STEM Day links classrooms, employers
June 27, 2013 - Leading employers that depend on highly skilled workers opened their research labs and production floors Monday to more than 150 secondary school educators from across North Carolina who are preparing students for the 21st century workforce.
Teachers and administrators from innovative schools, districts and regions in the state that focus on science, technology, engineering and math -- STEM in shorthand -- participated in NC New Schools' second annual STEM Day to help foster stronger connections between classrooms and businesses.
Educators learned about cutting-edge agriscience, energy, data analysis, and the development of sophisticated industrial products during work-based learning experiences at a dozen employers ranging from small local companies to large global corporations. They left with new
ideas about how to teach their students about real-world applications for the STEM subjects they teach.
"After spending the last 30 years in school, I was finally able to answer this question today: "When will I ever use this?" said Kevin Smith, an administrator from Duplin County Schools. "It was great to hear slope, derivatives, and Y intercept in the real world and also see the
engineering design process in practice."
Courtney Harrell, English teacher at Yadkin Valley Regional Career Academy said, "I really enjoyed the problem solving session where we got to work with the power outages when a tree had gotten in the way of a power line and [we had to] put the system back online. It was
interesting to see a problem that people at Duke Energy have to solve every day and see how that will translate into 'hey, I can do this with my students!'."
Participants visited a company of their choice relevant to their school's economic theme. The educators joining the visits were from schools that are partners with NC New Schools and part of statewide networks of schools with a particular economic theme: health and life sciences, energy and sustainability, biotechnology and agriscience and aerospace, advanced manufacturing and security.
Photo: Alycia Worthy Ali, of City of Medicine Academy, and Dea Riha, of Middle College at UNCG, working in a GlaxoSmithKline laboratory.
