Despite all of the challenges that have faced Macon County Schools this year, there are still plenty of innovative ideas stemming from the school system’s science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.
Macon County Schools STEM coordinator Jennifer Love recently updated the Macon County Board of Education on how the program’s year has gone. Five years after the inception of the STEM program, things have gotten into a good rhythm. Obviously, there were plans and activities that fell by the wayside because of the pandemic, such as the Macon BOTS robotics team, which didn’t have access to canceled competitions. In other ways, though, this year has seen unprecedented success.
Stream restoration
It was a big year for fundraising, for example, most notably with the Shade Your Stream campaign. Macon County Schools has collected over $210,000 in grant funding to put toward beautifying Cove Branch Creek in a project that Macon Middle and Mountain View Intermediate students can take an active and educational role in. By the end of this year, Love hopes to see the creek transformed into a healthy natural environment that the whole community can enjoy.
“We have our students outside right now from our natural resources classes and our environmental science classes and our STEM classes that are outside collecting pretreatment data, and then we have our art teacher and students working on signage,” Love said. “You’ll have a stream corridor fenced off with split rail fencing, native plants, signage and a nature path that will connect the front of (MVI) with the back and have a whole loop trail.”
A lot of outdoor curriculum has been adapted for the age of COVID-19. Kids in the Creek, which takes students out into the woods to study local ecosystems, is being spread out over an entire week to allow for social distancing. There’s even a new major outdoor initiative in the form of the Macon Youth Trail Corps. This summer, Macon County students age 15 to 18 will spend four weeks in July working on maintenance projects on the Bartram Trail as a paid internship. The program is sponsored by the Georgia/North Carolina Bartram Trail Conservancy, whose members hope that the project will get more kids invested in both the economic and social value of Macon County’s natural resources.
“Thanks to STEM’s input, outreach and development, we will now have six paid youth positions in our community this coming summer – a program we plan on continuing and growing into the future,” said Brent Martin, the conservancy’s executive director. “These students will not just to get a paycheck – they’ll learn about careers in conservation, outdoor skills and team building, and hopefully contribute to our community for years to come.”
Tower gardents growing
There are plenty of new ideas sprouting up inside the classroom as well. Using money originally intended for new electronics that was made superfluous by coronavirus relief funding, the STEM program invested in a collection of Tower Gardens, which allow gardeners to grow crops indoors through aeroponics. These mobile gardens have made their way through a few classrooms already, and teachers have been pleased with the results. East Franklin Elementary School second grade teacher Kristin Bailey hoped that working on the garden in class would inspire her students to think more about the food they eat and their investment has exceeded her expectations.
“My kids absolutely love the Tower Garden,” Bailey said. “They have been amazed at how quickly the plants grow. They love walking in and going over to the Tower Garden to see the progress of the plants each day. Their reactions coming in on a Monday morning to see the progress of the plants over the weekend are amazing.”
The school system also has two new STEM teachers in Craig Kurimay at MVI and Bryan Wilkinson at Macon Middle. They’ve been having a good time with their students so far, offering up creative projects like building miniature cars powered by balloons and programming toy robots.
Learning can be fun
Kurimay said the basic essence of the STEM program is to encourage problem solving and critical thinking skills that will be essential to shaping students as both employees and citizens, but there are plenty of ways to make getting that message across enjoyable.
“My goal is to create an environment where learning can be fun,” Kurimay said. “From the moment the parents drop off their students, to moments in the hallways, to time spent in the classroom and even the time the students prepare to leave our campus, these are all opportunities to interact in positive and fun ways and I take advantage of every one of these opportunities.”
The future of the STEM program offers plenty of promise. Robotics competitions will start up again eventually, much to the delight of robotics team members. Kurimay and Wilkinson are collaborating to design a four-year coursework plan that will maximize the impact of classroom projects for their students.
Love has high hopes for the return of field trips, career development programs and more extracurricular activities like coding clubs for the middle grades. Summer will provide opportunities for STEM camps that will both supplement what the kids have been learning and provide invaluable help to parents looking for somewhere safe that their kids can spend the day.
“I think parents are going to be, once again, left without a lot of options for places for their children to go during the day,” School Board member Hilary Wilkes said. “A lot of parents feel very safe with their children in a school environment.”
Whatever the future holds for the program, however, looking back over the last year of progress makes school board members confident that Macon County STEM is in good hands.
“Throughout our system, we have people that truly believe in their project and what they do, but I’m not aware if I’ve met anybody more committed than [Love is] to this whole project,” board chairman Jim Breedlove said. “It’s giving an opportunity to our children that they wouldn’t have otherwise.”
For more information on STEM in Macon County Schools, email Jennifer Love at jennifer.love@macon.k12.nc.us.