Science takes great minds and passion. Absolutely anyone can understand how gravity caused you to fall on your face and how complicated designing robots can be. But, genuinely loving science takes more than understanding; it takes appreciation. That’s what STEM day is for: building appreciation for STEM careers in the future generations.
“STEM day at Warren Elementary is basically [when] all the kids get to gallery walk around the entire school, and there’s some classrooms where the school invites outside STEM educators and really cool opportunities for the students to be involved in STEM,” said senior Katie Huynh.
According to science teacher Ryan McCoy, this has been going on for about 3 years and encourages student participation in STEM day because of how it will help both high schoolers and elementary schoolers interested in STEM careers.“I hope that they learn that there’s a lot of interesting fields that you could be doing in STEM,” said McCoy, “It’s something that I would have appreciated if I was in elementary school…and I think it’s really valuable for those high school students to see those young people look up to them and ask questions.”
McCoy is not the only one to value STEM day; junior Matt Luskowski wants STEM day to help validate younger students’ curiosity for STEM subjects, as well as teach them about his own interests.“I hope they learned that their future’s important,” said Luskowski, “and how airplanes work.”
In order to teach students about STEM subjects and encourage more interest in such topics, a variety of activities and experiments were held.
“I’ve been running this DNA model/puzzle for the last few years,” said Huynh, “and I kind of explain the bases and the nucleotides as Legos. Then they can piece it together like that.”
DNA is interesting and an important scientific concept for children to learn, but it only involves the science aspect of STEM. So, Warren Elementary brought other STEM experts to teach other aspects of STEM as well.
“We brought a wind tunnel,” said Luskowski, “but there was another guy from a farming company that experiments with grain silo explosions. They’re also robotics teams there. There was 3D printing. There was a lot of different stuff there.
While not every student is involved or interested, STEM day has clearly brought joy for years to the students who find joy in STEM projects.
“They’re either super excited, or they have no idea, and they don’t really care for it,” said Huynh, “So, you prepare for both ends, but it’s honestly great whenever a student is super excited to be there, is interactive, and doesn’t, you know, ignore you.”
Finding value in the most significant parts of one’s life doesn’t take much. It can be found through a love for teaching, a shared appreciation, and the spectacular visions of small sparks that quickly transform into explosions (literal and metaphorical) that you can never forget the feeling and sight of. Science takes great minds and passion. But all minds need time to grow, and passion is easily influenced by the smallest of memories. So, nothing is better than a day of growth and experimentation.
