Many schools across Iowa are working to find ways to re-engage students and excite them to come into school each day. The Storm Lake Community School District is leveraging the STEM BEST® Program’s state funding opportunity, a signature program of the Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council at the Iowa Department of Education, to revolutionize the way students learn STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) by developing more dynamic lessons, transforming learning environments and reconstructing schedule structure.
With a strong focus on student engagement and an effort to better serve students who struggle in traditional learning environments, Storm Lake Community Schools has used two recent STEM BEST® awards to develop an elementary STEM classroom and kick start their work-based learning program at the high school.
“We started STEM in 2018, kind of after a trip to NASA,” said Jacquie Drey, Storm Lake Early Elementary STEM teacher. “We came back, and we just said we need to offer more science opportunities to all the students, not just select groups, but to all of them. So how could we push that in as a special?”
In 2022, Storm Lake Early Elementary School was awarded a $40,000 STEM BEST® award with goals to link early learners with agriculture through community partnerships.
“In the beginning of the year, we talk about a lot of different fields. Like is this a scientist? Is this not a scientist,” Drey said. “But I also then throw fourth graders in there and my kindergartners from the year before, ‘Are they scientists? Yeah! Can you be a scientist? Absolutely!’ So you hope you kind of instill that part in them.”
In one of Drey’s kindergarten classes, young minds are introduced to exciting new things, like mixtures and polymers. Broken into small groups and adorned in tiny lab coats, students mixed together an activator solution and then added a neon colored solution to explore chemical reactions and molecules.
“We use that high vocabulary,” Drey said. “We want them to hear it.”
Other STEM-focused lessons extend to exploring potential career pathways in Storm Lake, such as agriculture and technology, and efforts to incorporate STEM opportunities continue onward at the middle and high school levels as well.
“They're doing more things with glowforge machines and 3D printing and just some cool things,” Drey said, describing middle school STEM units.
Additionally, Storm Lake Community Schools used a second STEM BEST® funding opportunity in 2022 to start their ASCEND (Ambitious Students Creatively Exploring New Directions) program at the high school.
ASCEND allows students to move between a traditional high school setting and a pathway model with access to work-based learning options, reflecting a more student-centered, 21st century teaching and learning approach. Storm Lake Superintendent Stacey Cole says the ASCEND program was born out of a desire to open up time in students’ schedules so they can go out into local workplaces and afford them the opportunity to do more things than a traditional schedule typically allows .
“It's really interesting to think about how a relatively small amount of money really exploded into a whole program for us,” Cole said. “I was hopeful that we would really start to see something magical happen through that grant, and it really has opened doors that I just couldn't have imagined.”
Cole recognizes the STEM BEST® funding opportunity’s benefits reach beyond the monetary award, touting how the network of STEM BEST® models across Iowa provided the connections and ability to collaborate, building on their already existing infrastructure.
“Having that team say ‘yes, we think that's a project worth funding’ really just helped us provide the things that I have never felt confident providing. It provided the days off for the teachers to go and visit other programs,” Cole said. “What STEM BEST® has done is really connect us to other really innovative minds across the state that we can just call and collaborate with.”
Cole described how this project and the shift to applied mathematics courses is helping shape the future workforce in the Storm Lake area.
“Some of the classes that we're most excited about are our AMPED on Algebra and very soon, Geometry in Construction,” Cole said.
AMPED on Algebra is a curriculum that combines business and algebra. Storm Lake students plan to use the course to create t-shirts. Using algebra, they will figure out a price point that allows them to keep the business going and build teamwork skills as they market their products. Ahead of this, they are creating personalized stickers, gaining valuable communication skills as they interview homeroom teachers on their students' activities.
“That's taken a lot of collaboration with the class because that's not something that's just embedded into algebra. That was something that they had to come up with on their own,” Cole said. “The really amazing piece is that I really feel like in today's world, the value add that a high school gives to kids is that camaraderie, is that collaboration piece that they're not going to get anywhere else.”
The soon to be implemented Geometry in Construction curriculum takes math basics like angles, trigonometry and measurements and applies these fundamentals to lessons applicable to future careers.
“We do run a pretty intense building trades program, and that program is connected to ASCEND,” Cole said. “That program is creating graduates that are working in construction across the community.”
Additionally, ASCEND has brought other positive opportunities for Storm Lake, including strengthening partnerships with the local community, getting teachers excited through professional development and leadership opportunities and getting kids into classrooms.
“We've always given the math credit, we've always given the science credit,” Cole said. “But what they can't get is they can't get the interaction within our school walls,” said Cole.
As some schools grapple with attendance issues, Cole is pleased how engaged Storm Lake students are with the ASCEND class structure.
“There's not an empty seat in the room,” Cole observed. “You don't see the kids missing ASCEND classes the way that you do traditional classes.”
According to Superintendent Cole, the Storm Lake Community School District is about 87 percent students of color with a district average of about 70 percent students living in underserved situations. For example, some students may live with an aunt or uncle for financial reasons without the traditional support other Iowa students may have.
“One of my favorite things about ASCEND is this is a program that can serve them well,” Cole said. “We're not just pushing kids through and saying they got a diploma. We have evidence that they're actually meeting high school standards so that when they do finish and they do get that diploma, an employer will know that it actually means something, and it will tell them that they do have the skills that they need to be productive in the next environment that they choose.
The successes Storm Lake Community School District is already seeing demonstrates how transformative the kickstart of a STEM BEST® award can be for Iowa schools. The benefits of STEM BEST® reach beyond the $40,000 funding opportunity and enhancement awards to the resources and network of other STEM BEST® models around the state.
“More importantly, it gave us the confidence just to try something new,” Cole said. “And I think the more we can do that in our state, the better we are all going to be.”
The deadline for submitting STEM BEST® applications this year is Dec. 11. To apply or learn more, visit the Department’s STEM BEST® webpage.