Hope For More Challenge In School? First STEM School Certified For GA

[newsjunky]

How many of you would want your child in this school! Just want to know what your opinions are. This school is in Marietta.

http://www.gpb.org/news/2012/03/07/georgia-certifies-first-stem-school

Gilda Lyon, who directs the state’s STEM certification program, says that even schools with strong math and science programs might not meet the qualifications for certification.

“A lot of schools are doing real high-level math and science, but they don’t have any business partners or they don’t give the teachers time to plan together or the math and science is simply isolated,” Lyon says.

What she’s looking for is schools that show how the fields relate to one another.

“So that students understand that math is not just for math class – how many times have we heard kids say, this is not English, why do I need to learn English here?” Lyon says. “We want them to understand that math is a part of science and math is a tool for science teachers to help students become deeper learners.”

 

[LisaC]

This is wonderful, but then you have teachers who try to do that and fail - like the school in Gwinnett County (I think), the one that asked the math question about slaves because the kids were studying slavery in history....

 

[newsjunky]

This is wonderful, but then you have teachers who try to do that and fail - like the school in Gwinnett County (I think), the one that asked the math question about slaves because the kids were studying slavery in history....

That was one of my first thoughts too. Sad what those teachers chose to do.

 

[Foxmeister]

When you think about it, Math crosses many boundaries. If someone wants to be a carpenter or builder, they need to know Math. Math is used in music, cooking, and many other areas as well.

I remember when I was in the 5th grade and my brother was in 4th. He was going to bake a homemade cake from scratch for his class of 24. We found a recipe in a cookbook that said the cake served 12. We thought if you just doubled all the ingredients, you'd have a cake that served 24 and it would taste good. My Dad watched us and told us it would not taste good, but we told him it would. After we baked it, my brother cut a small bite size piece from the corner. It was horrible. My Dad, said, "Told you so," and then explained that baking was like Chemistry and you had to know certain things to increase the size of a recipe. Of course he brought Math into the equation as well. We created the new recipe as he explained everything and the cake turned out pretty good.

 

[LisaC]

This is wonderful, but then you have teachers who try to do that and fail - like the school in Gwinnett County (I think), the one that asked the math question about slaves because the kids were studying slavery in history....

That was one of my first thoughts too. Sad what those teachers chose to do.

It was a good concept, but poor execution. STEM schools can work, teachers just need to be trained in how to make them work well.