STEM Integrations Community Partnership Series: Supporting Students’ Social-Emotional Learning Competencies through School-Community Partnerships in STEM/STEAM Education

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Written by Krista M. Stith & Rachel L. Geesa

Oftentimes, when we consider science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEM/STEAM) community partners in education, we think about the academic resources that community partners can share to enrich curricula and provide real-world and authentic experiences for students. However, to support PK-12 students to be career and college ready, community partners may also provide resources and opportunities for students to move toward or sustain social, emotional, and behavioral wellness. In this second installment of our community partner series, we anchor community partnerships within STEM/STEAM education practices that provide opportunities for positive social and emotional learning (SEL) development. We also offer exemplars of potential partners that extend throughout Indiana. 

In formal and informal education settings, students must have opportunities to learn how to process their unique reactions, experiences, and stressors with their still-developing physical and emotional maturity. SEL education guides educators to recognize these individual needs and address them. The Indiana Department of Education’s (IDOE; 2020) Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Wellness website provides numerous resources to support SEL of students. According to Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL; 2020), SEL is “the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” 

girl, mother, daughter

The IDOE adopted this definition and developed the Indiana PK-12 Social-Emotional Learning Competencies, which includes seven domains embedded in a neurodevelopmental and culturally responsive framework. These competencies are Mindset, Collaboration, Connection, Regulation, Sensory-Motor Integrations, Insight, and Critical Thinking.

We share specific Indiana-based examples of how educational leaders may encourage student development of the seven SEL competencies through STEM/STEAM learning and community partnerships in the following ways:

  1. Mindset- A student’s mindset plays a critical role in developing occupational interest, capacity, and emotional connections to pursue STEM/STEAM fields. Leaders and educators need to cultivate a mindset of “yes I can” for students from a young age and support them with real-world experiences to develop STEM-related knowledge and skill sets. Girl Scouts of Central Indiana provides a spectrum of hands-on activities that foster growth mindsets in STEM/STEAM. The K-12 curriculum inspires girls to think and do as scientists, technologists, engineers, artists, and mathematicians. 
  2. Collaboration- Educational leaders can promote educators to include lessons with students working together in teams to develop relationships skills. In STEM/STEAM activities, students ideate solutions to problems, design and test solutions, celebrate their successes, and manage conflict. Leaders may foster collaboration with community partners to further cultivate social competencies. FIRST Indiana Robotics partners with schools and provides grant opportunities for students to interact with one another and build upon one another’s contributions in robotics challenges. 
  3. Connection- When students can connect with themselves, their peers, and the adults in their lives, they develop respect and social awareness. Active listening, for example, can connect students to others and develop respect and cultural sensitivity. Community partners can also serve as active listeners to students. At Yorktown Community Schools, STEM teacher Kristen Alcorn, has partnered with the Modern School in New Delhi, India. Yorktown students connect with students on the other side of the world to ideate solutions to the region’s poor air quality. 
  4. Regulation- The capacity to manage feelings, regulate emotions, and practice positive self-discipline are critical skills in the presence of failure, such as in engineering design activities.  A community partner that supports art integration within STEM/STEAM activities provides an avenue for students to incorporate healthy stress relieving activities and an outlet to calm emotional reactions. Arts for Learning, with a robust list of volunteer teaching artists, partners with schools throughout the state to offer arts-integrated experiences for students. 
  5. Sensory-Motor Integrations- The relationship between the sensory system and the motor system of the body integrate together so that the brain receives and organizes input from the environment and the body appropriately responds. In STEM/STEAM education, minds-on-hands-on activities support students in a variety of learning styles, but particularly kinesthetic learning. Leaders may work with 1st Maker Space in Indiana to build and develop maker spaces, as well as provide maker curricula and products. 
  6. Insight– Intuitiveness and deep understanding of cause and effect supports students developing capacity in insight. STEM/STEAM education initiatives support the development of insight, such as through exposure to STEM careers. Better Youth Outcomes partners with employers across the state to connect students to these work-based opportunities, such as apprenticeships, internships, job shadowing, and site visits. 
  7. Critical Thinking- Students preparing to enter society in adulthood should possess transferable and marketable critical thinking skills-making rational and reasonable judgments though synthesizing, managing, and analyzing multiple streams of information. The Purdue Science K-12 Outreach program through Purdue University creates and facilitates state-wide programs that cultivate critical thinking skills through collaborative interactions with faculty, leaders, teachers, and families. 
children studying, book, reading

Community partners in the STEM/STEAM fields can not only support the academic experiences of PK-12 students, but support their social, emotional, and behavioral wellness as well. Through schools and districts working with external partners, such as the examples listed above, students are exposed to STEM/STEAM knowledge, attitudes, and skills within contexts that encourage them to regulate emotions, set goals, empathize with others, develop sustainable relationships, and use rational decision-making. 

References.

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (2020). Overview of SEL. https://casel.org/overview-sel/

Indiana Department of Education. (2020). Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Wellness. https://www.doe.in.gov/sebw

This article was published in the October 2020 Indianagram- a newsletter for Indiana’s Educational Leaders published by the Indiana Association of School Principals

Creating and Sustaining School-Community Partnerships to Enrich STEM/STEAM Curriculum during COVID-19

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The preparation of students for complex, undetermined jobs that require STEM/STEAM proficiencies is an expectation for today’s educators at the local, state, and national levels. A school-community partner relationship is an excellent solution to further integrate STEM/STEAM into the curriculum and bring greater authenticity for students to think and do as developing professionals. 

According to the Alliance for Excellent Education (n.d.), community partnerships are “the formal and informal local and global community connections, collaborative projects, and relationships that advance the school’s learning goals” (para. 1). Purposeful partnering with community organizations can provide more enriched programs and support the social, emotional, and academic development of students. In preparing students for 21st century skills, community partnerships can support student exposure to life and career skills, learning and innovation skills, and information, media, and technology skills (Battelle for Kids, n.d.). 

child, tablet, technology

In 2018, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE), Office of Workforce & STEM Alliances released the STEM Six-Year Strategic Plan: An Integrated K-12 STEM Approach for Indiana (IDOE, 2018). Three strategic objectives with impact goals are included in the plan: 

1) Improve STEM instruction– 100 percent of Indiana K-12 teachers will be trained in problem/project/inquiry-based approaches to learning by 2025; 

2) Scale evidence-based STEM curriculum in classrooms– 100 percent of Indiana K-12 schools will implement integrated, evidence-based STEM curriculum by 2025; and 

3) Foster early STEM career exposure– 100-percent of Indiana’s K-12 schools will create and sustain robust STEM related business and industry partnerships in order to inform curriculum, instruction, and student experiences to foster college and career readiness.

Additionally, the IDOE (2020) began a STEM School Certification process in 2015 for each school to work towards becoming a STEM Certified School in the state. The process to become STEM Certified involves several domains of educational programs and leadership. According to the IDOE (2020), “evolving into a STEM school environment is much more than introducing a program. For schools, this requires establishing a common local agenda to significantly improve student performance, incorporating STEM education at all levels, engaging local business and the community, and adopting new curriculum and instructional practices” (p. 3).

Building and sustaining community partnerships can be particularly challenging during the time of COVID-19, but educational leaders can still consider the meaningful potential of community partnerships as an approach to encourage authentic STEM/STEAM experiences for students in face-to-face, blended, and virtual learning situations. In later Indianagrams, we will discuss the different roles that partners may play with schools and districts, but for this issue we address the community partnerships that support curricular enrichment in a COVID-19 landscape.

Leaders and educators may take the following steps to develop, foster, and sustain community partnerships within their school or district:

  1. Identify potential community partners– Consider the school’s mission, potentiality for student achievement, curricular drive, and focus on STEM/STEAM and integration of developing 21st century skills. Community partnerships may include local businesses and industries that make products or provide services, local colleges and universities, government and military agencies, nonprofit organizations, afterschool clubs, and museums. 
  2. Communicate with potential community partners– Consider ways engagement and resources from both organizations can shift online. An initial survey can help to frame the district or schools’ needs as well as provide an opportunity for partners to express their needs. This survey could include: contact information; ways the organization prefers to interact with teachers and students; technologies available to interact with teachers and students; and ways the school can support the organization’s needs.
  3. Develop reciprocal relationships with community partners- Consider wants and needs from community partners and schools. Once a community partnership has been catalyzed, with an understanding of the reciprocity of this relationship, teachers and students can begin making real-world connections in authentic settings with the partners. How the partnership is framed, the level of interaction with students, and the goals of both organizations will be unique to each partnership. However, the following are a few examples of how curriculum enrichment can occur through:
  • Students work with the community partner to solve a problem through problem-, project-, or design-based pedagogical approaches.
  • Community partners serve as an authentic audience for student projects.
  • Community partners share their work, research, and experiences while out in the field. 
  • Students share their work, research, and experiences from school or home with community partners (e.g., citizen science projects).
  1. Sustain relationships with community partners- Consider how to maintain ongoing communication and support within both organizations. Teachers, students, and community partners collaborate together via videotelephony and online chat services (e.g., Zoom Video Communications, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Google Meet), share documentation through e-mail and web-based software (e.g., Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Microsoft OneDrive), or other online management systems. Students can write reflection journals or present their work as alternative assessments to show evidence in growth of STEM knowledge, skills, and attitudes. 

One example of a remote learning partnership is the virtual STEAM Club at Burris Laboratory School in Muncie, Indiana. The theme for this year will be Indiana to Antarctica: An Adventure Learning Experience. To support K-5 students from home, pre-service teachers from Ball State University earn service hours while working with the Burris students virtually. A representative from the organization Homeward Bound will also share artifacts (e.g., videos, pictures, interviews, data sets) from a recent expedition to Antarctica. Students will interact virtually with each other, with community partners, and with STEM content to complete projects that relate Hoosier students to Antarctica’s ecosystem.

landscape, weather station, antarctica

The old adage of “work smarter, not harder” serves as a reminder that challenges and changes will arise as society continues to evolve, the educational landscape changes, and educators and leaders must think strategically to fit local, state, and national mandates. Community partnerships have shown to further support the academic, social, and emotional development of students by enriching the learning experience and provide meaning-making to students. Twenty-first century skills are essential skill sets for today and tomorrow’s complex STEM/STEAM jobs. Though COVID-19 has created unprecedented issues from educational organizations around the world, technological innovations can be utilized to provide virtual opportunities to integrate STEM/STEAM into the curricula.

Written by Dr. Rachel Geesa and Dr. Krista Stith. This article was published in the September 2020 Indianagram- a publication released by the Indiana Association of School Principals.

Why do we have content silos?

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For most of us who attended brick and mortar schools growing up, our academic careers were very traditional with an intradisciplinary approach- learning one discipline at a time. This is oftentimes referred to teaching and learning in “content silos.”

The Silos of Education

I certainly experienced content silos growing up. I had a mathematics lesson, then moved onto a reading lesson, then an arts lesson, followed up by a social studies lesson…etc. As I got older, I went from general educators teaching intradisciplinary lessons to having separate intradisciplinary classes. For example, I had a physics teacher, an AP Biology teacher, an art teacher, and geometry teacher. I do not remember many lessons, if any, that were very collaborative and involved purposeful integration of multiple disciplines until I got to college. 

I did not take a technology or engineering class until graduate school when I was enrolled in programs- particularly my Integrative STEM education courses at Virginia Tech.  In this program, the definition of Integrative STEM is “the application of technological/engineering design based pedagogical approaches to intentionally teach content and practices of science and mathematics education through the content and practices of technology/engineering education. Integrative STEM Education is equally applicable at the natural intersections of learning within the continuum of content areas, educational environments, and academic levels” (Wells & Ernst, 2012/2015).

In Rachel and my work with Dr. Rose at Ball State, we broadened the scope of integrative STEM education as more of a conceptualization of holistic teaching and learning of new concepts, principles, and practices- with horizontally and vertically integrated curricular approaches- to simultaneously achieve learning goals that originate from two or more STEM disciplines and with unique contributions of non-STEM disciplines. Technology and engineering still play a central pedagogical role, but we also welcome other pedagogical approaches like experimentation, scientific inquiry, and mathematical inquiry to the table. 

With either definition, the value of integrating disciplines in the classroom is key. 

Rachel and I were invited to write a chapter for a book about educational leadership and integrative STEM education (which is something we can talk about for days), but the purpose of this chapter had an interesting twist- we had to deconstruct integrative STEM education. In other words, we had to take on the roles of archaeologists and dig up the artifacts to understand how contemporary integrative STEM education came to be. There is quite a bit of documentation on the predecessors of STEM (e.g., SMET) and the policies and major events leading up to STEM so we did not feel out of our element writing content about this topic, but the editor of the book asked us to dig deeper. 

How deep?  Deep enough where we had to describe, to the best of our abilities, why in our educational system we currently do not teach integratively. Instead, identify why we perpetually teach and learn disciplines in these content silos. 

This was definitely unexplored territory for us, but it raises a good question on why a majority of our schools are set up this way. Once we leave school, we rarely live and work in the bubble of one discipline. 

It took a bit of research on our part to understand where this intradisciplinary teaching framework came from. One strong argument is the popularization of the Formal Discipline Theory in the early 19th century, which heavily favored robust mental discipline. 

Granted this is a gross oversimplification of the theory, but the overarching construct from my understanding is that the human brain works similarly to a muscle. Just as you go to the gym and complete different exercises to strengthen specific muscles, to a practitioner of the Formal Discipline Theory, you would work your brain to strengthen brain aptitudes. A grueling memorization exercise in mathematics would make your memory stronger to tackle the type of memorization that may be needed for your future career. Classes were designed to provide the brain the gymnasium to improve reasoning, memorization, perception, and intelligence.

4 Exercises That Buff Up Your Brain

This Formal Discipline Theory has largely been discredited at this point, but we still see the “artifacts” of this theory in our educational systems. Lessons and classes continue to be intradisciplinary and some educators focus on mental discipline more so than content, engagement, or real world relevance. For example, a chemistry educator requiring students to memorize the elements of the periodic table because she believes this practice will increase student intelligence or school personnel that do not collaborate or co-teach because their discipline matter alone will lead to student transference in their personal and future professional lives.    

We need to be cognizant of supporting students with how they transfer learning of the classroom to learning of the real world. Why not emphasize the knowledge, skills, and attitudes in interdisciplinary settings that will prepare them for the real world?  

Rachel says Welcome!

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Hello, and welcome to STEM Integrations!

My name is Rachel Geesa, and I am the co-founder of STEM Integrations LLC with my friend, colleague, and fellow co-founder, Krista Stith. We are excited to launch STEM Integrations, and thank you for joining us in this journey!

While Krista shared information about our history and purpose in developing STEM Integrations, here is a bit of information about me.

I am from Indiana and proud to be a Hoosier! While earning a Bachelor of Arts in art education, art history, fine arts, and photography at Purdue University, I studied abroad in Oxford, England and Florence, Italy and discovered a passion for learning more about the world in which we live in through travel, cultural experiences, and meeting people. To me, travelling is much more than a vacation. It is an education and a way of life to promote kindness, understanding, creativity, and communication with others (which is hard to gain through textbooks).

After teaching art in the Indianapolis area for a couple of years and earning a Masters of Art Education at the Herron School of Art and Design, Indiana University, I took a teaching position with the United States Department of Defense Education Activity. This was a life-changing opportunity to live in Seoul, South Korea, teach art, explore Asia, serve United States military children and families, and make lifelong friends.

While in this position, I decided to further my education in gifted education studies and educational leadership. Through online education, I earned a Masters of Art in Educational Psychology, Masters of Education in Educational Administration, Education Specialist in School Superintendency, and Doctor of Education in Educational Administration and Supervision at Ball State University. With my administrative training, I then served as the assistant principal of a school on a military base in Yokosuka, Japan and a gifted resources specialist in Quantico, Virginia. 

After joining Ball State’s Department of Educational Leadership, I began research related to leadership and STEM/STEAM education. Through my educational and professional experiences, I continue to find that students thrive in learning environments where they have opportunities to take ownership in their learning, solve real-world problems, think creatively, and have fun! I’ve enjoyed working with Krista on a variety of projects, along with Dr. Annette Rose who has been a wonderful mentor to us, and I look forward to our work within STEM Integrations.

In my free time, I love to take photographs, workout, garden, cook, travel, volunteer, and spend time with family and friends who mean so much to me.

A body of water with a mountain in the background Description automatically generated

Thank you for taking some time to get to know us, and we would love to hear about you and your interests in STEM/STEAM education!

Krista says Welcome!

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Greetings and welcome to STEM Integrations! My name is Krista Stith and I am the co-founder of STEM Integrations LLC based out of Indianapolis. This is such an exciting journey into the unknown with my colleague and fellow co-founder, Rachel Geesa. Rachel and I met in 2017 while working at Ball State University with the intention of submitting a grant that we were hoping would lead to a STEM education course at the university. We felt that a course like this would help prepare future educators for the scientific and technological world we live in.

What started off as a small grant proposal turned into a multi-year nationwide study on STEM leadership, international presentations, a plethora of publications, and a book deal! We are so thankful for our fellow authors, researchers, and supporters of the past three years- especially our fellow in arms, Dr. Annette Rose, who has been a mentor to us.

Within this blog we’ll share a lot of information from our research that we feel will be helpful for education leaders to build and sustain Integrative STEM programs. We will also invite guest speakers, talk about STEM programs and curricula, and a wonderful assortment of resources to that will help you on your own STEM journey.

With that being said, here are a few things about me!

I love my family, but coffee was technically here first

I am a military brat, but I usually say that I am from Virginia. I met my husband at our alma mater- Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. I have a Bachelors in Animal & Poultry Sciences, a Masters in Agricultural Extension & Education, and a Doctorate in Curriculum & Instruction with a focus on Integrative STEM Education. While in graduate school, I was a community college adjunct and a high school science teacher at a gifted magnet school. While my pedagogical approach was pretty traditional at the community college, I was given a lot of flexibility to pursue a more project-based learning approach with my junior and senior high school students. I’ll save this experience for another post.

I have been married for 10 years and we have 3 kiddos- Connor, Cailin, and Hannah. It has been a unique balance of my maintaining my job as a director at Ball State University, a parent, a wife, a small business owner, a children’s book author, all while trying to keep my family safe during the pandemic. The empty campus has been our own playground.

Thank you for visiting our new blog and we look forward to this exciting journey to support schools and districts with their 21st century programming!