ABC CREATE Summer Teachers’ STEAM Retreat 2021: Bridging the Gaps Between the Workforce and Education
Salvation Army STEAM Camp 2021
FUTURE READY IMPACT IN ACTION
Laura Fleischer Proaño, high school Spanish teacher at Highlands School District, creates a classroom of inspired and motivated learners by integrating robotics and other tech tools into her Spanish classes. As a repeat user of the ABC CREATE Resource Library, Laura has borrowed Hummingbird kits, Finch robots, VR Viewers, Ricoh cameras and more! Laura has collaborated with other educators, both inside and outside of her own school district, to create several ABC CREATE Learning Pathways. In one of her pathways, Modeling Sustainable Homes with Hummingbird Robots, Laura’s students designed and modeled sustainable Ecuadorian homes and wrote code in Spanish to animate and describe the parts of their homes.
Laura is a regular participant and leader of ABC CREATE activities, trainings and professional development. Laura leads our ABC CREATE Learning Pathway writing sessions where she provides coaching and guidance for colleagues who want to document and share their lessons with their peers. Laura presents each year at our ABC CREATE STEAM Showcase where she often invites her students to share their own experiences and perspectives on integrating STEAM into their Spanish classrooms. Each summer, Laura joins other ABC CREATE thought leaders to help design and facilitate our Teachers’ Summer STEAM Retreat. |
Sue Mellon, gifted support teacher at Allegheny Valley School District, gives students agency over their learning by keeping them engaged, practicing future-ready skills, and producing real world projects. Sue's students used Speck monitors from the ABC CREATE Resource Library to track indoor air quality with senior citizens living in an Allegheny County Housing Authority property. Her students trained senior citizens on how to use the Speck monitors, built their own particulate monitors, built a computer to record smokestack emissions data, built DIY air filters, and recorded data from video of smokestacks. Both Sue and her students presented this project at the STEAM Showcase 2021.
Sue is an active member of ABC CREATE. She assists in the annual design and facilitation of the teachers' summer retreats, participated in the CREATE Lab Fluency Fellowship, and hosted an Air Quality + Data Analysis session at the Connecting Classroom series. Sue was also a member of the Learning Pathways cohort where she created and shared her pathway lesson, Creating Data Visualizations with Chibitronics, which teaches students how to develop their data fluency by creating data visualizations using Chibitronics and analyzing Earth Time stories. |
ABC CREATE COMMUNITY QUOTES“ We’ve got to disrupt the old ways, be more creative and we’ve got to reinvent to prepare our children for what their world will look like tomorrow. ”
Dr. Shannon Wagner, Superintendent of Burrell School District
Dr. Wagner moderated a panel discussion on Shifting Paradigms between Education and Workforce at the TEACHERS' SUMMER STEAM RETREAT 2021
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CONNECTING CLASSROOMS
On Day 2 of the Summer Teachers’ STEAM Retreat 2021, ABC CREATE brought educators and business + industry representatives together to discuss how to ‘bridge the gaps’ between education and the workforce. Facilitated by ABC CREATE partner The Consortium for Public Education, educators and business + industry reps discussed their goals for partnerships from the education perspective and from the business perspective. They explored what barriers they might need to overcome, what success may look like and ways to develop more productive partnerships.
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Arconic HS STEAM Project: BELONG in STEM
ABC CREATE Summer Teachers’ STEAM Retreat 2021: Shifting Paradigms: A Conversation
On Day 2 of the Summer Teachers’ STEAM Retreat 2021, ABC CREATE brought together three community leaders, Ryan Rydzewski, Author and Communications Professional, Dr. Tinukwa Boulder, Director of Innovative Technologies and Online Learning at the University of Pittsburgh and Sherri McLeary, Executive Director of the Digital Foundry at New Kensington for a conversation about the shifting paradigms in education and work. Dr. Shannon Wagner, Superintendent of Burrell School District, moderated the conversation, prompting panelists to share their perspectives on how these shifts are impacting the way students learn, the way teachers teach, and the way workers work and helped teachers to better understand their role in preparing students with future ready skills.
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In 2019, ABC CREATE sponsored 3 expos highlighting the direct connections between ABC CREATE STEAM classroom projects and their 21st Century workforce applications. This event brought high school students, teachers, parents, and business professionals together to demonstrate the links between classroom STEAM projects, the 21st century skills the students were learning, and the ways those skills are utilized in the workplace. Participants designed robots and programmed them to sense, think and act.
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ABC CREATE believes that education should prepare students for an ever-changing future. Educators should have access to STEAM-based resources and professional development that promote essential, future-ready skills such as collaboration, communication, problem-solving and critical thinking. |
ABC CREATE works collaboratively with business and industry to better understand the knowledge bases and skill sets that students will need to be successful in a future of rapidly changing technology and innovation. ABC CREATE knows that today's students are preparing for jobs that have yet to be invented. Not only is there a need to keep pace with emerging technologies and to be capable of using those technologies to create efficiencies in business and to improve the human condition in the public sector, but there is an even greater need to develop the soft skills that will prepare students for any job. Through collaborative professional development and community programs, ABC CREATE brings educators, business and community members together to exchange ideas, share expertise and identify the future ready skills that will help all students to succeed.
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In summer 2021, ABC CREATE and the Penn State STEAM Outreach Club partnered with the New Kensington Salvation Army to offer a two-day summer STEAM camp for local children. Thirty-two children, ages 6 to 12, learned some simple programming algorithms by retelling a story using a Bee-Bot robot! Once they mastered the simple algorithms of the Bee-Bots, the children learned how to use FinchBlox to write code and to program a Finch robot. They worked in collaborative teams to design and decorate their Finch robot dragons and then participated in a series of ‘dragon olympics’ events. The children used computational thinking and problem-solving skills to program their robots to joust, walk on a balance beam, run through an obstacle course and perform a synchronized dance! ABC CREATE was able to use their expertise in STEAM education and their Resource Library tech tools to have a positive impact on the local community and offer a fun experience for all!
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In 2022, ABC CREATE and the Digital Foundry will sponsor a High School STEAM program called BELONG (Bringing Experiences and Learning Opportunities for New Growth) in STEM. This program will be offered to students in grades 9-12 from underrepresented populations and will be designed to bridge the students’ classroom learning experiences to those in the real world through relevant STEAM experiences and through connections to industry networks and future opportunities. The students will come together on a monthly basis to engage in STEAM activities, industry mentorship and professional career exploration and development. The BELONG in STEM program will culminate with a week-long summer camp experience held at the newly built Digital Foundry in early summer 2022.
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FUTURE READY IMPACT
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