Excitement surrounds, drives ‘model’ STEM status at Northwest Elementary

The day before Halloween at Northwest Elementary School, the reading lesson for Leah Jones’ kindergarten class centered on “Pumpkin Jack,” a story about children who carved a jack-o-lantern, set it outside to melt into the ground and, when the time came, saw its leftover seeds grow into vines, flowers and little Pumpkin Jacks. But in this teacher’s telling, there was much more to the story.

The kindergarteners watched as Jones carved the class’s own pumpkin. She cut a hole for an eye and held up the pumpkin wedge. “What shape is this?” she asked. Triangle. She cut a square nose. “What would be a good shape for the mouth?” she asked, pointing to a hint she had drawn on the whiteboard.

Oval, the class said. The class later counted pumpkin seed in a math lesson, learned the vocabulary word “decomposition” and, on their iPads, found a digital pumpkin they could “carve,” cementing the geometry lesson they’d just had.

“That’s the kind of teaching and learning we try to do here,” Northwest principal Christy Eubanks said as she and a visitor left the classroom.

By any objective measure—and according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI)—that kind of teaching and learning is already happening at Northwest on a grand scale. The school’s embrace of engaging instruction and inquiry-based learning recently earned it recognition from the state as a

STEM School of Distinction—joining EB Frink Middle and Contentnea-Savannah K-8 on the list of 11 statewide—and its “model” status from NCDPI has made it a magnet for visits and Zoom calls from school leaders elsewhere who want to know how Northwest did it.

“This was an effort that involved the whole staff, not just a little team,” Heather Clark, the school’s digital learning specialist, said. “We involved the whole staff from the beginning.”

The year-long application process gave Northwest teachers and administrators an opportunity to reflect as a group on what and how they taught and how problem-solving exercises for students can be created for any lesson, not just the science, technology, engineering and math teachings that give this pedagogy its acronym.

“STEM is like a state of mind, having everybody understand you can cane be critical thinkers, that you can be analytical, that you can work together to integrate all of the skills through all of the subject areas and apply that to a real-world setting,” Nicolette Morgan, the school’s curriculum specialist, said. “None of this is done in isolation.”

The core element of STEM as it’s taught today is the engineering design process—identifying the problem, designing a plan, testing the plan, collecting the data and determining what worked or didn’t work. “You go through that cycle all over again,” Morgan said.

In math class that could mean focusing on the wrong answer to a problem and, with well-placed questions, working backwards to help students identify misconceptions and arrive at the right answer. It could mean giving students magnetic tiles and a six-inch ruler and letting them figure out the best way to erect a nine-foot structure.

Stephanie Parris’ fourth-grade class was reading a book about hurricanes when Hurricane Melissa began pounding the Caribbean. They studied photos from other Atlantic storms, particularly photos of structures that withstood the beating. Then they translated their own ideas of hurricane-proof structures into models, building with popsicle sticks, Play-doh and tape. Then came the test. Parris flooded the aluminum pans in which each model sat and used a hair dryer to bring the wind. The day’s vocabulary word was “debris.”

(Check out this video of a fourth-grader’s model standing up to the hair-dryer hurricane.)

“I think this process has broadened our teachers’ perspective of what they can do.” Eubanks said. “We have become more collaborative.”

That sense of partnership extends outside the classroom. Parents come to Northwest’s regular STEM Night events to participate in problem-solving activities. The school’s desire to increase community involvement led to the creation of Book Buddies, a corps of some 40 volunteers who serve as reading tutors, and to a stronger alliance with Partnership for Children of Lenoir and Greene Counties, which plays a lead role in early childhood development, especially in the area of literacy.

Northwest has employed iPads and other digital devices as key learning tools for nearly a dozen years and is among the 15 LCPS schools designated as an Apple School of Excellence. That familiarity with the way students acquire information today gave the school a foundation in its push for STEM recognition, according to Clark. “I don’t think it could have been possible without it,” she said.

But what’s changed is the way teachers are using these tools to expand their lessons and keep young minds interested. Eubanks credits greater student engagement with driving Northwest’s significant jump in academic growth, as measured by last spring’s accountability testing. “STEM brings in so much engagement. The teachers are making learning fun,” the principal said.

“The staff’s excited about it,” Clark added. “When the teachers are excited, that filters down to the students.”

Cutline:

Northwest Elementary kindergarten teacher Leah Jones models the shape of a triangle as she turns pumpkin-carving fun into a geometry lesson.