Not only are our FIRST students in Camdenton introduced to STEM concepts, they are able to see the connection between what they're learning in the classroom and the real world beyond.  FIRST gives students answers to questions that sometimes stop them from getting started: “Why do I need to learn science, technology, engineering or math?" and "Why do I need to understand this concept?

The Camdenton 4-H LASER (Laker Afterschool Science Engineering & Robotics) team works closely with technical mentors—expert engineers, fabricators, graphic artists, Web designers and computer programmers.  They work with local business leaders who help them understand all aspects of a business and what it is like to work for a company.  The only way the team can succeed is if everyone works together toward one common goal.  If one team member fails to do his or her job it impacts the success of the team as a whole, just like the real world.

The core values of "gracious professionalism^®" and "coopertition^®" interwoven in FIRST are what the coaches and I, as well as the Camdenton R-III school district, value most.  It is part of the ethos of FIRST; a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others and respects individuals and the community.  With gracious professionalism, fierce competition and mutual gain are not separate notions.  Coopertition, or displaying unqualified kindness and respect in the face of fierce competition, is built on the idea that teams can and should help and cooperate with each other, even as they compete.  Both of these values become a way of life that carries over into students' daily lives.

The Challenges of Rural Afterschool Programs

Camdenton is a decidedly rural community, but with a few unique aspects.  The population of the town is 3,200, but we have 4,200 K-12 students on campus between the hours of 8:00 am and 3:00 pm daily, because the school district covers 372 square miles.  There is little industry and no big corporations to support the robotics teams.  FIRST was implemented at Camdenton in 2009 with 21 high school members and three adult mentors.  In the four short years since, the program has grown to include an additional 250 students in grades 4-12 and will expand next year with the addition of the Junior FIRST LEGO League program for students in grades 1-3.  The growth is extraordinary, testimony to what the program means to our students, our school and our community.  In fact, the elementary teams are formed using a lottery system, because demand surpasses the school's resources of space, staffing and financing.  With respect to the latter—money—we face a particular challenge rooted in our rural setting: We have to travel to Kansas City or St. Louis to compete (three hours one-way.)

We're fortunate that the Camdenton R-III School District and community have embraced FIRST.  Camdenton Optimist member and STEM Alliance organizer John Albright says that “FIRST has been life-changing for many of the youth that participate in Camdenton’s afterschool program.  One hundred percent of the graduating seniors have gone on to universities and are majoring in STEM-related fields for the last four years!  What an incredible testament to the community, school, mentors and coaches.  Our students are being accepted at some of the most prestigious colleges in the United States because of their involvement with FIRST robotics.”

The Camdenton 4-H LASER teams have to be creative to operate.  With no large corporate sponsorship, the students and mentors rely heavily on 21^st Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC) funding to support their STEM efforts.  The team also wrote successful NASA and Boeing grant proposals to help pay competition fees.  Other sponsorship includes local business such as Sakelaris Ford, which sponsors the team’s largest fundraising effort.  Numerous other businesses provide funding, meals, mentors, materials and support. 

In an effort to repay the community for its incredible support of the afterschool program, the FIRST LASER teams from elementary to high school levels give back with service projects each year.  They've raised money for the Joplin Tornado Relief Fund to help Joplin High School form a robotics class after the 2011 F5 tornado destroyed their schools and community; they've also raised money for breast cancer research and to support a Citizens Against Domestic Violence children’s play room.  FIRST encourages teams to become involved with their community and always to leave the world a better place.

Providing opportunities that our students might not otherwise have in a rural area is what FIRST and our other afterschool programs are all about.  We want our youth to have options and the same opportunities that students from urban and metropolitan areas have in regard to STEM careers and exploration.  I want the fifth-grader who said she wants to be an astronaut to still be saying that when she's a high school senior.

There would be a significant reduction of investment in informal STEM education (ISE) if this budget request were to be approved.  Federal science mission agencies—such as NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency—that have invested in ISE and afterschool see a significant reduction if not a complete elimination of their STEM education budgets.  Of particular interest to the afterschool community, NASA’s Summer of Innovation program, which has provided funds to summer and afterschool providers, has been zeroed out.  The National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal Science Learning program also sees a $13.6 million cut below its current level of funding.       

The Smithsonian is a new and surprising partner in STEM education, and the details of the $25 million request for “STEM engagement” are still being worked out.  One of its main roles will likely be to serve as a centralized location for the education resources generated by the various science mission agencies.  According to the budget request:

“The STEM initiative will be coordinated by the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, which will create new online resources and experiences for students that have a measurable impact, align Smithsonian content with learning standards set by the states and create communities of teachers who may use Smithsonian content and tools to customize their own programs.”  

At the Department of Education, the only real new opportunity for ISE lies with the “STEM Innovation Networks,” a new program to help school districts build strategic partnerships with institutions of higher education, museums, businesses, government agencies, etc.  The three pillars for these networks are supposed to be teacher preparation, teacher professional development and ISE.  However, the only required partnership as of right now is between school districts and universities, raising a concern that ISE will (again) not play its rightful role in STEM education reform.

The focus of the other K-12 programs proposed by the department is on teacher recruitment, preparation and professional development—$80 million to prepare 100,000 excellent teachers over the next decade (the "100k in 10" initiative) and $35 million to pilot a new program, the STEM Master Teacher Corps, that would recognize and reward the best and brightest STEM teachers and help them play a leadership role in their schools and communities.  The Effective Teaching and Learning Program (formerly the Math and Science Partnerships Program) will receive $150 million; this program has been mostly used to provide professional development to teachers.

There are still many details to be worked out in this large-scale redesign of STEM education.  While the proposal is worrisome for those of us who strongly believe that ISE should play an integral role in STEM education reform, it is still just a budget request.  The ISE and afterschool community should view it as an opportunity to engage the Administration and Congress in a dialogue about the research base and evidence for building an “ecosystem for learning” that includes afterschool.  Let’s rally to make it clear that young people lose when they can’t participate in innovative engaging afterschool STEM learning opportunities.

Members of NASSA are enthusiasts of all things space—even the club’s name was created in homage to NASA!  Last year, they were able to take a trip to the NASA Glenn Research Center.  The club began five years ago when they couldn’t find afterschool programs that addressed the topics they desired or offered programming as often as they wanted.  Beginning with a water purification challenge, the club then delved into activities from the Deep Earth Academy, which covers ocean drilling science and from NASA Wavelength, an exhaustive database of peer-reviewed Earth and space science resources.  In 2011, the club developed a microgravity experiment for a NASA contest, which earned them the chance to have astronauts perform their winning experiment on the International Space Station (ISS)!

Chicks in Space closely follow the astronauts on the ISS.  Don Pettit is the girls’ favorite astronaut to watch, whose video series “Science off the Sphere” can fill many a lunch break.  Pettit served as inspiration for the Garden of ETON due to his in-flight experiments growing plants.  The humorous Diary of a Space Zucchini chronicles one such microgravity experiment.  The team hoped to build on the challenge of successfully growing plants without the earthly gravitational clues and to develop a sustainable fresh food source to be used on the ISS and in other microgravity environments.

Through their participation in science fairs throughout their elementary school years, along with their experiments in their afterschool club, the girls have become experts in the scientific process, demonstrating truly rigorous research and design skills. For help with some of the high-level science content needed to develop and refine the Garden of ETON, the team has Skyped with experts in the U.S. and overseas.  They’ve been amazed at the willingness of scientists and other professionals to help out!

Ultimately, the Chicks in Space aim to present their findings to the International Space Station and hope that what they’ve developed can contribute to future NASA missions.  The girls find space travel fascinating, believing it will be for the benefit of mankind if we can achieve it on a large scale.  These entrepreneurial scientists have a bright future and the Afterschool Alliance wishes MaryAnn, Lillith and Adia the best of luck at the Spirit of Innovation Challenge!

Our recent report chronicles the development and evaluation of five EA units.  The pilot testing of EA confirmed that children in OST can engage in engineering practice and develop engineering skills.  Many of the skills necessary for success in engineering are also critical 21^st century skills (critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and communication).  Extensive observations of children piloting EA units and examination of the engineering journals in which they recorded their plans for designs provide evidence that children were actively using these engineering (and 21^st century) skills to complete design challenges.  Our report provides many examples of kids’ drawings and verbal explanations that exhibit deep understanding about how their designs work, careful consideration of the properties of materials, and solution-oriented reasons for improving their designs.

The drawings to the right, for example, show a child’s initial (top) and improved (bottom) designs for a small-bubble maker in EA’s Bubble Bonanza unit.  Based on testing the initial design and knowledge of the materials (both important in engineering), this child chose to improve the bubble maker by using a cup without holes and incorporating a screen, which was seen during materials exploration to produce lots of very tiny bubbles.  The comfort with which we saw children expressing their ideas in engineering was also observed by OST providers, who agreed that their kids had “increased confidence that they can design and improve technologies.”

Along with increased ability to apply engineering skills, EA children reported more positive attitudes toward STEM fields.  Kids participating in pilot testing of EA completed the “Engineering Attitudes” survey, which asks them to rate their agreement with several statements about science and engineering.  Because children completed this survey before and after experiencing an EA unit, we were able to see whether their attitudes about these statements improved.  Gains were significant for children participating in EA during the summer of 2012, particularly for the statements "I would enjoy being an engineer when I grow up” and “Engineers help make people’s lives better as part of their job.”  Providers agreed that, following EA, their kids “believe they could be engineers when they grow up” and “have a better understanding of what engineers do.”

Kids’ ability to apply engineering skills, their increased expressed interest in engineering careers and their understanding of engineers’ roles in society mirror some of the indicators of STEM learning outcomes described in the Afterschool Alliance report.  While it is promising that EA appears to bolster these outcomes for children, it is equally as exciting that the “Engineering Attitudes” instrument can be used to appropriately measure outcomes.  One of the key recommendations in the Afterschool Alliance report is that evaluation and assessment experts must begin designing measures that can assess these outcomes.  We are excited to offer the validity and reliability-tested “Engineering Attitudes” instrument as one of the first answers to that call.  The instrument is currently undergoing revision, and we will release the newest version to the public as soon as it has been tested for reliability.

Ultimately, the research surrounding Engineering Adventures supports the findings of the Afterschool Alliance report.  While outcomes in STEM content knowledge are not necessarily appropriate for OST settings, other extremely valuable outcomes are feasible, and even measurable.  Future Engineering Adventures research will focus on how EA can better support providers and programs as they pursue these outcomes for their kids in the context of engineering, including the development of additional effective instruments and methods for evaluating STEM activities in afterschool.

Read the full report here, check out the “Engineering Attitudes” survey, or try out Engineering Adventures for yourself.  The development and research of Engineering Adventures has been funded by the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation and the Samueli Foundation.

One of these exemplary programs is the Woodcraft Rangers Program in Los Angeles, CA.  Woodcraft Rangers exposes middle school students to cutting-edge STEM activities, including robotics.  This highly engaging program allows students to configure high-tech robotics, enhancing their STEM skills, unlocking their imaginations, and exposing them to real-world problem- solving situations.  Afterschool and summer programs are uniquely positioned to deliver valuable enrichment activities like robotics that help children gain valuable creativity, critical thinking, and team-building skills.

In addition to programs that serve children and youth directly, organizations such as the Afterschool Alliance are working to advance policies, research, and partnerships so that all children can access rich STEM education experiences through out-of- school programs.

Private companies are also embarking on efforts, such as Time Warner Cable’s Connect a Million Minds, CAMM, initiative, to promote youth interest and performance in STEM fields during out-of-school time. Businesses like Time Warner Cable know that investing in STEM education now helps ensure a robust workforce in the future, and they know that afterschool, summer, and other out-of-school programs are key venues for students to develop the problem-solving, team-building, and creative thinking skills necessary for a strong STEM workforce.  I applaud the afterschool and summer learning programs, advocacy organizations, and community partnerships across the country that are working to advance our students’ STEM achievement and our country’s future through enriching out-of-school learning.  To support the work of these organizations, I hope that the Senate can come together to reauthorize the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program—the only Federal program dedicated to supporting afterschool and summer learning.