Five elementary schools throughout the Lamar County School District are joining the more than 12,000 schools throughout the country in offering Project Lead The Way, a hands-on classroom environment designed to help children develop knowledge and skills needed to excel in their studies.
In Lamar County, the program – which is being offered at Baxterville, Lumberton, Purvis Upper, Purvis Lower and Sumrall Elementary schools – will focus on activities in science, technology, engineering and math, more commonly known as STEM. Hands-on activities, projects and problems can entail anything from designing a car seat belt or building digital animations based on students’ short stories.
Teresa Sappington, who serves as STEM coordinator for the Lamar County School District, said officials are especially excited to offer the new program, as this is the first year the district has employed the coordinator position.
“We’re really wanting to implement STEM in a way that integrates it into language arts, math and the other curriculum that teachers are already teaching,” she said. “(That way), students get those problem-solving and creativity skills that they often need later on in life, but in a way that it’s interesting to the students.
“And it’s not just one more thing that the teachers have to do – they’re actually teaching other parts of their curriculum, just teaching it in a different way. This aligns to the new science curriculum that the state adopted, and it also teaches ELA and math skills.”
Through Project Lead The Way, students will be encouraged to engage in critical and creative thinking, build teamwork skills and grow as problem-solvers by exploring and gaining confidence in STEM subjects.
“For example, in one of the projects, they develop and build a glider system,” Sappington said. “There’s robotics incorporated into it, both building the robot and programming as a computer science module.
“We definitely see the need to put computer science in the hands of these students, so as they get older and older they’ll be able to more readily adapt to what we know as our changing educational system and our changing work system.”
Project Lead The Way also includes professional development training to provide teachers with support and resources to help them get more involved with and inspire students. Through the program’s professional development, teachers can connect with other educators throughout the country to share experiences regarding the program.
The training and the programs are both sponsored through a grant from Cooperative Energy.
“The teachers are really excited,” Sappington said. “They did two days of training last week, and already they’re getting their students into the curriculum and doing some implementation. So I think it’ll be great for our school system, and it’s great for our kids.”
