STEMposium shows Phenix City’s ‘bold vision’ to more than 220 educators

Phenix City Schools hosted more than 220 educators from 20-plus districts Monday for its inaugural STEMposium, a free conference for improving instruction in science, technology, engineering and math.

“We’re very proud to be able to host an event like this,” Phenix City Schools Superintendent Randy Wilkes told the Ledger-Enquirer. “We’ve got people from all over the state, all over the United States, here visiting with us, and it’s affirmation of the things we’ve been doing in Phenix City.”

In the three years since the Phenix City Board of Education hired Wilkes from Crenshaw County, Phenix City Schools implemented STEM projects totaling more than $6 million:

▪ $3 million for the Dyer Family STEM Center at Phenix City Intermediate School, where students in grades 6-7 learn science, technology, engineering and math skills in an interactive environment.

▪ $1.75 million for SmartLabs in each of the seven elementary schools, enabling students to explore robotics, software engineering, mechanics and structures, circuitry, scientific data and analysis, alternative energy, computer graphics and digital media arts.

▪ $1.3 million for the system’s 1:1 computer device initiative, which provided iPad Airs with electronic textbooks for grades 6-8 and Chromebooks with electronic textbooks for grades 9-12, equipping approximately 3,500 students and 300 teachers.

▪ $335,000 to train 25 teachers for 160 hours over two years to become STEM certified.

That training comes from Silver Spring, Md.-based Discovery Education, a subsidiary of Discovery Communications LLC, providing digital content aligned with state curriculum standards to effectively deliver that high-tech instruction.

Discovery Education partnered with Phenix City Schools to produce the STEMposium.

Wilkes calls this overall initiative “STEMming students out of poverty” in a system where 70 percent of them receive free or reduced-price lunch but preliminary standardized test results, which he announced during Monday’s conference, show math scores are the highest in Phenix City’s history.

“There’s a lot of hands-on, minds-on, and we’ve got test scores to support it,” Wilkes said. He told the Ledger-Enquirer the official report on the test scores won’t be ready until next week.

Phenix City’s STEM projects have amounted to “probably one of the most bold visions that I’ve seen around the nation,” said Amy Knower, director of Discovery Communications.

“It’s not just about content or curriculum,” Knower said, “It’s not just about a STEM center, an edifice here in the district. It’s really about working with teachers and administrators and thinking differently.”

Discovery Education, according to its website, serves approximately 4.5 million educators and more than 50 million students with its variety of services in half of U.S. classrooms and more than 50 countries.

STEMposium participants rotated through sessions in the STEM Center and SmartLabs, covering topics such as virtual science, engineering, computer coding and digital media.

Cindy Moss, the senior director of global STEM initiatives for Discovery Education, was the keynote speaker in the Phenix City Courtyard by Marriott. Moss won numerous awards during her 20 years teaching science and serving for 10 years at STEM director in Charlotte, N.C.

Among the powerful examples of STEM education’s impact Moss shared with the audience was her concluding story. It was about what happened when the three 3D printers arrived two years ago at the STEM summer camp her church conducted for the high-poverty school it had adopted.

The teachers running the camp asked Moss whether she could assemble the printers. Moss replied, “Absolutely not, but we have 120 sixth-graders for three weeks. Put them on the table and let’s see what they can do.”

Moss figured it would take the students the full three weeks. “They’d never seen a 3D printer, much less play with it,” she said.

The first day, however, the sixth-graders got two of the three printers to operate. The second day, they called the 3D printer company five times but didn’t get the help they needed. So the third day, they used the two printers they did assemble to make the pieces that were missing from the other printer, and they got it to work as well.

And the fourth day, Moss returned the repeated calls from a representative of the 3D printer company, who told her, “I want to hire Juan, Jose and Maria. I’ll start them at $50 an hour.”

Moss replied, “They’re 12 years old.”

Representative: “I don’t care. Do their parents drive?”

As the crowd cracked up, Moss explained, “He’d been trying to hire 100 people to work on 3-D printers, and he said these three 12-year-olds have better problem-solving skills than any adult he had interviewed.”

She said those sixth-graders realized “they had skills that could make them more money than their parents, their teacher or their principal would ever know.”

Moss implored the educators, “Remember, STEM teaching and learning needs to be for all kids. We don’t know who’s going to figure out how to bring clean water to the world. We have to make sure it’s not just for the 12 kids in the robotics club or the engineers’ or the doctors’ kids who take the AP classes.”

According to National Science Foundation research, Moss said, “the more diverse the group solving the problem, the more robust the solution. In schools, in pre-K-12, we have these kids who can solve these problems, and we have to engage them.”

Moss finished her presentation with this message: “We need to stop asking kids what do they want to be when they grow up, and we need to ask them what kind of problems do they want to solve. … We need to help them put together a portfolio that’s evidence that they really are problem solvers.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2017 at 4:30 PM with the headline "STEMposium shows Phenix City’s ‘bold vision’ to more than 220 educators."