Stem Education: Lessons from the teachers

Juli Hoffman working with her students at Increase Miller Elementary. Contributed photo

Kelsey Smith spending time with her students. BYRAM HILLS SCHOOL DISTRICT PHOTO

Nicole Tantillo HARVEY SCHOOL PHOTO

By PAUL WIEMAN 

It may be unusual for an elementary school library media specialist to serve as the model for a STEM teacher, but Julianne Hoffman of Increase Miller Elementary School does just that. 

Originally trained as an elementary school educator, she received her master’s degree in library science and a second master’s in media literacy and technology. These three degrees, combined, position her perfectly to teach elementary school students the lessons and ideas embedded in STEM.

“I want them to feel empowered by doing things that are real, by creating something from nothing through a teamwork process,” Hoffman said of her work with her fourth graders, with whom she meets for one hour a week. “Planning, brainstorming, building, rebuilding, how to share ideas and discern the best. By the end, I want them to see that teamwork works.”

With these broad goals in mind, fourth-graders embark on building a cardboard carnival. After reading a biography of George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. (of Ferris wheel fame) and watching a short documentary of a young boy who builds his own carnival, the students are divided into teams and must decide on what carnival game they will construct. The planning, designing and building all happen using teamwork, pre-design, building, and trial and error. Then, once completed and all the pieces are put together, the fourth-graders demonstrate their carnival to the Increase Miller kindergarteners.

“I’m looking forward to when our library program can tap into the STEM labs that are being built now,” Hoffman said. “These activities develop critical and deep thinking. Screentime has definitely had an impact on creativity, and it is our job to create spaces that force creativity and the thinking that comes along with this.” 

One would not generally think of a social studies teacher as embodying the ideas behind a STEM program, but Kelsey Smith of Byram Hills is breaking that mold. 

In her fifth year, and arriving with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in history, Kelsey teaches in the social studies department but is also one of the forces behind a popular elective called “Start Up,” a course designed to teach the skills of entrepreneurship.

“I want my students to understand how to use the tools that exist — digital, professional, social — all combining to create success for them,” Smith said. “They will start to be comfortable with things not going as planned, adjusting accordingly, and take pride in what they produce.”

STEM sits at the core of Start Up. 

“Each student has a design challenge, and students must work across disciplines to solve these problems. Failure is part of developing ideas and products and one thing I can do is model failure, explain when things didn’t work out and how I adjusted to make it better,” adds Smith.

Looking ahead, Smith hopes to get students to focus on projects that involve more building, shifting away from digital projects and making use of the available 3D printers and laser cutters. 

“I encourage students to try new things outside of their comfort zone, not in their area of expertise. Start Up is an opportunity to do something different, and to show that you can be good at more than one thing.” 

Which is exactly what Smith did when she agreed to shift from her history teaching to Start Up.

Nicole Tantillo embodies and embraces the concepts brought forth by STEM. As the department chair of both the math and science departments at the Harvey School, and with a background that includes a bachelor’s degree in science and a master’s degree in educational technology, STEM teaching is a natural outgrowth of both her job description and her own educational degrees.

“What I want for my students is for them to emerge with a science literacy, an understanding of how science works in the world. Students need to be comfortable asking questions and being curious, and a classroom is a good place for this work to be done,” notes Tantillo.

“In my work each day,” she continued, “there is a connection between all the range of the STEM areas; they naturally overlap, and I can get students to recognize that. STEM asks us to see the natural interconnectedness.”

Looking forward, Tantillo imagines students learning to work independently, or in teams, with inquisitiveness and energy.

“I hope my students become more comfortable with not knowing, and from here get students active in their own learning,” she said. “We need to work with students to capture their passions and then guide them in an academic manner fueled by these passions.”

In thinking about her work at Harvey, Tantillo reflects, “the work I do is hard, but it is hard in a way that is fulfilling. It is easy to come to work; challenging, but a challenge I enjoy doing every day.”

This article is part of a series exploring how local schools are addressing the teaching of science and its related fields — technology, engineering and mathematics — collectively referred to as “STEM.” This independently-reported series in The Recorder is made possible by a grant from Regeneron.