Discovery Place's Education Studio uses problem-based learning where students solve real challenges like powering toys with alternative energy. Teachers work with scientists and engineers, and the program targets Title I schools that lack early STEM exposure. Hands-on sustainability projects turn students who dislike science into engaged learners.
What we focus and specialize in here in the Education Studio is problem-based learning. You give kids an authentic problem, a real-world problem. Like, right now a bunch of teachers are trying to figure out how to power toys, little dogs that flip around, using alternative energy rather than batteries.
The teachers just love coming to this space. It's just a great place for learning.
What we really focus on is treating teachers as the leaders that they are.
I know that I need to be thinking, how do I apply this to my classroom, to my group of students? How do I make it work for them so that they are able to learn it, implement it, and know that it plays a value in their future?
Today we're learning about different sources of sustainable energy and what can we do to reduce the amount of batteries that's leaking different toxins into the environment.
It is definitely our corporate community coming together to support the efforts that we carry out here each day. But more importantly, it's also the partnerships at the school level so that as they're developing their STEM plans and thinking about where they want their teachers to be in the next 3 to 5 years, that we're right there alongside them.
Being able to work with people that actually work in the field of physics and engineering and biology, is so great for what I do, and it helps me to improve my teaching daily.
To really focus on what the teachers need and, and really recognizing them as professionals and experts in the field, and not that so much they have something to learn, but they have something to share.
A lot of times, especially working in a Title I school, They're not exposed to STEM until they get to middle school and high school, and by that time they hate math and they haven't had enough exposure to science.
I've seen a lot of kids' light bulbs have just gone off with, that's what it is, or, I can do this, as they went from hating science in 5th grade and 6th grade where, no, I hate it, I'm never taking science again, to now I've got the kid where they enjoy it. And they want to do better with it. They want to learn more about it.
Our teachers, after coming to Discovery Place, are super engaged and they're excited about STEM instruction. And that energy filters through our school system and through our school buildings, and it goes directly to the kids.
And it's just a great way for students to step out of a type of learning where teachers just sit there and download information, and students learn that they are able to teach themselves, and they have power, and they have the ability to contribute to this world that we live in. You have more power?
Look 'em up!
Not when they grow up and graduate college, but right now as they are.
