In the Los Angeles area, a school district took an “out-of-the-box” approach towards educating their students, since many of them had individual needs, that simply were not being meet by standard teaching techniques. Children are not like cookies from a cookie cutter, they have individual needs, strengths, and abilities. As teachers, we need to hone in on the individual needs of our students and our emphasis needs to be on “learning rather than teaching”.
STEM3 Academy largely focuses on “STEM” subjects: science, technology, engineering and math. The interesting aspect of this school is that they flip the classroom model. That is, “…this means that time in class is used to complete projects and homework assignments, while time at home is spent reviewing the next day’s lessons.”
The atmosphere of the STEM3 classroom is one full of hands-on equipment. STEM3 Academy has an innovation lab that’s equipped with a CNC machine, 3D printer, CAD machines and electronics. It also offers programs in robotics, entrepreneurship and programming. Students sit at communal tables to foster group work and social interactions.
When the model first began, it opens with 30 students in August 2015. As word spread, two months later, a middle school was opened and the attendance increased to 60 students graded 6-12.
The STEM3 approach to learning only demonstrates that when you take the material that the student learns and actually apply it to concrete, everyday, interesting, applicable experiences; students learn and have fun doing so. Learning becomes an exciting experience rather than a resisted task. Additionally, as the statics are showing, “…We know that 34% of students with these learning challenges that go on to college chose STEM majors.”. Moving towards the future, some large companies, including defense contractor Raytheon (RTN) and aerospace and defense technology company Northrop Grumman (NOC) — have already approached the school about potentially working with the students.
As far as social emotional development, this model not only helps establish social skills by facilitating the students to work with one another, which will in fact help them in the future work amongst co-workers in the work environment. This model helps to foster positive self esteem because the students are succeeding in areas of academics that in the past they may have been challenged with.
On a personal note, I love to see new educational approaches that succeed. Especially when they so obviously meet the academic and socio-emotional need of the students. The STEM3 is, in my opinion, a program model to build upon. It takes the needs of the students and puts them as the primary importance. Learning, in my opinion should always be experiential if possible, and the STEM model succeeds in accomplishing this. Two thumbs up!!!