By Lauren Burgess
LOWNDES – One hundred fifty-five fourth through eighth graders came out to the Grove the week of June 10 to participate in the fourth annual Pine Grove Middle School STEAM Summer Institute.
Started under the leadership of Principal Ivy Smith in the summer of 2016, Pine Grove Middle’s STEAM Summer Institute has grown, with the number of campers doubling in size. Mrs. Smith, who is taking her expertise to Hahira Middle School, is handing the reins to Mr. Sam Clemons, former assistant principal.
Mr. Clemons talked about the history of their STEAM program, saying “About two years ago, we achieved our STEM Certification. Last year, we started an initiative to add the ‘A’ in for the Arts and expanding our current model of instruction to include the arts.”
He continued by stressing the importance of adding the “A” to their certification, saying “We don’t always consider the arts to be as important as other subjects, but we can tie in many different standards to the arts through its different components. When you look at graphic design and graphic arts, there are academic standards tied to them, like Math and English.”
At the start of the camp, students chose a specific area of STEAM–science, technology, engineering, art, or math–as their focus.
Zach Hurley and Ryan Dixon led the science portion of the camp. Students spent much of their time outdoors, getting their hands dirty. In the food forest, students learned much about conservation and ecology while planting seeds. Students also got the opportunity to learn some of the basics in beekeeping with live bees, getting to take home a jar of honey that they extracted themselves.
“The main theme for our group is doing things in a way that helps other people down the road, that’s not just about us,” said Hurley. “This group got to eat some of it this morning that some of those previous students planted. Students complain “why didn’t we get to do that,” and I always tell them that the kids before you did things to help you, and you’re doing stuff to help the next group. The reason we tied in the bees is that they don’t have a ‘me’ attitude. We connect the idea that we do things today that won’t help us to help the next generation.”
Gina Tindall and Curt Johnson oversaw the technology portion of the camp. At the start of the week, students build robots and learned to program code. At the end of the camp, students went head-to-head in a competition for the best robot. “Our youngest group started this whole process by building the foundation of the robots with Legos. Each day after that, each group learned another component to the whole masterplan, where today, they had a wrestling tournament,” said Johnson.
Dr. Heather Morin and Tammi Sims guided campers through activities in the MakerSpace. Campers had free range to tinker with the many different activities. Building towers and other structures, learning about electricity and circuits, and experiencing virtual reality were just a few experiences to choose from.
“The MakerSpace is fun because they get to build whatever contraption they want. They fail and get to start over,” Sims said. “Not every learning experience allows you to fail and then come up with a new plan and try again.”
Issa Young, Pine Grove’s new Choir Director, taught campers how to use some African instruments with different techniques and drumbeats. “It’s important for these kids to be exposed to the arts because it opens up a path for them to express themselves,” said Young.
At the end of the week, campers showed off what they learned, putting on a performance of several songs from Disney’s “The Lion King”, complete with a Simba stuffed animal.
For Students who chose Math as their focus, Meghan Fender, Lynde Henry, and Brooke Atkins led them in constructing several different STEAM challenges. By creating and shooting off paper rockets, students learned about how variables can affect an experiment.
Brooke Atkins spoke about how they tried to place an emphasis on how things students learn in the classroom apply to real life situations, saying, “We incorporate these fun activities into the lessons they learn, and really lets them see the connection between what they learn and things they may grow up and want to do.”
“The most important part of our program is to get students interested in STEAM. We want to expose them to various mediums of learning and activities. Many students are not exposed to certain aspects of STEAM, or just don’t know what it is,” responded Principal Sam Clemons when asked about why such programs are important. “We want to show our kids that STEAM is everywhere.”
