STEAM in the City: The Power of Experiential Learning
After a successful first year, STEAM in the City is back for it’s second year with a brand new cohort.
Barnard College STEAM in the City is a week long institute for K-8 public school teachers. It is funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. Over the course of the five days, the college provides programming to teachers who can learn about how to make science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematic (STEAM) topics more accessible for their students and for their classroom.
“I’ve always loved science but never had an opportunity to dive deeper into it. So with the STEAM project that came to me through my principal, I think it’s going to be a huge opportunity to expand my knowledge and to be able to share this with my students,” said Tara Garcia, of P.S. 36 Margaret Douglas Elementary School.
This year the program expanded to a bigger cohort which consists of 19 teachers. This includes paraprofessionals, department heads, principals, and after-school educators. “We’re also incorporating a technology and mathematics portion of the program for the first time,” said Yuval Dinoor ’21, program coordinator for STEAM in the City.
Assistant professor of computer science, Mark Santolucito, is one of Barnard’s faculty members assisting with the program this summer. For his section, Santolucito is having the educators look at creativity and computational thinking. “As a group, we were the computer and we were trying to come up with an algorithm for sorting and then actually execute that algorithm amongst ourselves. This models how a computer actually runs a sorting algorithm in real life,” said Santolucito.
The program leaders planned an array of different activities for the week from making mini greenhouses, constructing solitary bee habitats, building prototypes in the design center and learning how to identify tree species. Not only are the teachers learning creative activities for their students inside the classroom, but also they get to gain hands-on experiences outside of the classroom.
The cohort was taken up onto the roof of Barnard Hall to talk and learn about bee keeping with the college’s honey bee researcher and associate professor of biological sciences, Jon Snow. Then, they were taken to the design center where they learned about computer science, and to Morningside Park where each individual worked with community partners to develop curriculums.
“They’re going to be able to not just bring back the lessons, but we’re also going to make sure that they have the resources and the actual materials they need for their classrooms,” said Emma Wolfe ’01, Senior Advisor to the President for External Relations and Leadership Development.
“A program such as this allows us to have such a cohort of teachers come together and pick up from each other what our skillsets are and how to implement what works in their classroom into our classrooms,” said Yomaly Peralta, P.S. 028 The Wright Brothers School.
After completing the fellowship the year prior, Erin Legendre, P.S. 206 Jose Celso Barbosa, came back to share her experience on how she implemented what she learned from her fellowship into her classroom with this year’s cohort.
“My best advice is open up your mind to whatever thing that you’ve always wanted to try and always wanted to do and see if there’s a way that you can integrate it into your classroom—especially if it’s steam related. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that our students are having better experiences and that’s what steam was able to do for me and I’m sure will be able to do for you,” said Legendre.
Credit: Barnard College
