The World Economic Forum, a not-for-profit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland focusing on entrepreneurship, recently cited three critical skills students will need for tomorrow’s work world: problem-solving, collaboration and adaptability.

Those broad concepts can be challenging to come by. That’s why many education institutions lean toward a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum.

In Georgia, STEM and STEAM (the ‘A’ stands for arts) education is an integrated curriculum driven by exploratory project-based learning and student-centered development of ideas and solutions.

How a STEM curriculum impacts the community

Stripling Elementary Principal Molly McAuliffe was aware of the benefits such an educational focus can have for all students, especially her student body of 800. With 84% of them qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, it is a Title I school.

That means the Georgia Department of Education provides technical assistance, resources and program monitoring to ensure all children have a “significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable and high-quality education and to close educational achievement gaps.”

“We like to say that [free and reduced-price lunch] classification is about how students pay for their meals. It has nothing to do with how they learn,” McAuliffe said. “Our goal is to provide a high-quality education for all students. And we believe here at Stripling Elementary that our kids can do anything they put their minds to.”

Located in the Norcross Cluster, Stripling Elementary serves families from Peachtree Corners and Norcross. The school has had a close relationship with Paul Duke STEM High School and Norcross High School.

“We’ve had student leaders from both schools come over and sort of mentor our kids in different ways,” said McAuliffe.

The Norcross Robotics team was involved with the school’s STEM night in the past, and Paul Duke students who are part of the Society of Black Engineers have put together learning sessions for the elementary kids.

“Paul Duke also has a mentoring program this year where they work with third-grade students,” she said. “They come over on Fridays and mentor some of our third graders to get them excited about school and learning and specifically about what they can learn in the STEM fields.”

A worthwhile endeavor

With a student appetite for a new kind of learning, McAuliffe and her staff decided to become one of the few STEM-certified elementary schools in the county. Of Gwinnett County’s 88 elementary schools, three have state STEM certification.

“We looked at [our school mission] as a team and updated it this past summer with our instructional leadership team. When we looked at our vision about students becoming responsible, empathetic and driven world-class leaders, we thought about how we can achieve that,” said McAuliffe.

“Things like encouraging effective communication, critical thinking and innovative problem solving among our student body were at the forefront,” she added.

McAuliffe said that the school’s science director shared a fascinating statistic recently: 65% of the jobs that their students are going to be doing …do not yet exist.

“We can’t be giving them specific facts or figures or little bits of knowledge. That is not going to help them. What will help them is if they know how to think critically, problem solve, be creative and effectively communicate with one another.”

Those are all components of a STEM-based curriculum.

Assistant Principal Frank Rodriguez and teacher Rebecca Phillips, now the school’s STEM coordinator, agreed to take on the STEM specials class and lead the initiative for the school.

“We’re at the beginning of this process, and we know it’s going to take about three to five years for us to get the STEM certification from the state,” said McAuliffe. “We know it’s challenging, but we also believe our kids deserve it.”

Getting students engaged

As the STEM specials teacher, Phillips said she gets the “absolute wonderful privilege of teaching every single student in the school. Just to see the kids spark up and get excited about the problems around us in the world, and maybe coming up with some solutions to solve them, is really what drives me.”

STEM uses project-based learning where children are encouraged to use their natural curiosity and creativity to solve problems.

“Kids that might just be sitting in the back of the classroom kind of bored and not interested get engaged when they have something that they can relate to and want to solve because, I think, kids in general just want to solve problems,” said Phillips.

“They’re much more creative than adults, in my opinion, and they’re able to break out of that box that sometimes we get put into,” she elaborated.

She said this is especially true for non-native English speakers since project-based learning requires students to work in groups.

“It requires them to communicate, and then it gives them so much more of a desire to work to acquire that English language,” said Phillips. “I watch them being so brave and working through that kind of quiet phase a little bit more quickly because they are dying to express themselves and communicate with their teammates.”

The classes use grade-level-appropriate problems — and the students work out solutions. Recently, fifth graders were working with magnets when a student realized their STEM education could help a real-world issue.

“One kid’s dad would always get flat tires. He worked in construction and there are always nails around,” said Rodriguez. “He invented a machine that used magnets to pick up the nails in the parking area.”

Bringing staff on board

Although Stripling Elementary has just one teacher dedicated solely to STEM, it’s a concept that covers just about every subject.

“Right now, we have been trying to get more teachers involved in the STEM process,” said Phillips.

She employs the same techniques with educators that she uses to keep the kids engaged. For the past few months, several teachers have volunteered for what they call “sip and STEM” sessions.

“In October, we took on a Halloween theme and added flavored syrups like peach and blueberry to a base of Sprite,” she said. “We gave them names like Dragon’s Blood.”

Phillips also gave teachers and administrators a STEM challenge — how one might use light to scare people in a haunted house.

“She taught us quickly how to build a circuit to light up light bulbs. Then she gave us cardboard boxes and a lot of fun materials like aluminum foil. We had to build the circuit and get it to light up in 40 minutes,” said McAuliffe.

Those kinds of sharing experiences drive the point home and bring the other staffers — teachers and non-teaching staff — into the world of STEM.

“We’re still in the process of learning all of the steps we’re going to need to go through,” said McAuliffe. “But we have submitted an intent to seek certification form with the State Department of Education.”

Following the established rubric, McAuliffe is confident that Stripling Elementary will be able to add the STEM seal to its school accomplishments before the end of the decade.