Meet Our Fellows

STEM Coalition Schools

School Location:
Los Angeles, CA & Willmington, CA

Fellows:
Alexander Lara
Edward Mallillin

School Websites: 
http://www.sppschool.org/

School Team of the Month - January 2017

What are you focusing your STEM Impact Plan work on for the coming year?

We continue to adjust our STEM Impact Plans to more specifically address the needs of our individual schools. We've collaborated with our colleagues already on lessons and projects to help create a STEM-focused mindset at our schools. Our t

eachers are eager to learn as much as they can about STEM, so we've tried our best to provide as much support, information, and insight as possible. We continue to assess our curriculum, based on materials we currently have, while identifying key needs to increase STEM teachingand learning for our students. It's an exciting time for the STEM Coalition of Los Angeles!

What exciting STEM experiences have happened at your school so far this year?

Our students have enjoyed creating paper charcoal, working with circuitry, and researching the ways in which their personal hobbies were related to science, technology, engineering, and math. This coming semester, we will create water filtration systems and do interdisciplinary STEMprojects involving three or more classes. 

We are excited to introduce a Coding Class at both of our schools this month. We've already been amazed by the students' interest in coding! Finally, we have a scavenger hunt planned with four grade levels visiting the LA Zoo, and the students couldn't be more excited.

In what ways have you been able to engage other members of your school, local community, or other STEM Teaching Fellows?

Many of our teachers are receiving additional STEMtraining through such places as the Tiger Woods Institute and the Teach To Lead summit, as well as site visits to established STEM and PBL sites around Los Angeles and Orange counties. As our coalition consists of four schools, we've had the benefit of exchanging information through our monthly meet-ups. Many businesses and organizations, such as SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and the USS Iowa, have donated materials, services, curriculum, time, and money to support our schools. Lastly, it's great to maintain contact and talk about our ideas with the great Cohort 2 and Cohort 1 friends we've made at Notre Dame!

St. Anthony de Padua Catholic School

School Location:
South Bend, IN

Fellows:
Sarah Leblang
Katherine Alexander

School Website: 
http://stasb.org/school

School Team of the Month - April 2017

What are you focusing your STEM Impact Plan work on for the coming year?

The goal of the STEM Impact Plan is to make STEM more visible at Saint Anthony de Padua School. In order to increase visibility, we are working to conduct more “genuine” STEM experiences to the student body including challenges within the classroom, school-wide challenges, and Trustey Challenges. The team is working on bridging the gap of understanding with teachers & parents by providing professional development opportunities, growth experiences, and resources. In order to support a common-vocabulary and integration, the team has created a STEM library, a website called STEM Panthers in Action, a STEM bulletin board in the hallway, and a STEM t-shirt. On March 20, 2017, we hosted a PD called “GLOW” into Spring STEM Ready. We had fifteen teachers present. At the PD, the Trustey Fellows worked on sharing the EIE Engineering Design Process, common vocabulary sheets, checklist for authentic STEM vs. Tinkering, and Productive Talk Moves.

The teachers who attended were challenged to look at the information, and before the end of the year, try to implement one STEM lesson with our STEM theme of conservation & stewardship based on the use of our school solar panels. Our school wide slogan is “ Let your light shine!” We have developed support from our pastor to present a homily about Stewardship & Conservation, we have contacted multiple presenters from the community to discuss sustainability & stewardship, and we have decided to work as a school on a school-wide Garden Market with the theme of STEMs will Grow!

What exciting STEM experiences have happened at your school so far this year?

This has been an exciting time to be a Panther! We have worked on introducing the Engineering Design Process to all students, Pre-K through 8th Grade. We have successfully completed several authentic STEM experiences for all grades. Two of our teachers have taken on STEM lessons without assistance based on the teacher-teach model. These teachers have felt extremely excited about their work.

Our STEM kickoff day was a huge success. Students in Pre-K-5 worked with the Rosie Revere Engineer book to solve problems that were age-appropriate. Students then had the opportunity to improve their designs and test again. Sixth Grade students competed to create cantilevers that could suspend the most dice over an edge of the desk, focusing on the Engineering Design Process. Seventh Graders created an obstacle course for the class bearded dragon, Fluffy, who needed more exercise. Teachers will extremely satisfied with the experience and asked that we do another event in the Spring. We are currently planning the next step!

Currently, our classrooms are working to develop STEM lessons that support our theme of conservation / sustainability / stewardship. We have multiple presenters coming in to discuss our solar panels and sustainability. Additionally, after I-STEP we will be planning a FUN week of Conservation Class Challenges centering around our theme. The final project will be each class will be in charge of planting something in their room and nurturing it to transport to the Garden Maker Space we are creating.

In what ways have you been able to engage other members of your school, local community, or other STEM Teaching Fellows?

We have had great buy-in from our school community. Our parents are beginning to understand the importance of STEM education and are offering their own expertise and time to assist with school activities. Our students are excited about STEM activities and are sharing their experiences with siblings and family.

Several Teachers/Staff took it upon themselves to create a Dr. Seuss Themed STEM Day, which was a huge success.

We have been working with other STEM Teaching Fellows to Create a Proposal for a possible STEM lab to open next year - send us your advice!

St. John XXIII Catholic School

School Location:
Scottsdale, AZ

Fellows:
Michelle Heintz
Jeff Mitchelson
Karl Ochsner

School Website: 
http://saintjohnxxiii.org/

School Team of the Month - September 2016

What are you focusing your STEM Impact Plan work on for the coming year?

This year, the focus of our STEM Impact Plan work is to change our technology integration Professional Development time into a comprehensive STEM Professional Development time to implement STEM in grades K-8. This will allow time for teachers to collaborate with one another and find ways to share ideas, plan together, and provide opportunities to integrate the STEM disciplines within subject matter and grade levels throughout the whole school!

What exciting STEM experiences do you have planned for the fall?

We would love to say that by week 3 our students have already engineered a warp drive, but we still do have exciting ideas for this fall!

For our 6th grade we are competing in the Lexus Eco Challenge, which is a STEM competition where students find ideas to improve an environmental issue in our community. The 7th grade is competing in the Honeywell/Fiestabowl Aerospace challenge where students will be planning a 10 year space mission to the Mars moon, Phobos, with a small research base on Mars. The 8th grade is competing in the US Army’s STEM contest called e-Cybermission which has students engineer or create experiments to solve and measure a local problem.

We have chosen to participate in competitions to have the students' work reach outside of the four walls of the classroom and see how it is a real world situation.

In what ways have you been able to engage other members of your school, local community, or other STEM Teaching Fellows?

In our second week of school, one of our 2nd grade teachers came up to me showing a book called Rosie Revere the Engineer. She wanted to get the kids excited about engineering through reading and then to create a lesson to incorporate engineering. The whole grade level team is now reading the book and teaching an integrated engineering lesson! It is exciting to see teachers want to start STEM Integration projects even before our Professional Development classes have begun. Our faculty's engagement and buy-in this early in the process has been amazing!

Our Lady of Perpetual Help

School Location:
Riverside, CA

Fellows:
Lynn Castaneda
Shannon Maloney-Flores
Stephanie Martin

School Website: 
http://www.olphriverside.org/

School Team of the Month - February 2017

Shannon and Stephanie brought an enthusiasm for STEM in our middle school by immediately engaging the students in various STEM activities. We explored the properties of buoyancy with aluminum boats, created topographical maps of cardboard hills designing walkable paths to the summit, and applied the concepts of range, mean, median, and mode to engineer Oreo wedding cakes.

To encourage our parents to embrace our program, we hosted our first annual STEMDay in November. We chose to have it in conjunction with our annual Thanksgiving Feast, which is attended by all of the families in the school, ensuring the greatest opportunity for participation. The families enjoyed engaging in STEM projects and experiences that were available at booths led by our OLPH Tech Club, a group of 22 seventh- and eighth-graders who meet weekly after school. They led the parents and grandparents through STEM experiences that included a “human piano” and a “musical dance floor” using a Makey Makey board, building cantilevers and learning about kinetic and potential energy with “The Cup Challenge.” This was the first opportunity for our parents to engage with their students' newfound excitement for STEM!

Upon our return from South Bend, we met with our city’s Mayor and several of his staff to inform them about our exciting new program and relationship with Notre Dame. Through this meeting we have gained a relationship with the STEMCoordinator for the Riverside County Office of Education, and are now invited to attend all STEM meetings and professional development opportunities the county provides. Recently we were contacted by the Mayor’s office to be included in a database of STEM schools in the City of Riverside.

As the STEM Integration Specialist, Lynn has mentored our elementary teachers who did not have experience with our new STEM program. With her guidance and modeling, teachers were able to take an active role in delivering a STEM lesson without the pressure of having to create a lesson. Thanks to this, our faculty has gained an enthusiastic desire to continue integrating STEM lessons on their own. They have begun to integrate STEM based projects into their curriculum, have introduced the engineering design process, and are beginning to bring real world applications to their lessons.   

Finally, we have partnered with several community members to bring innovative STEM lessons to our students. This partnership includes a lesson with the Riverside Police Department in learning the forensics of accident investigation through the analysis of skid marks.