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Boardman teachers turn grant funds into global-awareness project
BOARDMAN
With the help of a $5,000 grant from the Turning Foundation, students in Boardman will have the opportunity to increase their global awareness without leaving the classroom.
Boardman STEAM coach Todd Smith gathered what he called “the brain trust of Boardman schools,” and they devised a project in which 30 students will create smartphone apps that address issues faced by a group of rural Thai students. The group consists of technology teachers Carrie Hurd and Tim Harker and art teacher Chelsea Wisbar.
“We wanted to make it as collaborative as we could. We wanted to bring in the idea of empathy and the concept of global awareness,” Smith said.
Bart Smith, Glenwood Junior High School principal, provided the international connection.
His wife is from Thailand, and every summer, they volunteer at his wife’s village school.
From the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, the Thai students will identify six that apply to their lives. The goals touch on various aspects of life from clean water to gender equality.
“Then our students here are going to learn about those goals and how they’re affecting kids their own age in another country,” Smith said.
Grant funds will be used to purchase licenses for an app-making software and Chromebooks.
Part of the project-planning process involves anticipating obstacles.
The project’s participants will be contending with a 12-hour time difference. Additionally, because the school is in rural Thailand, most of its students do not speak fluent English.
“[Bart Smith’s] wife and mother-in-law will be doing a lot of the translations,” Smith said.
As communications coordinator Amy Radinovic noted, “It’s going to be a learning process from start to finish. Everything that’s difficult about it is going to be the learning process.”
Since students are driving the project, their problem-solving skills will be highlighted.
“I’m excited to see how they deal will all of those because we’re facilitating more so than running this project,” Hurd added.
Smith intends to conduct the project so that it can be replicated.
“We’re going to have one of our students be a videographer and videotape this whole process and another one being an archivist and doing the notes so we have stuff to refer back to,” Smith said.
Energized by the award, the group already is thinking about how to extend the project.
“I don’t know if we could pull this off, but if our kids wanted to volunteer to go in the summer with Bart and his wife, that could be arranged,” Smith said.