LeadersIN EDUCATION
LeadersLeadersIN EDUCATIONIN EDUCATION
ALSO: Friday Institute report says Pitsco’s STEM Expeditions® yield statistically significant results
CLASSROOM CONVERGENCE: Educators, business leaders, and students come together
Screen-free coding for Grades K-2
Pitsco.com/KUBO
KUBO — a simple plug-and-learn robot that makes teaching and learning coding as easy as solving a puzzle.
The unique TagTile® system enables students to physically piece together code and then watch in awe as their robot executes commands.
That instant when you see in a student’s eyes that they have made a connection with the world – educators call that a light bulb moment. This is how education advances: small connects to large; our schools connect to the needs of our communities; our communities connect to the needs of our world.
As a community of leaders, we rely on one another’s strengths and expertise. We partner to pool our resources. We share knowledge and needs. And we pass this value on to our students, teaching them the skills of cooperation and collaboration. Each of us carries a piece of the puzzle, and increasingly schools, industry, and government are discovering the benefits of working together.
In this issue of Leaders in Education, you will discover the connections that longtime Pitsco customers have made. These are bridges between the individual and the community, between the present and the future. We invite you to join us in bringing the world together.
For your convenience, we have created a navigation tool. Browse the icons with each article to explore:
Pitsco’s vision: Leading education that positively affects learners
CEO:Harvey Dean, [email protected]
President:Lisa Paterni, [email protected]
Executive VP & Chief Strategy Officer:Stephan Turnipseed, [email protected]
Vice President, Education & Executive Editor:Matt Frankenbery, [email protected]
Director of Sales:Eric Simmons, [email protected]
Communications Manager & Editor:Tom Farmer, [email protected]
Communications Assistant & Editor:Cody White, [email protected]
Graphic Designer:Jodie Sutton, [email protected]
Change of address: To report a change of address or name of recipient, contact Editor Tom Farmer at [email protected] or P.O. Box 1708, Pittsburg, KS 66762.
© 2018 Pitsco, Inc., P.O. Box 1708, Pittsburg, KS 66762
Quick Contact ReferenceCustomer Relations • Phone: 800-828-5787, 800-774-4552
• Fax: 620-231-2466
• Email: [email protected]
• Contact us online: www.pitsco.com/Support
Websites • Home page: Pitsco.com
• Shop online: Pitsco.com/Shop
• Curriculum: Pitsco.com/Our-Programs
• Network magazine: Pitsco.com/Network
• SySTEM Alert! for students: Pitsco.com/SySTEMalert
• TETRIX® Robotics: TETRIXrobotics.com
Sales and Professional Development • Main phone line: 800-828-5787
• Web: Pitsco.com/STEMPD
• Professional Development: workshops.pitsco.com
• Contact us online: Pitsco.com/HelpDesk
LeadersIN EDUCATION
LeadersLeadersIN EDUCATIONIN EDUCATION
Making connections
Matt FrankenberyVice President, Education & Executive Editor
21st-Century Skills
College and Careers
Community Partnerships
Funding
Proven Results
Robotics
Social-Emotional Learning
ON THE COVER: Duke Energy's Millie Chalk and Craven County CTE Director Chris Bailey in a Pitsco STREAM Missions lab at Bridgeton Elementary School in New Bern, NC
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 1
Join us in liberating
We must allow our children to flourish and prepare for an unknown future
US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
recently spoke at the American Enterprise
Institute conference on the topic of “Bush-
Obama School Reform: Lessons Learned.” In
her remarks, Secretary DeVos
said, “If America’s students
are to be prepared, we must
rethink school. . . . ‘Rethink’
means we question everything
to ensure nothing limits a
student from pursuing his or
her passion and achieving
his or her potential. So each
student is prepared at every
turn for what comes next.”
When I was an engineer
and industry leader from the
‘70s through the early ‘90s, I
was amazed at the lack of skills
my newly hired engineers had
when faced with real-world
hands-on challenges. Consequently, the
idea of preparing students for what comes
next, especially in the areas of STEM/STEAM/
STREAM, brought me to the field of education
By Stephan Turnipseed, Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer • [email protected]
THE PARADIGM SHIFT
Competency Based
Learner AgencySocially Embedded
Open Walled
OUTCOMESKnowledge, Skills, and Dispositions
Personalized, Relevant, and Contextualized
Stephan Turnipseed Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer
Stephan Turnipseed is the
executive vice president
and chief strategy officer
for Pitsco Education. His
experience as an education
thought leader, advocate
of hands-on learning, and
entrepreneur includes
a tenure as president of
LEGO® Education North
America. He has chaired
the Partnership for 21st
Century Learning and
cochaired the Brookings
Institution’s Business
for Early Childhood
Development Task Force.
He serves on or has
served on boards for
numerous organizations
and think tanks, including
Education Reimagined
and the Learning Policy
Institute. Turnipseed has
been a member of the
Clinton Global Initiative.
Recognizing his lifetime
achievement in STEM
education, National
Instruments awarded him
the prestigious Engineering
Impact Award.
the classroom
2 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
in 1992. I hoped to be a part of changing education through hands-on learning.
Since that time, the need to rethink education has been a constant refrain from an education community more focused on evolution rather than revolution. While strides have been made in focusing on change through the middle school movement, project-based learning, and 21st-century skill acquisition, the focus has been on the adults in the system, not the children. In an environment of societal change, in which social mores and political priorities have shifted rapidly to the will of the people, often the minority special interests have held fast as a bulwark of education.
The nonnegotiables such as age-graded cohorts, school choice, assignment by zip code, and learning confined to place and pace have now relegated American children to the middle class of the educated world, a position that is swiftly declining as evidenced by results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
In seminal work done by Education Reimagined (Education-reimagined.org), fellow travelers and I penned a vision of the future of education, which is student focused and student led. Our vision imagined a new paradigm guided by five elements of learning.
In this paradigm, learning is: • Competency based, focusing on mastery, not
certification, and seen as an alternative to age-based cohorts in the current system.
• Personalized, relevant, and contextualized, following
the passions of the learner and tapping into the intrinsic
motivations that accompany that passion.
• A derivative of learner agency, which recognizes
that learning is done with the learner and not to or for
the learner.
• Socially embedded, in that learning is essentially a
social process (Vygotsky) that engages and encounters all
stakeholders in the learner’s environment and culture.
• Open walled, allowing the learner to experience
learning in all settings, not only the 22 percent of the
time spent in a classroom, and to receive recognition
and credit for this experience.
At Pitsco, we have always been guided by this view of
student focus and teacher enablement. Our science of learning
is solidly founded in this new (old to us) paradigm and has been
for 47 years. Recently, we completed the formal communication
of our commitment to this continuing vision of education in a
white paper available on our website, Pitsco.com.
Our approach is fueled by the fundamental belief that
all students are capable of learning and achieving if they are
allowed to find their passion and pursue their dreams. I challenge
educators everywhere to join us in liberating the classroom from
the tyranny of adults’ systems, allowing our children to flourish
and be prepared for whatever comes next.
The Pitsco ExperienceThe Teacher
Learning TheoryExperiential Learning
The Community
Learner
The Science of 21st Century Learning at Pitsco
LEARNING THEORY
THE PITSCO EXPERIENCE
THE COMMUNITY
• Products• Activities
• Curriculum• Solutions
EXPERIENTIAL/ACTIVE LEARNING• Project Based
• Problem/Situation Based
• Cooperative• Collaborative
• Personalized• Competency Based• Blended• Flipped• Multisensory
• Constructivism – Piaget• Cognitive Development – Vygotsky• Constructionism – Papert• Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning – Mayer • Mindset (Self Theories) – Dweck• Grit (Perseverance) – Duckworth• Taxonomy – Bloom• DOK – Webb
THE TEACHER• Maker• Integrator• Implementer
LEARNER OUTCOMES
“The Any Child”
College Ready
Career Ready
Citizen Ready
Knowledge
Skills
Dispositions
• Equity
• Mentoring
• Citizenship
• Employment
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 3
4 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
The knowledge to get ahead nowFirst, the good news: STEM work and pay is
on the rise. Noonan (2017) reported that there are
about 9 million STEM workers in the US, “STEM
occupations are projected to grow by 8.9 percent
from 2014 to 2024, compared to 6.4 percent
growth for non-STEM occupations,” and “STEM
workers command higher wages, earning 29
percent more than their non-STEM counterparts
in 2015.” The higher wages cut across education
levels too. Those who obtain STEM degrees tend
to receive better pay whether they work in STEM
fields or not, and STEM workers enjoy lower
unemployment rates (Noonan, 2017).
Now, the bad news: Hoffman (2011) notes
that, unlike some other OECD countries, the
United States does not systematically tie
education to the workplace. She concludes:
“The hard truth is that neither educators nor
employers in the United States take
much responsibility for guiding young
people into careers, and in most high
schools and many community colleges,
career education remains remote from the workaday world of the office, shop, or hospital floor.” Absent some drastic changes in national and state education policy, like those Hoffman advocates for, schools assume the responsibility to prepare students for college and careers.
But data analysts, supervisors, and college instructors say schools often leave students unprepared. Bassiri (2014) wrote that, among nearly 400,000 students who took both the ACT Explore and the ACT, “fewer than two in 10 eighth graders are on target to be ready for college- and career-level work by the time they graduate from high school.” And a 2015 survey found that “only 56% of employers and 35% of college instructors are satisfied with the job U.S. high schools are doing preparing recent graduates for work/college after high school” (Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies, 2015). It’s clear that work remains to be done in college and career readiness at all levels.
The employment skills to stay ahead later
Business leaders, researchers, and policy makers worry about the country’s economic readiness as well. In a follow-up to its influential 2005 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a committee from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine (2010) urged that the United States would need to increase both its spending on research and its number of scientists in order to innovate, create jobs, and maintain a competitive edge. The committee report also warned that Americans would have to begin
Knowledge for
Create K-12 STEM classrooms that prepare students for the unpredictable
15
Pitsco.com | 800-828-57871
KNOWLEDGE FOR NOW, SKILLS FOR LATERCreate K-12 STEM Classrooms That Prepare
Students for the Unpredictable
By Stephan Turnipseedwith Matt Frankenbery and Matt Sluder
The text here is an excerpt of a recent Pitsco white paper exploring the science of 21st-century learning. To view the full document, visit Pitsco.com/knowledge-whitepaper.
now, skills for later:
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 5
“preparing for the growing educational demands of quality jobs
and continuing to maintain their skills in a circumstance where
the half-life of new technical knowledge may be measured in
terms of a few years or, in some cases, even a few months.”
But if some knowledge stales quickly, what can we
teach students that will endure? Cropley (2001) promoted
adaptability as a goal of education in this century:
[Educational] institutions cannot limit themselves
to the transmission of set contents, techniques and
values, since these will soon be useless or even
detrimental to living a full life, but must also promote
flexibility, openness for the new, the ability to adapt or
see new ways of doing things, and courage in the face
of the unexpected. These properties are becoming
increasingly necessary if people are to adapt to a
changing world and will probably continue to be
important throughout each person’s lifetime, whereas
specific skills and knowledge rapidly become obsolete.
This “changing world” is changing partly because of
machines and software that can do certain tasks faster and
more cheaply than humans can. Klaus Schwab, founder
of the World Economic Forum, calls the sweeping societal
and economic changes brought by technologies such as
artificial intelligence and automation “the Fourth Industrial
Revolution” (Schwab, 2016). Economists disagree about what
these changes will mean for the future of work. Some fear that
machines will take a larger slice of the employment pie, while
others anticipate that machines will make the pie bigger, as in past industrial revolutions (Standage, 2016).
But automation can free humans up to do what we do best. For example, manufacturers such as BMW are experimenting with collaborative robots that do the heavy lifting for skilled human workers. Julie Shah of MIT found at one Swiss company that “teams made of humans and robots collaborating efficiently can be more productive than teams made of either humans or robots alone. In her experiments, this coöperative process reduced human idle time by 85 percent” (Knight, 2014). To capitalize on opportunities like this, workers will need a background in STEM.
What’s the upshot for educators and students? Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, also from MIT, advise that “primary and secondary education systems should be teaching relevant and valuable skills, which means things computers are not good at. These include creativity, interpersonal skills, and problem solving” (Bernstein & Raman, 2015). And to cope with the changes automation brings, our future workers will need to learn new skills continually (Standage, 2016).
CitizenshipAs stated earlier, all citizens need scientific and technological
literacy in an advanced democracy dealing with complex issues. “All students – whether or not they pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math – will be consumers of news and information on STEM issues that will directly affect their lives. Beyond developing skilled professionals, we need to develop a skilled electorate that can apply knowledge, examine issues, and pose questions to politicians and policymakers” (Fisher & Frey, 2015). Priest (2013) points out that scientific literacy means more than just knowing facts; it includes evaluating sources and understanding that science is a human activity.
6 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
Educational Research Institute can help you secure the funding you deserve
Tax season is upon us; it’s the time when
we try to rustle up those W-2s, that one thing
from the bank, those tuition statements, all the
investment documents, that other thing from
the bank. Only the most organized among us
can go it alone. The rest of us need navigators
to help us steer away from the dreaded IRS audit
and toward a nice return. Applying for a federal
or state education grant is not so different.
Government education grants offer ample
funding for initiatives related to national priorities
such as STEM and equity. This is great news for
districts looking to add or augment STEM programs.
But this money comes with a bevy of stipulations
that can overwhelm, even if your district has a
dedicated funding specialist. To get a sense of what
such applications entail, see the National Science
Foundation Grants.gov Application Guide (nsf.gov/
pubs/policydocs/grantsgovguide0118.pdf). It’s not
exactly beach reading material.
While no TurboTax® for grants exists yet,
some organizations have sprung up to help
districts find and apply for government funding.
One such organization is the Educational
Research Institute (ERI) in Harlingen, Texas.
Its website states that “ERI has secured over
$335 million in successful grant applications
for charters, school districts, colleges, medical
institutions, universities, non-profits, and municipalities.” In addition, ERI evaluates grant-winning programs for effectiveness and provides professional development to schools and other organizations.
ERI boasts a grant application success rate of 80 percent. And the combination of ERI knowledge and Pitsco solutions has proven effective. Consider some Texas schools and districts that have used this winning combination to obtain funding for STREAM Missions, STEM Units, robotics materials, and more:
• San Diego ISD (featured in the February-March 2018 issue of The Pitsco Network)
• Mercedes ISD
• Raul Yzaguirre Schools for Success
• Elvis Ballew High School
• Golden Rule Charter School
Partnering with an organization like ERI can give districts a leg up in applying for funding when competition is fierce. Such expertise can help leaders turn goals into programs, create measures to see if those goals have been achieved, present plans in a persuasive way, and, of course, remember to get that one thing from that one place.
To learn more about ERI, visit the ERI website at erigrants.com.
Linda Alaniz ERI, Owner/President
Maggie Rodriquez ERI, COO
Grant writing doesn’t have to be taxing
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 7
Surefire skills for Cary Johnson K-12 Director of Innovation and Technology
Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, CA
A conversation with Cary Johnson, K-12 Director of Innovation and Technology, Placentia-Yorba Linda (CA) Unified School DistrictPYLUSD has Pitsco Education’s new STEM Expeditions® in all six of its middle schools after using the company’s Modules program for more than a decade. While Modules and Expeditions are both built to develop essential employability skills through hands-on, experiential learning, they are different in other ways, most notably the more flexible grading and implementation options for Expeditions. In addition to the Expeditions, Pitsco’s science Missions program was added last school year in five of the district’s elementary schools.
Talk about the endgame. You’re preparing these students for something STEM related. What exactly is that?
Johnson: We’re preparing them to have skills. We
don’t know what their jobs are going to be like five,
10, 20 years from now. They need to have the skills
to be adaptable for that future. STEM, by its nature,
is problem-solving, thinking through issues, being
cross disciplined. How many times did you solve a
problem just by using language arts? No, you bring
in all sorts of different skills. I think that’s what’s cool
about STEM – and particularly Expeditions and
Missions – is that it’s problem-based learning and
communicating of information.
How did the district fund the move from Modules to STEM Expeditions and the addition of Missions labs at several of the elementary schools?
Johnson: Part of what helped fund refurbishing
and retrofitting the (middle level) STEM labs
was the California Career Pathways Trust
Grant. The state of California has really kind of
doubled down on spending on career technical
education. And so, the first round of that was
competitive grants, and the California Career
Pathways Trust Grant was part of that. We applied
and received a $6 million grant for the district.
Talk about the decision to spread STEM down into the elementary level.
Johnson: One of the grant coauthors was a
former elementary teacher. She was like, “You know, Cary, you’re looking at this for high school. But we really need to look system wide.” And so her eye was really important for that. We pulled in an elementary principal to be part of that grant-writing team, and that’s where we kind of did the whole K through 14 because it was inclusive of community colleges as well.
What extra benefits does STEM bring to students?
Johnson: The biggest side benefit we saw was at the elementary level – how much communication was taking place. That was as big as, if not bigger than, the science part of it was, being able to communicate, the reasoning and kids communicating their thoughts about why this was the answer or why they should do this to find the solutions.
The principal at Glenview Elementary School, Ms. Ramos, talked about that. She liked what she was hearing from the kids together working at Missions.
Johnson: We’ve seen that at all five elementaries. They’ve all said the same thing. That’s a key part of why they like the Mission labs.
How does development of 21st-century skills at the elementary level affect kids as they move through the system?
Johnson: Our ultimate goal was the CareerLink Academies at our high schools. The idea was
Cary Johnson has been in education for about 20 years, including the past several with Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District (PYLUSD) near Anaheim, CA. He spent two years as principal at El Dorado High School, four years as director of secondary education, and the past year in a new and unique capacity. “My boss (deputy superintendent) and superintendent said, ‘Hey, we really need to push the envelope.’ And so they created this position called K-12 director of innovation and technology.”
an uncertain future
8 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
introducing kids to the concept of careers, not that they had to decide they were going to be an attorney or an engineer in third grade, but exposing them to that concept. So, then they come here to middle school and do the different Expeditions. Ultimately, our goal is to have a chart saying if you like this particular Expedition, you might want to go to Aztec Engineering and Manufacturing Academy, or if you like this one, then you might want to go to Digital Media Arts at El Dorado. The endgame is to introduce them to different careers.
How did the district settle on Pitsco as its STEM provider?
Johnson: We initially looked at a different vendor. And teachers like Mr. McLeish and Mary Chapluk said we needed to look at Pitsco as well, and we did. And overwhelmingly even I was sold after I saw what was going on with Pitsco and when we went to visit some elementary and middle schools in Hemet. I thought this is much more of what we need than the other vendor was showing.
What set Pitsco’s curriculum apart from the competition?
Johnson: It was deeper. You’re also delivering 21st-century skills that truly teach kids how to not just look at the content but really being able to communicate, being able to work collaboratively, and the customer service. One of the things that all the teachers said was even if it’s broke or there’s an issue, we can always get hold of Pitsco. They solve the issues for us right away. If we’re having an issue with any part of the curriculum, they respond. And I’ve found that to be true as well. Because if you’re a teacher in a classroom, you need the feedback and answers quickly. There was no comparison. Pitsco was much better. It was the curriculum, the setup, the customer service.
The Expeditions are a semester course at Tuffree Middle School instead of full year so that more students can rotate through. The teacher says there’s now a higher percentage of females in the STEM course than in years past.
Johnson: That’s absolutely important. That’s been a discussion as far as a district in our Career Technical Education Advisory Committee. We actually hosted a Women in Industry conference just a month or so ago. So we had key players from different industries that were female come and speak about their experience of being a female in an industry, whether it was
computer science or the medical field or as an attorney. . . . The
vibe was so positive at the end. It was cool to hear the struggles
that they went through and how they overcame the obstacles.
Because of the skills kids develop in Expeditions and the opportunities they have for success, do you think this lab can help build students’ confidence and improve their social and emotional learning?
Johnson: Middle school is a very strange period in a kid’s life
where they’re not quite high school kids yet, but they’re not
kids anymore. Any good project-based learning curriculum
would do that. It’s that old concept that failure is actually good
if you can help kids learn to persevere and learn from their
failure. That’s good for their own confidence.
Every Expedition has the engineering design process built in with a focus on plan-build-improve. How is this skill foundational?
Johnson: A keynote speaker at a recent conference in Orange
County, the COO for SpaceX, was showing video of how they sent
a rocket up and it comes down and lands on a huge platform in
the ocean. She said, “I’m going to show you the footage from our
very first attempt.” And it shows a rocket coming down and it hits
the pad, but it falls over and blows up. “When I first saw that, I
cheered and everyone was looking at me like I was nuts. But the
reason I cheered is because we hit the pad. Yeah, it was a failure,
but out of a huge ocean, we actually hit the pad. So we’re going
to improve on that. We haven’t crashed since.” I always heard it’s
important to fail and learn from that, but this is the COO of one
of the biggest private space exploration companies around. And
she’s saying that. So it was really exciting. It’s cool to see someone
in the industry saying, “Yeah, that’s true.”
Students in Robert McLeish’s STEM Expeditions® lab have fun putting their bridge to the test on the Pitsco Structures Testing Instrument. The aim is to earn a spot in McLeish’s top performers list, which is displayed for all students to see.
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 9
Early results promising for businesses and education collaborating in NC
GREENVILLE, NC – Education and business leaders
advocate the need to break down the silos in which they have
traditionally operated. After all, their common aim is a well-
prepared workforce, so a unified effort clearly makes sense.
But what does it really look like when talk turns into action and
the silos disappear?
For a clear picture, look no further than the eastern region
of North Carolina where for the past eight years business and
education leaders have emerged from their boardrooms and
district offices, come together at the table, and tackled long-
standing issues that had resulted in a repeated disconnect
between what education was producing and what businesses
needed in their employees.
The catalyst for this change has been STEM East, an
offshoot of NCEast Alliance, an economic development group
focused on shaping a transitioning work landscape. STEM East
officials formed the Eastern North Carolina Employers and
Superintendents Council with superintendents from the 11
school districts in the region and 11 key business and industry leaders whose companies rely on local school systems for their most important commodity – that well-prepared workforce.
“We want a workforce of inquisitive minds. We don't want someone to take the notebook that says, ‘Here's how we've always done it.’ We want a workforce that can take us to the next level,” said Duke Energy Government and Community Relations Manager Millie Chalk. “And that to me is what STEM is providing us, and that is what our commitment to STEM education in North Carolina is really about – How do we build a better workforce? How do we grow our economy to be more productive and to do more and be more? That really comes from a grassroots effort in education.”
Businesses are eager to step up and support education when it clearly listens to and meets their needs. In eastern North Carolina, that is happening through ever-growing K-12 STEM programs that engage students, add relevance to their education, expose them to careers in the region, and cultivate soft skills needed in today’s workforce.
“This pedagogical approach to inquiry uses the idea of, ‘We are going to be developing you as a student who can work in
Joining forces
10 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
a group and ask questions of each other and communicate with each other and make your own presentation about what it is that you're learning,’” said STEM East Executive Director Bruce Middleton. “These are discreet skills that you can work on and they are important for the workplace.”
STEM, STEAM, STREAM, and similar approaches are more about developing these essential skills that will be key to employability in the future if the recent past is an accurate barometer. According to a 2017 US Bureau of Labor Statistics report, “Employment in STEM occupations grew by 10.5 percent . . . between May 2009 and May 2015, compared with 5.2 percent net growth in non-STEM occupations.”
National jobs data is telling, but even more important to employers in the region are projections that their future employees will have the knowledge and skills necessary for open positions, work well together, and desire to stay in the area. Toward that end, major employers such as Duke Energy, Fleet Readiness Center-East, Hyster-Yale, and regional health care providers have representatives on the STEM East advisory council. They share best practices, help fund STEM programs, put on summer camps, offer a mobile Fab Lab, mentor and train teachers, and offer internships and field trips to give
educators and students a glimpse at the
job opportunities in their own backyard.
Mark Meno, research and engineering
group head at FRC-East where about 850
engineers are employed, said clearer
communication has been helpful in
breaking down the silos. “Education is only
reacting to what they think they’re hearing
from industry, and industry is not a clear
communicator because we can’t speak
educationese,” he said. “So, a lot of times
we end up missing the mark, and it isn't
until kids graduate college that we figure
out the schools misunderstood us and the
kids have a new set of gaps.’ . . . STEM East
is addressing the issue. The conversation is
happening at the table.”
Further proof of progress, says Craven
County CTE Director Chris Bailey, is that
the eastern region is a certified work-
ready community based on jobs being
profiled by ACT® WorkKeys® and students
being rated on National Career Readiness
Certificate® testing.
“What that does is it shows that there
is solid alignment between secondary and
postsecondary programs and industries
to show that we’re trying to build a
superhighway with multiple on- and off-
ramps where students can get the careers
they want,” Bailey said.
Millie Chalk Government and Community
Relations Manager, Duke Energy
Mark Meno Research and Engineering
Group Head, FRC-East
Chris Bailey Craven County CTE Director
Bruce Middleton STEM East Executive Director
Among the solutions in play in the STEM East region of North Carolina are a Pitsco Education STREAM Missions lab at Bridgeton Elementary School in New Bern, far left, and a mobile Fab Lab, above and left, that is outfit-ted and staffed by Fleet Readiness Center-East in Cherry Point as part of engineering exposure to middle and high school students.
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 11
Golden LEAF Foundation at a glance
Creation: In 1999, the North Carolina legislature created the nonprofit Golden LEAF Foundation to administer one-half of North Carolina’s share of the Master Settlement Agreement resulting from litigation with cigarette manufacturers.
Focus: The Foundation’s mission is to assist rural, tobacco-dependent and economically affected communities with economic transition. Its grant making focuses on critical issues facing rural communities: advancing agriculture practices, creating opportunity for job creation, helping retain crucial businesses at risk for leaving an area, and readying the workforce. The Foundation also works with schools to prepare students for college and the workforce and other priorities that help move communities toward economic vitality.
Results: The Foundation has awarded more than $650 million in grants, resulting in:
• 63,053 jobs created.
• $624 million in new payroll.
• 68,000+ workers trained or retrained for good-paying jobs.
What exactly is the Golden LEAF Foundation’s role in increasing economic opportunity in North Carolina?
Sorrells: The Foundation was established to be an endowment for the future of rural North Carolina. Because the state was the largest tobacco producer in the nation, the then-attorney general, who went on to become governor, advocated that the court settlement for North Carolina should include using a portion of the proceeds from the class action lawsuit to help the rural counties that were negatively impacted by the decline in tobacco production transition to new economic opportunities. So,
Golden LEAF was created to assist with rural economic transformation by investing in the physical infrastructure and human talent needed by rural communities to replace the revenue lost and attract new economic opportunities so that people could choose to remain in rural communities that represented prosperous places to live, work, and play.
Can you give one shining example of what Golden LEAF Foundation is doing in conjunction with the STEM East network to impact rural education?
Sorrells: One example is the investments Golden LEAF made in eastern North Carolina to help Fleet Readiness Center East (FRC East) and other companies acquire the talent they needed to grow their businesses. During the Iraq War, FRC East, whose mission is to repair damaged aircraft and helicopters and send them back into military service, found it needed to manufacture small numbers of parts to replenish depleted inventories so they would have the parts needed to repair then return aircraft to active duty. They needed engineers who knew how to reverse engineer and manufacture parts because many of the items needed to restore aircraft were not available and limited blueprints existed. FRC East was hiring individuals from national colleges of engineering and bringing them to eastern NC to work. When those new hires got off the plane and drove into eastern North Carolina, they would say, “Where’s a Starbucks? Where’s the mall?" And immediately they would start looking for employment elsewhere. When STEM East came along, it gave them an organic strategy to develop talent, engineering and other, in their region. An FRC East head engineer now frequently comments publicly, “Now that we have partnerships with education
Mark Sorrells
Mark Sorrells, a senior vice president with the Golden LEAF Foundation (GLF), can personally relate to the organization’s aims to seed new economic opportunities in struggling rural communities. “After graduating from high school, I was told that I needed to get out of the rural community where I grew up because there was nothing there for me. I went away to college but wound up back home operating the family business. I saw the brain drain that was happening in rural communities and knew that if there were not some real innovative ideas and dedicated resources to help stem the brain drain, many rural areas would cease to be viable places. The economic declines and dwindling populations would end up being the demise and downfall of rural life as I knew it.” Now with more than 18 years of work leading Golden LEAF’s education and workforce preparedness grant initiatives, Sorrells is seeing the positive impact of investments made to rejuvenate the rural landscape of NC, particularly in the NCEast Alliance region where GLF has pumped significant resources into establishing quality STEM programs in rural schools.
The STEM lifeline in rural North Carolina
Golden LEAF Foundation supports capturing student interest in Grades 4-9
12 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
through STEM East, the organization is able to save $50,000 for every engineer hired because they’re coming from surrounding rural communities and want to stay here. They’re deeply rooted in these rural communities and would prefer staying there if good paying jobs are available.”
Regarding ACT® WorkKeys® and the National Career Readiness Certificate®, how important is it that Pitsco’s curriculum is aligned with these standardized tests?
Sorrells: I think talent development strategies like this are very important because we are battling both a skills and interest gap. Employers indicate they can teach new hires the technical skills, but they find it difficult to also teach them employability or life skills. They constantly seek candidates who are coachable and can work in teams to collaboratively solve problems. Do they know what to do when they don’t know what to do? Can they identify and filter through gobs of data to get to relevant information that’s necessary to solve a problem? Those traits are hard to develop and take a longer-term perspective, so having a workforce curriculum that aligns to and promotes both technical and employability skills is important.
Why is it important to intentionally build career exposure and experience into the school day at all grade levels?
Sorrells: It’s unfortunate that a lot of STEM curricula get bucketed into CTE, which traditionally is isolated from core academic courses that students take. I think having curricula aligned to career readiness helps connect career and technical education to core curricula in math, science, English, language arts, and social studies. Taking a more integrated approach that shows students, for example, how technical report writing or math gets applied in a career or a business sector is critically important. Math and science teachers, like all teachers, have so much on their plate, making it hard for them to gain a deep understanding of how the core content they teach is applied in the real-world such as in aviation, manufacturing, welding, or nursing. Having the Pitsco curriculum align to core subjects through pacing guides has proven effective in assisting students learn how math is a critical skill that is relevant in an occupational career – we’ve seen that happen with Pitsco.
Have you visited any of the Pitsco STEM/STREAM labs?
Sorrells: I’ve been to a significant number of schools that uses the Pitsco program. I drive about 40,000 miles a year around the state, so a lot of the work that I do is going out to visit grantees and learn what’s happening on the ground. Golden LEAF sees itself as a partner to its grantees, often pushing them to go beyond what they initially proposed and grow their work with intentionality. I don’t have all the answers but
do know another grantee that’s gone through something similar and found a strategy that worked.
Do you recall what your initial takeaways were in those Pitsco labs?
Sorrells: My initial takeaways came from seeing students engaged, on task, and self-directed. They had essentially taken ownership of the learning process where the teacher was serving in more of a facilitator role, coaching students to help them explore, discover, and think more deeply about the problems they were trying to solve. That was a very important observation. I saw a level of excitement from students who may not see school as their thing but through hands-on learning see the relevance of what they are learning in core subjects and how that knowledge can be applied to a work-related experience.
Why is Golden LEAF focused primarily on STEM education for Grades 4-9?
Sorrells: In our infancy, Golden LEAF was primarily concerned with replacing the jobs and revenue lost from the decline in tobacco production. Our core work was focused on helping communities replace jobs and preparing adults for the workplace. After the first few years of making grants, we began to look back and think through how we needed to start developing the pipeline by working with youth to develop a pool of qualified workers. We heard about a skills gap from employers but also an interest gap from parents and students. It was not unusual to hear a parent say, "Thou shalt not pursue employment in manufacturing! I lost my job when the factory closed. You can be a doctor, a lawyer, or any other profession, but don’t go into manufacturing!" And so, the interest gap was something that really caught our attention. We knew that if we were trying to influence students’ decisions in high school, we needed to start early and expose students to career options in the local and regional labor markets. Through research conducted by graduate students at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and some internal findings, we decided to start exposing students to STEM skills and career exploration beginning as early as the fourth grade so they could be successful in the gateway course, Math I, and to extend support on up into the ninth grade to make sure that they were successful. So that drew our initial target on skill building and career exploration for students in Grades 4-9.
MORE ONLINE: Visit Pitsco.com/Network to read more of the interview with Mark Sorrells.
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 13
Friday Institute report cites MAP scores 20 percent higher than those of control group
Pitsco Education’s STEM Expeditions® program helped students achieve statistically significant results on national science tests, according to a December 2017 report from the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University’s College of Education.
Sixth- and seventh-grade STEM Expeditions students at Tucker Creek Middle School in Havelock, NC, scored 20.1 percent higher on the 2016-17 Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) science test than did members of a control group at a nearby middle school.
Eighth graders at Pittsburg (KS) Community Middle School (PCMS) who completed the Expeditions as part of a blended science program showed a statistically significant difference in growth in MAP science and reading than did the virtual comparison group.
According to the Friday Institute’s executive summary in the report, “Students in these analysis clusters tended to show more academic growth in science when compared to their peers in a comparison group or when compared to the national median.”
REPORT:
STEM Expeditions® boost science scores
14 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
Tucker Creek STEM Expeditions teacher Michelle Smith was not surprised at her students’ stellar performance. “I think the results are directly related to the amount of student engagement with the content. Students know from the beginning of the Expeditions that they will be using the scientific principles they are taught to solve the lesson Essential Question, which is an engineering design challenge. Because they know that the information will be immediately valuable to them in designing their solution, they pay more attention and get more involved from the very start.”
PCMS STEM Expeditions teacher Caleb Boulware said his students far exceeded a goal of 100 percent growth on MAP performance with an average growth rate of 178 percent for all the school’s eighth graders in 2016-17. “What shocked me was a lot of times when I used to give a test to the kids they’d pass it, but if you gave it two weeks later they forgot it. With the
Expeditions, the way they’re doing things hands on, the fact of doing it, building, it, designing something from start to finish, seeing it get done, and then interpreting it and pulling it into everyday life, that’s how to make it relevant. . . . I could give them a posttest and go into another Expedition and come back a month later and give the same posttest, and they would still know it.”
STEM Expeditions are standards
based and may be delivered as a single
topic to a whole class or as several topics
simultaneously to student pairs working
through rotations. The 37 Expeditions
feature a wide range of topics from robots
and rockets to food safety and flight to
engineering and electricity.
The engineering design process (ask,
imagine, plan, create, and improve) is built
into all STEM Expeditions, which were
developed around NGSS, ITEEA, and national
math and ELA standards.
MAP Science Scores Results
PILOT GROUP COMPARISON GROUP
46.5 26.4
*Difference in CGP Mean = 20.1
Student academic progress was measured using the
Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of
Academic Progress (MAP) assessments. Specifically, these
assessments use each student’s assessment scores at
multiple time points to yield a single Conditional Growth
Percentile (CGP) metric for that student. This metric indicates
how much the student’s score improved over time compared
to their peers of similar grade and age across the country. In
other words, it provides a percentile of their learning progress
compared to the national median (or 50th percentile).
Tucker Creek Middle School
Growth on MAP Performance
GOAL STEM EXPEDITIONS STUDENTS
100% 178%
Pittsburg Community Middle School Not only did PCMS STEM Expeditions
students outperform the virtual comparison
group, but they also far exceeded the goal
of 100 percent growth on MAP performance,
with an average growth rate of 178 percent
among all the school’s eighth graders during
the course of the school year.
Michelle Smith
Caleb Boulware
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 15
You don’t have to STEM Expeditions®/Career Expeditions profiled by ACT® WorkKeys®
“How will I use this in my life?”
Students who ask this question deserve a solid
answer. Fortunately for students in a Pitsco Expeditions
classroom, they’ve got one. The Expeditions
curriculum highlights the connection between
classroom and careers. Students experience realistic
work scenarios and then use content knowledge and
hands-on work to find solutions.
So far so good, but what about that especially
skeptical student who requires an extra burden of
proof? “Who says this scenario is realistic and this
content knowledge is relevant? Pitsco?”
To that student we say this: You don’t have to take
our word for it.
Profiling the ExpeditionsThe ACT® organization has thoroughly investigated
the skills that are valuable in today’s world of work.
Investigators not only surveyed employers, they
also observed employees in action. This led to the
development of the ACT WorkKeys® Assessments,
which determine National Career Readiness
Certification® (NCRC®). But the ACT organization also
profiles curriculum to determine how impactful it is in improving students’ fundamental career skills.
Pitsco’s STEM and Career Expeditions underwent the profiling process to determine effectiveness of the curriculum. Pitsco’s STEM Modules were profiled first, and they fared well. However, the Expeditions shone even brighter.
ACT-certified profiler Mary Paramore, who conducted the profiling, said of the curriculum, “If you go through the Expeditions, I think you’ve got to come to work better prepared. So, whether they go through a two-year or four-year institution or straight into work, I guarantee you they’re going to come out of there better prepared. I don’t see how they couldn’t.”
Paramore looked at the curriculum’s effectiveness in growing students’ skills in the areas of applied math, workplace documents, and graphic literacy.
“These skills are related directly to the job,” Paramore said, “and we can prove it because we’re using the same tool to profile jobs and curriculum. The curriculum is a combination of getting someone excited about a career and exposing them to the academic side of that career. So, it’s addressing the interest gap and the skills gap.”
take our word for it
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 17
This combination is a huge advantage to the students who experience the Expeditions, as Pitsco curriculum developer David Meador explains. “You make a lot of decisions about yourself when you’re in middle school – about what you’re capable of doing, what your abilities are, what you’re good at, what you like, what you want to pursue. This is the time in development when we start to clearly identify who we are.”
Making relevancy countGiven the proven relevancy of the Expeditions, it is no
surprise that schools are catching on to the long-term benefit for students. At Yankton Middle School in Yankton, South Dakota, the first location in the US to beta test the Career Expeditions, the curriculum is a valuable piece in a carefully designed career track.
“When we saw that WorkKeys and NCRC were aligned with these Expeditions, we just felt that that was a home run,” said Yankton Middle School Principal Todd Dvoracek. “That is an area of focus within our high school, and it’s something that’s even in our accountability at the state level with career readiness. We’re striving to make sure our students are career ready.”
Students who have cultivated career skills in school are in a better position when it comes to seeking certification. A district seeking to improve the employability of its students may be wise to take the NCRC as seriously as employers do.
Dvoracek comments, “At the high school level, they are pushing that employability skills test with the NCRC. We’re excited about that as well. I know that our students who are coming out with bronze, silver, gold, platinum certificates, they’re
employable right away, and they have that form forever. You’re going to get hired and be making some good wages right away, within our area and within the state. . . . The NCRC is a wonderful tool to have for students to be employable right away.”
REGIONAL EMPLOYERS
We are CONNECTING EMPLOYERS, TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS through a growing network of private and public partners. www.STEMEast.org
Printing funds provided by the NC Biotechnology Center.
Beaufort Public Schools • Carteret Public Schools • Craven Public Schools • Duplin Public Schools • Greene Public Schools • Jones Public Schools
Lenoir Public Schools • Onslow Public Schools • Pamlico Public Schools • Pitt Public Schools • Wayne Public Schools
COUNCIL MEMBERS
CONNECTING EMPLOYERS, TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS
*These workplace-readiness skills are commonly used in 80 percent of all occupations. The National Career Readiness Certificate ranks
these skills in a range of levels: Applied Mathematics (3-7), Reading for Information (3-7), and Locating Information (3-6).
Life Sciences Industries Cluster
BIOTECHNOLOGY
AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERSApplied Mathematics 7 • Reading for Information 6 • Locating Information 5CHEMISTSApplied Mathematics 6 • Reading for Information 6 • Locating Information 5EPIDEMIOLOGISTS
Applied Mathematics 5 • Reading for Information 5 • Locating Information 5
LABORATORY/DEPARTMENT TECHNICIANSApplied Mathematics 4 • Reading for Information 5 • Locating Information 5NURSE ANESTHETIST/ANESTHESIOLOGISTS
Applied Mathematics 6 • Reading for Information 7 • Locating Information 6REGISTERED NURSESApplied Mathematics 5 • Reading for Information 5 • Locating Information 4
APPLIED MATHEMATICS 4 * • READING FOR INFORMATION 6 * • LOCATING INFORMATION 4 *
REGIONAL EMPLOYERS
We are CONNECTING EMPLOYERS, TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS
through a growing network of private and public partners.
www.STEMEast.org
Advanced Manufacturing Industries Cluster
Printing funds provided by the NC Biotechnology Center.
Beaufort Public Schools • Carteret Public Schools • Craven Public Schools • Duplin Public Schools • Greene Public Schools • Jones Public Schools
Lenoir Public Schools • Onslow Public Schools • Pamlico Public Schools • Pitt Public Schools • Wayne Public Schools
COUNCIL MEMBERS
CONNECTING EMPLOYERS, TEACHERS, AND STUDENTS *These workplace-readiness skills are commonly used in 80 percent of all occupations. The National Career Readiness Certificate ranks
these skills in a range of levels: Applied Mathematics (3-7), Reading for Information (3-7), and Locating Information (3-6).
Advanced Manufacturing Industries ClusterROBOTS
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING TECHNICIANS
Applied Mathematics 6 • Reading for Information 5 • Locating Information 5
COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS
Applied Mathematics 4 • Reading for Information 4 • Locating Information 4
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERS
Applied Mathematics 5 • Reading for Information 6 • Locating Information 6
MECHANICAL ENGINEERS
Applied Mathematics 7 • Reading for Information 6 • Locating Information 6
PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS
Applied Mathematics 6 • Reading for Information 7 • Locating Information 6
ROBOTICS/AUTOMATED SYSTEMS TECHNICIANS
Applied Mathematics 4 • Reading for Information 4 • Locating Information 4
APPLIED MATHEMATICS 5* • READING FOR INFORMATION 4* • LOCATING INFORMATION 4*
18 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
Hire right – hire onceWorkKeys® certification even more important in age of millennial migration
GREENVILLE, NC – A relatively new tool is being wielded by businesses to improve their chances of hiring the right employees and minimizing the millennial migration that can occur when younger employees job hop until they find a comfortable landing spot.
Employers desire to learn as much as possible about a prospect’s qualifications and job skills from an objective source. At the same time, prospects want to match their proven skills with specific jobs that interest them most. A single solution that meets both sides’ needs is the ACT® WorkKeys® assessments for employers and corresponding National Career Readiness Certificates® for prospects.
The NCRC® evaluates work-readiness skills and is an indicator of job applicant qualifications and skills in the key areas of applied math, graphic literacy, and workplace documents. At the same time, WorkKeys profiles specific jobs to determine the exact skills needed in an effort to help
applicants determine if an opening might be for them based on their NCRC performance.
In many states, including North Carolina, high school students are taking the NCRC to assess their work skills and determine areas of career interest. Even middle school students are experiencing engaging programs such as Pitsco Education’s career-based Expeditions to build the exact skills the WorkKeys assess.
With hiring and onboarding costs at an all-time high for employers, finding the right person is critical, and WorkKeys assessments improve the applicant-weeding out process.
Case in point is Hyster-Yale of Greenville, NC, an international builder of lift trucks that has a wide range of skilled employees including engineers, technicians, welders, mechanics, and assemblers who must possess specific skills that can be evaluated during an NCRC test that often serves as a red light/green light for advancement in the hiring process.
Wayne Washington is the human resources manager for Hyster-Yale’s engineering group. “It’s definitely something where you set the criteria of what you need in terms of work required. I know it’s helped out in the selection of assemblers.”
Specifically, Hyster-Yale employees must possess strong graphic literacy skills. “That’s exactly what’s needed on our floor because all of our lines are computer based,” Washington explained. “We work on a just-in-time model so we don’t order in advance. Everything is assembled as it arrives, and it’s a very visual system.”
Washington is a member of the STEM East Advisory Council made up of superintendents from 11 county school districts and 11 key business leaders in the eastern region. Bruce Middleton is the executive director for STEM East, which for the past seven years has helped dozens of schools build their STEM education offerings and establish strategic plans for meeting the needs of businesses and industry.
“Business and industry say, ‘I don’t care that a kid made a C in his physics course. I do care when I see that they have these badges that they’ve earned or they’ve come through a program that has really prepared them for taking the WorkKeys assessment,’” Middleton said. “It’s what you can do with all you know that makes all the difference.”
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 19
Inside the classroom testing of Pitsco’s curriculaEvery innovation is a step into the unknown.
This begs the question: As leaders, how can we ensure
both originality and quality for our customers? The answer is
rigorous testing of our curriculum solutions.
Testing is a multi-phase process. The first round of tests
occurs internally, as Pitsco’s quality assurance team pokes and
prods, focusing on the basic integrity of the product. This is
valuable, but it doesn’t provide a picture of how the end users
will relate to the solution. For that, we perform beta testing.
Beta testing puts the curriculum into the hands of end
users. Pitsco’s developers monitor its functionality in the
real world. They gather feedback from students, teachers,
and administrators. A wealth of insight is generated, and
sometimes the developers go back to the drawing board
to rework aspects. But when a product is radically new, an
additional level of testing might be necessary to ensure
absolute objectivity.
That comes through a pilot study. Just as with beta testing,
the product is tested in classrooms, but Pitsco’s developers
take a step back and let an expert third-party facilitate the
testing. This gives a crystal-clear picture of how well our
product performs.
Leadership is not just a privilege; it is also a responsibility.
We have a responsibility to ensure our products continue to
live up to the reputation we have built within the industry. Based on the results of recent tests, we feel confident we are doing just that.
Beta testing in YanktonIn January 2018, beta testing of Pitsco’s newest curriculum
offering, Career Expeditions, began at South Dakota’s Yankton school district. The curriculum is ambitious, aiming to inform and prepare students for both college and careers. The titles have been profiled against ACT® WorkKeys® assessments used to determine National Career Readiness Certification (NCRC®).
The district was the first location in the US to beta test the Career Expeditions, which give middle school students a head start on discovering their aptitudes and abilities based on not just hands-on experiences but also on skills and personality assessments.
Career preparation and employability are prominent on the radar at Yankton High School, which makes Career Expeditions a key course at the middle school; it’s so important that it is required for all students and counts as half a high school CTE credit. Educators at Yankton recognize that 21st-century skills nurtured via team-based collaborative experiences translate directly to the workplace where employers are pleading for workers to possess such skills.
“We talk about that all the time,” said Career Expeditions teacher Tiffany Beste. “Problem-solving, critical thinking, troubleshooting. I think the way that these programs have
The proving groundPitsco’s intense curriculum testing process gives teachers and students the confidence to pour their heart into their classroom efforts.
20 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
been designed is definitely forcing students to do more of
that, which is really good. I mean they’re going to learn some
things when they’re working with the robots and when they’re
working with the different equipment. . . . It definitely makes
them slow down, solve some problems before they’re even
allowed to move forward.”
Pilot study in BertieLast year, leaders in Bertie County Schools in Windsor, North
Carolina, moved to refocus Bertie Middle School’s career prep,
implementing Pitsco STEM Expeditions® at the seventh- and eighth-
grade levels. Additionally, the school elected to become the subject
of an ongoing pilot study by the Friday Institute for Educational
Innovation looking at the success of the Expeditions curricula. (The
Friday Institute operates as part of North Carolina State University.)
Initially, there was trepidation about the curriculum’s
radically new paradigm. Teacher Latisha Freeman explained:
“We were used to the class being teacher led. The Pitsco
model is more student led and the teacher does facilitation. At
first it was difficult to wrap our heads around this!”
Uncertainty hung in the air. Would the new model prove to
be a benefit or a burden?
As it turns out, responses have been positive. Teacher Jacqueline Thompson likes the effect it has on her students. “It forces them to think on a higher-order level versus someone always telling them the answer. That looks so uncomfortable in the beginning. But as the children go along, they are seeing what the requirements are and what our expectations are.”
Freeman as well found the benefits of the facilitation model. “It gives me a chance to walk around and talk to my students. If there is something they don't understand, I can go to them directly and work with them one-on-one versus having to deal with the class as a whole group.”
Speaking with students is another essential method for
gauging our curricula’s impact. We recently spoke with Kayla,
a Bertie Middle School student. After being exposed to STEM
though the Expeditions, Kayla – who is an ambitious, big-
picture thinker – had no doubts about its value.
“STEM is beneficial for everybody, not even just kids,” she
said. “STEM should be a worldwide process where everybody
gets a bit of it wherever they are.”
Kayla’s enthusiasm is fired by both personal and altruistic
reasons. She credits the Expeditions with opening her up to
the field of science, and she is contemplating careers that
combine science and law. The Expeditions, she says, have
opened her eyes “to new experiences and new opportunities
to help make the world a better place.”
Putting more real-world science knowledge in the hands
of people around the world could reap great benefits. After
learning the process of water purification in an Expedition, she
reflected that this knowledge could benefit citizens of other
countries where clean water isn’t readily available.
Perhaps Kayla is onto something. But she also directly observed
benefit in the effect of the Expeditions on classmates.
“I feel like my fellow students appreciated getting a new
vibe, learning what STEM is and being pushed toward the
right career path. . . . It has helped them believe in the future
and believe in themselves. And it also taught some of them
discipline – basic stuff like cleaning up after your Expedition,
making sure you turn in your work on time, being responsible
for your own self.”
The student perspective
ResultsThough the Friday Institute has not yet published its results from the pilot study at Bertie Middle School, the organization has completed studies of Expeditions at two other sites, and their results have been spectacular. Read the results in “Report: STEM Expeditions® boost science scores,” located on page 14.
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 21
Pitsco Education’s collaboration with the Partnership for 21st Century Learning helps expand a powerful shared vision for students.
Pitsco Education has been a pioneer in innovative classroom solutions that emphasize social and emotional development and real-world relevancy. But the company’s voice has reached beyond individual classrooms to participate in a national conversation about the future of education. Its most recent collaboration, with the organization P21®, is another step in expanding a powerful shared vision for students.
“Our mission tells the story that we want to share: All learners need and deserve 21st century learning opportunities to thrive as tomorrow’s leaders, workers, and citizens,” said David Ross, CEO of the Partnership for 21st Century Learning. “We do this work more effectively by building coalitions that involve innovative and dedicated organizations like Pitsco.”
Proud to be a member alongside such highly effective organizations as Destination Imagination® and the Project Management Institute Educational Foundation (PMIEF™), Pitsco Education has a presence on P21’s Strategic Council through its Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Stephan Turnipseed.
Turnipseed, an impassioned advocate for hands-on learning, has had a vibrant career in education, previously serving as the president of LEGO® Education North America, the chairman for the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, and EVP and CSO of Destination Imagination.
“In a societal landscape of astounding complexity, how do we draw the map to 21st-century success for our young people?” asked Turnipseed. “No one person or organization has the full picture. We need a synergy of partnerships, each bringing expertise and capacity to fulfill a shared vision. Just as Pitsco brings knowledge to life for students through hands-on learning, Pitsco and our partners bring a vision for education to life through collaboration in communities across the nation and world.”
Part of that vision, as described by P21, is the recognition that “21st century learning environments and opportunities are essential to prepare all students for the challenges of work, life, and citizenship in the 21st century and beyond. . . .” In this crucial area, Pitsco has been leading by example for more than 40 years.
Matt Frankenbery, vice president of education at Pitsco, elaborated on Pitsco’s leadership philosophy. “Thought leadership in education is about more than just generating valuable thoughts. It is about putting thought into practice.”
Frankenbery recently had the opportunity to share a piece of Pitsco’s vision at the Patterns of Innovation conference held in Napa, California. The conference was organized by P21 and celebrated the collaborative spirit that P21 extols. The stated goal was to share 21st-century learning practices that have demonstrated success.
Frankenbery copresented with John Chaffee, CEO of NCEast Alliance, an economic development organization serving eastern North Carolina. The two discussed the success of STEM East, an NCEast Alliance initiative that has enjoyed a fruitful partnership with Pitsco for seven years. STEM East has so far launched 84 STEM Centers in middle schools in the state, furthering the quest to create a true K12-to-Career pipeline supporting the development of regional industries.
Chaffee discussed economic and workforce development aspects of STEM East, while Frankenbery discussed the initiative from an education perspective. “The importance of STEM education in high school has been rightly emphasized in recent years,” said Frankenbery. “But to truly build a STEM-literate pipeline of workers, the focus must be put on STEM at the elementary and middle school levels.”
Pitsco’s call for hands-on, minds-on education mirrors the larger effort the company is involved in with its partners – the sharing of knowledge and strengths to create a brighter future for young people.
P21® – Pitsco Education partnership puts 21st-century learning theory into action
22 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
AUSTIN, TX – As the largest STEM school system in the nation – and getting an unprecedented number of students into STEM majors and programs – Harmony Public Schools could be confident that its secondary STEM programs were hitting the mark.
But being relatively new to the elementary school scene, Harmony went in search of a STEM solution that would develop students’ fundamental skills and feed seamlessly into the middle level. The answer came not in the form of a traditional STEM lab but in a more robust STREAM Missions/STEM Units program from Pitsco Education.
The K-5 solution is in its first year at Harmony Science Academy – Cedar Park in Austin, TX, and could soon expand to other Harmony locations across the state and even the US as the district spreads its successful model. For now, though, Austin is the logical first stop for Pitsco’s elementary STEM program because of the burgeoning area’s need for a STEM-literate workforce.
“Austin is such a tech-happy city. We’re still one of the top cities in the nation for the tech boom,” said Victoria Stockstill, Austin director of outreach and development for Harmony Public Schools. “Harmony produces a lot of STEM graduates. We want to try and fix that workforce problem here.”
Pitsco’s STEM programs can be found in several Harmony middle-level programs, but because the district is STEM
focused overall, it has developed its own project-based
learning activities and programs at the high school level.
“We’ve been doing it for so long [since 2001], we’ve really
refined our model,” Stockstill said. “One of the reasons we’re so
interested in Pitsco at the elementary level is because it looks
very similar to the work that we’re doing at the secondary
level. So, it’s a good marriage between the two.”
The Pitsco curriculum and materials were purchased with
funding from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Coding
and robotics solutions were also implemented at the academy
with Michael & Susan Dell Foundation funding.
“Our aim is to get kids really interested and confident at
the elementary level and build the right foundation,” Stockstill
said. “That’s something we want to do system-wide for
Harmony. . . . Our hope is to have Pitsco up and running all
over our elementary campuses as the years progress and we
work out the kinks and the scheduling.”
Harmony Public Schools • 54 schools across Texas (7 in Austin)
• 64 percent of graduates choose a STEM field or a STEM major.
• 61 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.
• 64 percent of alumni are the first in their family to attend college.
• In the early stages of replicating its model nationally
Harmony finds its elementary STEM solution
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 23
Massachusetts Army National
TETRIX® materials strengthen statewide effort with Urban Search & Rescue competition
BEDFORD, MA – Providing students with hands-on robotics experience opens doors to their future. Strengthening STEM skills benefits all of our communities by giving today’s youth the knowledge they will need to tackle tomorrow’s issues. Unfortunately, not all schools have the resources to provide these experiences. Now, schools in Massachusetts have a new ally in delivering these opportunities: the Massachusetts Army National Guard.
The Guard had long noted a hunger for STEM resources. Over the years, the Guard has partnered with several education organizations in its effort to attract talented, technically minded young people. It was through a partnership with SkillsUSA® that the Massachusetts Army National Guard became aware of a perfect opportunity to help schools meet their needs: Robotics: Urban Search & Rescue.
In this robotics competition created and sponsored by Pitsco Education, teams of students design and operate remote-controlled robots through simulated disaster areas, seeking hidden explosives and disposing of them.
One point of interest was the overlap with the Guard’s expertise. It maintains multiple explosive ordnance disposal
(EOD) teams and works with bomb squads in state law-
enforcement agencies.
“Urban Search & Rescue plays right into our mission,” said
Sergeant First Class Geoffrey Allen of the Guard’s recruiting and
retention battalion. “You can easily bridge the gap between the
robotics the students use and what we would use in a real-
world scenario for our own search-and-rescue missions.”
As of 2018, the Massachusetts Army National Guard is
taking the lead with Urban Search & Rescue in the state. The
Guard is providing dedicated trailers fitted with competition
courses for district and state leadership meets for SkillsUSA
and is running the competitions.
But that isn’t all. To increase STEM access, the organization
is also bringing its trailers and TETRIX® robotics sets to schools
that lack resources to become involved in the competition.
The full experienceThe program has had only a short run, but the interest
level from schools has been, in a word, fantastic. The traveling
trailers have been booked week after week.
Guard takes lead with USAR
By Cody White, Communications Assistant • [email protected]
Underserved schools seeking gateways to STEM experiences through robotics have a wonderful ally in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. The Guard is using its resources to bring the Urban Search & Rescue competition to a wider population.
24 LEADERS IN EDUCATION
Electronics Instructor Lisa Roy expressed the enthusiasm that many teachers have felt, “The Pitsco Urban Search and Rescue robot event, in conjunction with the Massachusetts Army National Guard, was an amazing day for the students of Greater Lowell Technical High School. Students learned team-building, critical-thinking, and problem-solving. The Pitsco robots are educational, fun, and challenging for the students. They also provided the students with the opportunity to see the skills they have learned in school used in a real-world environment for search and rescue. Working with the National Guard staff made the event even better for the students and staff.”
Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, the experience the Guard provides is tailored to the wishes of the school. Are teachers looking to introduce complex concepts such as programming and construction, or are they looking to give students a taste for competition? Either way, the Guard is happy to lend a hand.
The team can roll in with prebuilt robots and an obstacle course and host a quick competition. Students have a blast navigating the robots remotely from a command center with the aid of a spotter at the course.
Or, if a teacher wishes, the Guard can provide a more in-depth experience – presenting a whole class on robotics and search and rescue.
The mobile trailers and the expertise the Guard offers are key to this versatility. And, of course, there’s the power of the TETRIX robotics platform.
“There are so many different facets to the [TETRIX] robot,” said Allen. “Students learn about electronics – putting the
motherboard and the servos in the right spot. They learn about
mechanics and mechanical engineering – put the wrong piece
in the wrong way and the robot isn’t going to work. They can
even take it a step further, adding modules to the robots so
students can program their robots to do simple tasks.”
A benefit to allThrough the program, students are exposed to the
National Guard and its mission to serve community and
country. Students interested in robotics or disaster relief
can form a vision of their career path based on what they
experience. But for the Guard members leading the Urban
Search & Rescue program, the reward is also personal.
Battalion Commander Lieutenant Eric J. Dinoto shared his
own story: “I was born and raised here in Massachusetts and
have two great kids attending our local high school, so to say
that I am invested in enhancing our children’s education is an
understatement. . . . The Massachusetts Army National Guard is the
original community-based organization, and as citizen-soldiers we
pride ourselves on giving back to our local communities.”
Guard units across the country have noticed the success
of the Massachusetts program and the extraordinary STEM
opportunity it offers for the state.
“Some of these schools just don’t have the ability to
purchase things of this scale on their own,” said Sergeant
Allen. “To give them access to that on our site – it’s a win-win
for them. We have a great time doing it, and it has brought us
into a lot of schools that really want STEM access.”
Members of the Guard are as enthusiastic about the program as students who benefit. For them, it is a chance to give back to the communities where they live, work, and raise their families.
LEADERS IN EDUCATION 25
The Pitsco ExperienceSolutions
ImplementerIntegratorMaker
Products Activities Curriculum
InnovatorThe learner is at the core of the Pitsco Experience. Experiential learning
– delivered through products, activities, curriculum, and solutions – prepares students for a future no one can describe.
We are here to help all types of educator-innovators succeed in our mission of . . .
Leading education that positively affects learners.
