related careers in the future. Last year we built upon that foundation with our Girls Who Code before school club for girls in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. Since then, we have created an Action Plan to connect with other underrepresented groups by 1.)intentionally inviting career professionals of different minority groups to speak with students about their careers and 2.)to have students study different people with STEM-type careers in the classroom in order to promote diversity in STEM fields.
