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Jackson-Milton adds STEM-like programming to district
By ROBERT CONNELLY
NORTH JACKSON
The Jackson-Milton School District has added curriculum choices for eighth-grade and high- school students this school year.
Jackson-Milton High School and Middle School Principal Dave Vega said they are offering five new semester-long classes for grades eight through 12 called Inventor Cloud. The district is partnering with Choffin Career Center in Youngstown for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) based approach, but mixes in language arts and social studies as well to focus on four skills — hands-on work, collaborations, critical thinking and problem solving.
“The most important aspect of this program to me is the students get an opportunity to use their critical-thinking skills, and they also get an opportunity to collaborate with the other students in their grades to solve problems,” Vega said. “Problem solving is big — that’s one of the things that businesses are telling us that kids are coming out and they don’t necessarily have the problem-solving ability that they need to be successful in today’s world.”
That will be the focus for sophomore and junior language-arts teacher, Angeline Theis, who is teaching Innovation, Creativity & Design Thinking. She said, “There is a lot of focus on the process, so the design process, the thinking process — it’s trying to make our kids understand that just because ... it’s your first idea [that it has to work]. It might not work.”
She acknowledges she wasn’t sure how a language-arts teacher would fit into STEM programming but said as she dug into the curriculum, she saw the need for writing and communication skills for kids. She said she has 18 in the class, with a mix of juniors and seniors of both sexes.
All eighth-grade students in the district will take the first course during their nine-week rotation and have the option to continue with the series until they graduate, Vega said.
This has been a process over the past two to three years. “We’ve been looking for, I guess, the right program that fits us as a smaller school district, and this one seems to fit us the most because we can use the teachers we have and the resources we have,” Vega said of Inventor Cloud.
Steve Mohr, junior and senior science teacher, will be teaching three classes: Environmental Sustainability, in which students look at reducing carbon footprints of everyday products; Creative Entrepreneurship, looking at how a person can start a business; and Foundations of Additive Manufacturing, more of a typical STEM class.
“I’m pretty excited about the tie in with America Makes ... developing things on a 3-D printer,” Mohr said. “The idea of manufacturing is going to kind of change. It’s the idea that everything is going to be customizable. ... You’ll walk into a shoe store, and they’ll custom fit it and make you a shoe.”
The classes will be able to use a device to send files to the Choffin Career Center for them to print out objects through the 3-D printers.
Theis is hoping these classes will impact lots of kids within the Jackson-Milton school district. “I would like to see this class taken by a variety of kids, not just college-track kids ... [this will] hopefully open some avenues for a variety of students and their interests.”