From Mandated STEM to Joyful STEAM – Inspiring Projects Can Transform Instructional Culture

By Mark Gura and Dr. Rose Reissman

Providing a quality, comprehensive STEM program for students, a regularly scheduled, ongoing series of instructional activities that involve Math, Science, Engineering, and Technology, can be a challenge for a school. Still, this is increasingly perceived as an important  need, a mandate in many places, and for good reason. How unfortunate, then, when programming decisions defined by staffing, budget, and resource scarcities result in STEM programs that are far less than they might be.

STEM, after all, is best conceived as an integrated program, not simply lumping together standalone elements of Math, Science, and Technology (Computing), subjects that have a long history of being provided as isolated classes in our schools, alongside isolated subject classes of Social Studies, and ELA. STEM experiences of high quality though, illustrate and model for students how the individual disciplines from whose names the letters of the STEM acronym are derived, work together as they are applied in solutions to real world problems. One important element and example of this is Engineering, from whose name the fourth STEM letter “E” is derived. In real life the designing of bridges, machines, buildings and a myriad things that represent  so much of man’s built and designed environment involves the coming together of Math, Science, and Technology, all supporting one another.

As clear as that understanding may be, schools still continue providing traditional isolated Math and Science classes which must satisfy their own individual mandates for accreditation and accountability. And in many places the school’s providing a “Computer” or “Technology” Class reflects similar needs, as well. What results often then are STEM classes; classes that often occupy the same niche as the Computer class, but which are updated to provide activities that reflect the STEM sensibility. Such classes expose students to bodies of skills like coding, robotics, and ‘smart (programmable) electronics” and similar program elements. Much of this is supported by purchased or subscription-based resources that include programming apps and resources, as well as electronic component and robotics building kits.

While establishing and implementing this variety of relevant and rich STEM program is, in and of itself, no mean feat, several years back, ever restless, forward thinking educators went even further and launched the STEAM framework. STEAM, which adds an “A” for the Arts, is seen by many as including a connection to Literature, which has a very long history of its expressive and descriptive functions being considered an art form. Reflecting a bit further, it is easy to see that Social Studies is fertile for a great many connections with Literature, The Arts, and STEM when considering its own needs to relate events and ideas and illustrate and explain them and propose interpretations of them.

With all of the above as background, it is easy to see that designing, preparing, and implementing a full STEM/STEAM program requires a great deal from a school. Reflecting on a case story of a school in which, despite challenges that would stand in the way of most, a truly excellent STEAM program emerged, is enlightening and so inspiring as to be a call to action on the part of many colleague schools. Here, then, is the story of the 6^th Grade STEAM program of Ditmas Middle School in Brooklyn, New York.

The school’s SEP Team is composed of Mr. Carideo, the school’s 6^th Grade Technology teacher (also licensed in Social Studies) and Mr. Eliot Sefaradi, a 6^th Grade Mathematics teacher.  Both Mr. Carideo and Sefaradi are officially designated as making up the school’s SEP team (a district-level designation), and are scheduled to work collaboratively together on 6^th grade STEM instruction. However, because of the professional chemistry between the two, as well as the broad scope of their professional backgrounds, they surpass their mandate to teach STEM, something they accomplished to a very high level, but also lead their students into the wonderful dimension of STEAM. In their scheduled STEM co-teaching classes, they engage their students in interdisciplinary projects that infuse Literacy. Social Studies, ESL and other topics through application of STEM skills. This is a great learning bonus for the students and one that reverberates significantly through the school's general instructional culture. 

Both teachers have a child's fascination with ongoing curricula innovations and are eager "to play with" standard STEM content and resources. They like the new challenge of tackling the mandated STEM initiative yet making the subject their own, reflecting their interests and passions and above all, those of their students, whom they often engage in conversation in their ongoing listening for what interests them.  Both teachers experiment with new tools and technologies and teach them to themselves as part of their process of expanding their repertoire before passing their passion for and joy in STEAM on to their students.

A Project Oriented Approach

The glue that holds the various elements of their STEM program together are the projects the two come up with; an ongoing series of challenges that require much thinking, learning and then application of skills and bodies of knowledge, as well as frequent reflection on the way things turn out and how they might be improved. These projects are longterm ongoing efforts, with students working on them for more than a dozen sessions each.

Animated Music Videos is one of their popular projects in which students select a popular song and create an animation to accompany music.  At the core of this highly engaging project is the skill of coding, for which these teachers make good use of the SCRATCH coding platform. SCRATCH is a project of the MIT Media Lab and is available as a free resource. This project establishes important and clear connections between this body of tech and media skills and core curriculum area subjects which, in this school, are generally taught traditionally in a print-centric environment.

Further, the project offers a good opportunity for metacognitive reflection and through accountable talk and writing, in which students are required to explain why they selected a particular song and how its lyric or music connected to their individual interests or resonated with their cultural background. They were challenged to make the video “fit” a specific aspect of a lyric and explain how they developed the video to fit that lyric.

The project also offers a good deal of career learning. Students learn coding and other sought after technology skills and their application to a host of media communications uses. The student created videos are very much the sort of thing that business increasingly relies on as competing brand and market niche companies rely on telling their story to potential customers.  

Connections to essential learning directed at Common Core Standards include English Language Arts Standards » Anchor Standards » College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Speaking and Listening » 5

“Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.” 

http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/CCRA/SL/5/

Related to this are powerful connections to softer curriculum that represent crucial learning for success in higher education and careers. The project is also rich in learning opportunities to expand capacity in goal setting and task focus; strategic problem solving; and developing grit and perseverance.

Story Creation

Another of their projects that provides great alignment to ELA and Literacy learning is their Short Story Creation, coding-based animation project. In this project students were challenged to create very short stories, making certain that their stories have a definite beginning, middle and end. In other words, beyond learning and applying coding skills, they were engaged in classic author’s craft learning about narrative format and plot development. They were charged to focus, as well, on descriptions of settings and characters.

Thus, the students were engaged in a project based, digital publication effort, and one that included addressing a potentially large audience as the intention was to post the finished work online so that the entire community of learners could review one another’s work. Again, this represents invaluable career training as the shape of commercial communications continues to develop in the direction of highly valuing this sort of storytelling.

"Student work was posted online in a project gallery and the teachers created a loop composed of all of their individual works for the students which was made accessible online to all. Students were encouraged to comment on one another’s work, learned how to give appropriate peer feedback, and were guided to ask probing, relevant questions in response to peer items they read.  Some students even had followers from other countries comment online; some of these even asked for a story “similar: to one they liked to be created for them."

Standards directly and strongly addressed include (in addition to ELA-Literacy/CCRA/SL/5 already mentioned above for the music video project, which apply here, as well):

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.4
Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.5
Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

Impacting the Culture of Learning and Teaching

The impact on these students from such projects being made part of their ongoing regular instructional program has been significant. Not surprisingly, the student’s level of engagement, enthusiasm, and esprit du corps has been noticeably high. Further, these projects have garnered the attention of other teachers in the school, notably core curriculum subject area teachers. Thus, not only has the STEM program improved the scholarly life of the students directly assigned to the classes of these 2 teachers, but there has been a highly significant ripple effect of their efforts throughout the school, most notably in the desire of other teachers to adopt and infuse their practices into their own curriculum and teaching.

Accordingly, the SEP teachers offered a workshop on their approaches to colleague teachers in the school. Among those who attended is Ms. Carcione, a Science teacher and Mr. Downes, a Social Studies teacher were inspired by the work of the SEP teachers and voluntarily attended a workshop on SCRATCH coding and were further inspired to introduce the body of skills in their own teaching. 

They decided they could use it in their ongoing project based learning as an additional option for projects they already do as part of their curricula.  The students had the option of selecting from a body of technology applications in order to communicate a Science or Social Studies message. In Science, for instance, students read current news stories that concern real world energy issues and communicate their learning and opinions by first selecting either robotics, animated video games, or a slide presentation as a vehicle to carry their voice to peers and others. In Social Studies students play the role of advertising media producers to create brochures and animated informational messages intended to convince Europeans to come to the American Colonies to live.

It is noteworthy that the eagerness of Downes and Carcione, both veteran teachers, to include these STEAM experiences for students in their ongoing, field tested menu of projects demonstrates that the integrating STEM skills into classrooms, other than those run by specialists officially designated as STEM Education team members, has strong appeal as a way to update and enrich mandated content area instruction that is too often approached reflexively, traditionally.

Letting STEAM activities drive instruction across the curriculum can result in a rich, authentic, cross disciplinary program, an educational opportunity to satisfy the needs of today’s students preparing themselves for careers and future higher education that increasingly is steeped deeply in STEAM skills and contexts.

Mark Gura - a native of New York City, Mark Gura taught in public schools in East Harlem for two decades. Afterwards, he spent 5 years as a staff and curriculum developer for the central office of the New York City Department of Education. Eventually, he was tapped to establish the Department’s Office of Instructional Technology, where he held the position of Director for 7 years, supervising professional development in the use of technology, citywide. After retiring, Mark joined Fordham University’s Regional Educational Technology Center, organizing citywide education conferences and events. He has taught Instructional Technology courses for both Fordham and Touro College. Mark has written books and created  materials for ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), Information Age Books, Scarecrow Books, Corwin, and Teacher Created Materials. He has been an education writer for the New York Daily News and contributed numerous articles to Converge, T.H.E. Journal, and EdTech magazines. He was the co-producer of the popular podcasts The Teachers Podcast, Talking Financial Literacy Podcast, and host/producer of Literacy Special Interest Podcast. Mark has spoken on the subject of Instructional Technology throughout the U.S.  Visit: http://www.markgura.blogspot.com/ Write to: markgura@verizon.net

Dr. Rose Reissman is the founder of the Writing Institute, now replicated in 200 schools including the Manchester Charter Middle School in Pittsburgh. She is a featured author in New York State Union Teachers Educators Voice 2016 and was filmed discussing ESL student leadership literary strategies developed at Ditmas IS 62, a Brooklyn public intermediate school. roshchaya@gmail.com