Anne Arundel County Public Schools, MD Parent's Corner, 3 May 2018

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From YouTube: May 2018 Parents Corner

Description

Jasmine talks about the Old Mill Middle South STEM program with Principal Christian Thomas and Marie Hartman.

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Coming up next on parent's corner, a conversation about the aacps stem middle school program.

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(Upbeat music).

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Hello and welcome to parent's corner, I'm jasmine coleman, and I'm excited to welcome, not one,, but two special guests. We have with us today, mr. christian thomas,, the principal of old mill middle south.

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And the stem department chair at old mill, middle south,, ms. marie hartman,. Thank you both for joining us today.

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You're welcome.

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Pleasure to be here., I'd like to start and talk about the stem program itself in case our viewers are not familiar.

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ms. hartman,. Can you tell us about the program and some of the things that it includes?.

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I'd be happy to,. This will be the 5th year that we have completed a stem magnet program at old mill, middle south,, being the first of two other schools in the county to come on board with a specialized program, a school within a school,, but a school within a school program that also promotes stem infused education for many of our students at the school, beyond the magnet..

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The program really focuses on training, youngsters up on their content, areas, but, more importantly, to start to develop skill sets that they're gonna need for their futures in the workplace..

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We are trying to reach out to these young people and support them through all kinds of academic support, such as project-based learning,.

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Which is a big component of our program, overlays that we're doing with our students that embellish and extend the curriculums, and a lot of experiences that take them both outside the school building, but also bring resources in,, especially from our business community,.

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Our educational, partners, and non-profits..

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Wow,, what a dynamic program.

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[ms. hartman], it is very exciting. yeah,. The students are certainly lucky.. I wanna back-track just in case someone just has no idea what stem is..

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If you're talking to someone who doesn't know what stem is,, how do you explain that to them? what is stem?.

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Well,, the traditional response would be science,, technology,, engineering, and math, but that's not really what this program is about,.

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It has morphed into something along the lines of students, teachers, energizing minds., it's more about growing our next culture.

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Of thinkers and learners, they're gonna be problem solvers for our future, so we sort of moved away from the content ship, knowing that that's important to be embedded in almost all the students will eventually have to do and most of the types of jobs they do,.

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All this will be integrated in some way shape or form., but the shift is more open-minded now, and it's more about innovation and problem. Solving.

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Mm,, thank you for that.. Mr. thomas,, you have this power house of a program at you school,. How has it impacted your school culture?.

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Well, it's definitely impacted it in a positive manner.

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The students that come to old mill, middle south,.

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Whether they've been accepted into the stem program or not accepted into the stem program, have an opportunity to engage in a stem-rich curriculum.

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That they may not have received had they not gotten in the stem program, or received. Had we not started the stem program., it provides them opportunities like ms. hartman discussed,.

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Opportunities to be innovators, opportunities to engage.

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In a stem-rich curriculum, and it puts a stem spin.

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On what the county's curriculum is, puts the stem spin.

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And infuses it into it, so that kids have opportunities.

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That delve a little bit deeper and look through the stem lens.

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Great,, so if I'm understanding correctly,, there are cohort of students that have the specific stem.

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Experience based upon the name of the courses, for instance.

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But then there are the entire population of the school, who also benefit?

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yes, absolutely, for example,, with our tech-ed department.

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Our wonderful teachers have decided and determined.

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That they're opening up, projectively, the way to every single student in that school who takes their encore class.. Typically in the past, that's been limited only to magnet students,, but now they've extended that opportunity. So these students are engaging in opportunities to practice engineering skills and learn more about the wide range of careers and applications..

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We are very fortunate, also, to have an amazing computing automation teacher who focuses primarily with our students on coding in the classroom during instructional time,.

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But she's also very involved in running a tsa, which is open to any student in the building..

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Tsa stands for technology student association,.

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And it's an amazing after school club and she had over 30 students show up to participate in this and they were not all magnet, students,, so she's drawing a pool of interested audience, of students from our school to engage in opportunities that they might not have during the school day.

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Wow,, so you have these teacher leaders,, you have the stem program leaders, and you obviously have.

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Dynamic leadership at the school level..

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How does that work?? What is the relationship between all these leaders that you have in a school, mr. thomas?.

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We're fortunate enough to set our schedule up.

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So that all of our teachers teach students.

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Who are in the cohort classes and students who are not.

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In the cohort classes., so the teachers were able to buy into the program.

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Because they're, at some point in time during the day,.

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They're always teaching the students within the cohort..

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They can take what they learn in those classes and transfer that same skill set, and that same curriculum,.

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And put it through the non-cohort stem students.

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So that piece of it has been official for them.

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And then ms. hartman brought up the other piece of students who aren't in the stem cohort classes,.

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Being a part of the clubs and activities, and to go back to the question that you asked earlier about the positive school culture,, all students are now starting to receive.

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And see the benefits of the stem, as more and more students.

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Are gaining access to bits and pieces of the program.

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And I can also give a very good example of avid combined with stem this year to offer an amazing career day,. So our avid teacher did a phenomenal job of working in collaboration with me and we pulled resources so that every student in that building had an opportunity to interact with professionals that had a wide variety of background,, including many stem backgrounds, and they could always see stem infused. In almost.

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Everything that is invoked with work place, settings.

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So we were very fortunate to bring a team,, I mean we had 850 students involved for almost two hours,.

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Engaging and listening and participating, interacting with people from a wide variety of backgrounds, it was really a marvelous experience and we're gonna continue. That.

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And that's no small feat-- [ms. hartman], no engaging (laughs), the middle school students for that amount of time., and you spoke of professionals,. What kinds of professionals or community partners have you worked with? oh, my goodness.

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We have had,, I could list as long--, but just to name a few,. Northrop grumman has been a strong supporter for the last six years,.

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We continue to bring,. It's called discover northrop grumman,.

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It used to be the discovery program,. We continue to have our engineers return every year, this year, every 6th grader was engaged with them and not just career presentations but activities.

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So we were very fortunate to have a team come in.

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apl: john hopkins applied physics lab, northrop grumman oceanic has been a huge partner, involved,.

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Universities: university of maryland, baltimore camp county,.

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Unbc, and also university of maryland, college park,.

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We take our students up there every year for a let's get techy day, and thanks to some of our phenomenal parents,, we actually took them down to the school's engineering design day this year., so we're continuing to grow. Those partnerships, we're also very lucky to be involved with many non-profits,.

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So sarah's house,, we have folks with saint luke's.

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Water restoration project going on down in indianapolis,.

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The ronald mcdonald house, up in baltimore, these children are reaching out beyond the network of in-house connections and they are really drawing in the community, through both parents and through partnerships that we find and network along the way, we're very lucky.

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Wow, yeah,, I would agree,, you are very lucky, and so are the students.

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Oh, I have to throw in nasa too, because we've been very fortunate to have huge connections with nasa, so we have parents working there and they connect us,.

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I mean to a level I have never seen before.

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So we continue to take students back to interact with them.

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and I'm thinking, with all these cool partners.

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That are coming in,. You probably have some pretty cool projects going on with the students as well.. What kinds of projects, are there any project highlights? I should ask, or are there any project, favorites?.

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It's interesting because there are things happening.

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That are happening even though there's a limit to what we can do in our 50-minute cycles..

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We have our social studies, teachers working together.

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With some of our science teachers to do things like monument projects,, we took the entire 7th grade out recently for an amazing day down to the museum to visit the washington, monument and part of their challenge.

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Is they're gonna have to come back and use that whole experience to build a template for a monument project they have to do so. This is really a great way to integrate--.

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Some of these are steps in project design,.

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Not all of these are full tale. Project base, sorting units.

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Until they become change-makers in 8th grade, so our stem magnet students are very involved with change-maker projects and there are 25 projects that we just finished reviewing yesterday,.

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These are year-long projects,, they're, very intense, they're, much like capstone projects for high school students except they're, downsized for middle school students, and they are completely student-centered,, student-focused,, student-lead, and collaboratively completed.

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So students work in teams to do this and it is a remarkable experience,. It's a wide range of topics..

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We go from everything from developing and building an electric generator on a bike that can recharge.

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Cell-Phones to going up to sarah's house and serving the hungry,, so it's a wide range, but the children end up interacting with many people outside of the building to accomplish these projects and they self-determine. What they're going to do so. There's a lot of student voice in this.

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Yeah, it sound like it. so,, I'm presuming. This idea of change-making is making-- a change, right., a change in the community.

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Yes, absolutely,, it's focused on empathy.

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We were modeled after program through ashoka,, which helped guide us and train us for this.

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And so we ended up being trained in that methodology.

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Of thinking and teaching in combination with some of the things going on at the buck, institute, where they have project based learning templates and layouts and methodologies,, we've combined that and we're delivering this as an annual project for our 8th grade stem students..

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So that is a requirement of the program and it's an amazing event, we're having a huge celebration in the next few days to have the families come in and the community come in to celebrate what they were able to accomplish.

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Wow, and so mr. thomas,, you are looking at this.

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From that leadership perspective,, I know that you're.

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Really involved in what the students do everyday, but being able to kind of take a step back and see all the things that ms. hartman is talking about.

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That the students are engaged with,, what kind of benefits overall? Do you see for the students, for the school?.

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So I think that that's one of the major impacts.

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That comes into play, is,. The benefits could.

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Be academic, professional, or social, but it kind of..

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A great piece of this is it could be anyone or combination of those, right?, so the program is able to throw it's framework, meet the students where they are,, so a student who may be.

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Lacking a little bit on the social side,, this program puts them into a position to collaborate with one another and collaborate with adults.

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Whereas the professional side of it,, it puts them in a position to focus on their 21st century skills,.

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Focus on public speaking.

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we're putting students in a position, obviously,.

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To be a little uncomfortable at times,, but without that discomfort there's no real growth.

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So we're giving students an opportunity to grow.

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Through these various presentations and projects.

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That they engage in, throughout their career at old mill, middle south.

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Wow., our goal really is to prepare them to be more high school.

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And collegiate level, ready, or technical school ready, and to really train them in the mind of the workplace,.

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Of the 22nd century workplace,, because we're already moving in there really fast and before you know it, things are gonna, be changing. So those important soft skills that mr. thomas was referring to are very key to learning how to work, collaboratively and productively.

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In project settings to solve problems and deliver products,.

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To learn how to manage your time, to meet deadlines,, I mean, these are important skills. Children will need as they grown on into their work. Lives.

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And I think another big piece of this is when they get to connect with partnerships such as during our cyber-defender day, when we have an entire slew of cyber-tech. People come in.

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And run in a completely community based activity., many of our children take part in that, and so they are really connecting with what is happening beyond the walls, they're, connecting with workplace, environment and meeting major ceos or corporations that come in to spend time with them..

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So I think it's giving them a taste of what is out there and also making them aware that their decisions now really matter and are very important so that they are better prepared for high school, so that they can then make entry into whatever path they follow., so we're steering them. Earlier.

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You all have been phenomenal guests,.

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I thank you both so much for coming and sharing so much information about the stem program., you're welcome.

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It was a pleasure. thank you.

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And thank you for joining us,. We look forward to seeing you next time right here on parent's corner., (upbeat, music).

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Today I come to you with exciting news about school meals,.

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School meals offer students a healthy school breakfast and lunch. everyday, students are offered unlimited choices of fresh fruits and vegetables.. Students are encouraged to select two cups of fresh produce.

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Each day at lunch from our unique salad bars., you may also monitor your child school meals online.

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At mypaymentsplus,, this is a convenient tool we offer to all parents to make managing your school meal accounts a simple process.

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to learn more about mypaymentsplus,, simply visit www.mypaymentsplus.com.

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Or call 877-237-0946.

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Each year, families have the ability to apply for free or reduce priced meals.. The application to apply is online, parents. You may log on to applyformeals.aacps.org.

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The process is fast,, easy, convenient, and it's accessible from any computer.

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remember,. If you received meal benefits last year, you must complete a new application. Each school year.

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Thank you for this opportunity to provide you this valuable information pertaining to school, meals., school meals, fuel, your child's brain and body for academic excellence..

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If you have any questions regarding the healthy school meals offered,, please contact me at 410-222-5900.

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I'm president of the board, julie, hummer,,.

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And you're watching aacps tv., (energetic music).