We've selected our latest EdTech grant recipient, awarding August's grant to Terri Bradley! Terri is a teacher at the San Joaquin Elementary School in San Joaquin, CA. She tries to incorporate as many opportunities for students to explore technology as possible, including through robotics and coding in the classroom. Terri's school is part of the Golden Plains USD in central California and she's blessed with a diverse student body. Many of them have immigrated from Mexico, other Central American countries, and the Indian Peninsula. To help meet some of the cultural and socioeconomic challenges her students often face, Terri has explored a bunch of grant opportunities for teachers. We're happy to reward her commitment with this month's award!
In her grant application, Terri outlined plans for some upcoming projects she hopes to complete. Her main focus is on providing students with hands-on opportunities for developing engineering skills. She's titled this particular initiative 'Engineering through Making' and she's hoping to add more of these types of experiences to her instructional offerings once receiving her grant materials from us. Adding the maker education angle is certainly another intriguing element of what Terri has in mind. Of course, engineering and MakerEd have similarities and we think it's great to focus on combining them in the classroom.
To Terri, the benefits of engineering experiences extend beyond each individual classroom activity. When students have the chance to design, build, and modify different objects and devices, they get to experience the intellectual and analytical sides of being an engineer as well. To start, she's planning to focus on helping her elementary students understand the functions and uses of simple machines. It's her approach to this, however, that's really compelling. Since engineering is so hands-on, it's understandable that Terri would prefer to make these lessons interactive with tangible tools. With a sound plan in place, however, including allowing students to discover scientific concepts, principles, and laws through hands-on problem solving, the experiences will be much more impactful.
Once she settles in to the new school year, Terri will continue her commitment to advancing STEAM opportunities for her students. She has a number of lesson plans in mind, including challenging students to find similarities and differences in projects each of them design, helping students deepen their understanding of key curricular objectives, and even tie in social-emotional learning. She'll do this by helping them build self-confidence, self-efficacy, and the ability to transfer knowledge to solving future problems. Since hands-on engineering experiences are not included in the school's core curriculum, Terri also knows the value and significance of these lessons for many of her students.
For her grant award, we'll be sending Terri some of the most versatile and simplistic STEAM tools on our store. The first of them is the Thames & Kosmos Roller Coaster Engineering Kit, which students can use to build roller coaster models with various pieces. We'll also be sending her some MakeDo Invent kits for students to use in creative MakerEd and engineering projects. The Roller Coaster Kit—like all Thames & Kosmos kits—comes with plenty of detailed project guides and manuals. These pieces truly help ensure students are getting the most out of their design and engineering experiences. As for the MakeDo kit, students can utilize the various plastic pieces in creating models, scenes, dioramas, and more. It's very hands-on and simply involves connecting them to cardboard pieces of any size to bolster them.
Of course, Terri has purposefully selected these two kits to integrate in her STEAM lessons. Besides their connections to engineering education, she's excited about opportunities for students to use them in expressing their creativity and innovation. As for academic connections she hopes to improve with the grant, Terri is planning to use these projects in teaching students about key scientific concepts, like force, movement, speed, and more. Specifically, she plans to help students understand motion and gravity on a deeper level through hands-on exploration. She's also planning to tie in recycling initiatives, helping students see how they can repurpose materials with the MakeDo components. Since her school receives a lot of deliveries, they have a lot of cardboard. We definitely think the idea of teaching conservation through repurposing—a cornerstone of the Maker Movement—is a fantastic idea!
Since engineering and discovery are so closely tied to science standards, Terri should have no problem using her grant materials to help her students gain a broader understanding of these key concepts. She also, however, wants to help reinforce some of the science concepts her students have learned over the years. This is certainly a worthwhile endeavor and can definitely prove effective with these tools at her disposal. Most of her students' previous experiences with engineering, however, have only come from textbooks. The hands-on experiences she's going to design—as she understands—will help them recognize how different areas of science are interconnected. She also wants students to see how they make up such a large part of our everyday lives.
In applying for our grant, Terri has always remembered that most of the students she teaches have not had any real hands-on STEM experiences before entering her classroom. Their technology experience, in general, is also typically minimal. Knowing how vital tech skills are, however, she wants to give students relevant STEM experiences. She also wants to help them see how they could make a career using the skills they gain. Terri very much believes in using technology to prepare students for a future that's built on those skills and experiences. Beyond that, however, she also sees it as a vehicle to foster dynamic, interesting, and relevant problem-solving practice. Giving her students a start with designing, modifying, and improving projects in the classroom will definitely help them in the future, which aligns perfectly with Terri's vision.
Since one of the fundamental elements of modern STEM education is establishing equitable opportunities, we certainly support Terri's mission and goals. At her school, 97.8 percent of students qualify for both free breakfast and lunch according to the 'socioeconomically disadvantaged' statutes set by the California Schools Performance Overview committee. Like we said, many of her students are also immigrants. Over 65 percent of the students Terri works with are English language learners. In this situation, it also means many parents can't fully help them when it comes to STEM learning. Language gaps have led to various instances of marginalization and students aren't always afforded equitable STEM opportunities. This is certainly something we recognize and aim to improve through our grant program.
In the San Joaquin area, many adults work as farm laborers. It's even commonly understood that there is little chance for children to end up doing something besides this work. In her words, she hopes her students have the opportunity to 'escape historical isolation' and sees STEM education as a vehicle for helping to make that happen. We wholeheartedly support and admire Terri's commitment to providing students with relevant learning opportunities. In their school district, facility upgrades routinely encounter delays due to alignments with current codes and requirements. With district funds lacking, there also haven't been too many upgrades in recent years. This has left students to sometimes work in outdated classrooms with outdated equipment.
It goes without saying, but we certainly admire Terri's commitment to her students and the Golden Plains USD community. Her efforts and mindset have inspired us and we're happy to help her and her students experience new STEM opportunities. One last time, we thank Terri for applying for our grant and congratulate her on her selection. If you'd like to apply for September's award, the application is now open. You can apply on this page and be among those considered if you apply by Sept. 20. Feel free to forward the link around to other members of your school or district as well! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more, including one other grant opportunity.