A Visit to Greencaste-Antrim School District

Another day and another great visit!  This time, I ventured over to Greencastle-Antrim.  This tour was led by Chief Education Officer Bob Crider.  We toured the middle and high schools.  The first stop was in a 6th grade classroom and Stacie Shaner.  She is leading the initiative to push STEM to the elementary classrooms.  She has earned a grant to develop STEM carts that can be deployed to elementary students.  This is an aggressive plan to take activities to students.  It also combines with a GAMS STEM Carnival in the Spring which I hope to attend.  I liked how the room was designed with students working in pods and they were clearly engaged in the lesson at hand.

We moved on to 8th grade where students work on a robotics curriculum as seen above.  Students work in teams to build Lego bots.  They are currently using NXTs but are transitioning to EV3s.  You can see the lines on the floor to make use of the light sensor.  All students will rotate through this course.  They are also building projects throughout the semester.  What caught my attention was on the board.  They are using the design process.   It is so important to provide students with a framework to rely on for design work.

We then moved to the high school where they have just started a STEAM program.  You can see the curriculum below.

There are 3 tracks for students to progress through.  Notice that the courses have and & in the title.  You could really see students working through several authentic tasks.  G-A has redesigned this space that was likely the traditional Tech Ed space.  Art not only has a space in this area but it fits with the curriculum.  Students are working with both physical and digital media.  Attention is being paid to the aesthetics in both design and detail.  Students can progress through a course sequence as seen.  The digital citizenship class forms the foundation of the technology to be learned.  The district is all Microsoft with students using Surface Tablets.  You can also see the plans to expand into AP courses in the future as well as robotics.  I thought it was a great use of existing tools and space.  Take a look at how they reshaped the classrooms.

There is some work to be done in bringing in the core curriculum to work with the STEAM program and they mentioned some revisions to the Digital Citizenship course.  I could feel the excitement among the staff as they discussed the hard work they have completed so far and the work to come.  Check out their work @ga_steam!