SJSD receives $25,000 donation for STEM projects

May 10—St. Joseph students will have new opportunities to be scientists and mathematicians in the classroom thanks to a donation aimed to uplift STEM learning.

Thanks to Optimum's donation of $25,000, the St. Joseph School District is now turning to teachers to create fun, innovative STEM projects.

Teachers can submit their ideas through DonorsChoose, which is a nonprofit that helps fund teacher projects. Funding will be given to the first 50 teachers.

Optimum said this donation honors Teacher Appreciation Week. Previously, Optimum has donated to over 30 STEM-related projects, totaling over $8,000.

The district has already received various submissions, such as a paper crafting project at Bode Middle School and simulation goggles project for visually impaired students at Pickett Elementary School.

Victoria Mueller, a math instructional coach for the district, is working on a project to introduce algebraic tiles in late elementary and middle school classrooms.

"There are pieces that you can use to represent unknown and known values in algebra," Mueller said. "It would allow kids to manipulate problems and to have a concrete piece to represent some of those unknown values."

These tiles would allow students to physically see the problem and solve it. Algebraic tiles can be applied to subjects like adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers to solving polynomials. Teachers would also receive a magnetic set to display the tiles to students.

"When you get a big algebraic expression and some kids don't know what that means," said Mueller. "But if they can go back and they've connected moving the pieces, what is in front of them doesn't look so abstract and they kind of know what to do with it."

Mueller said she used algebraic tiles with students when in college and she saw huge success. They cost about $89 for a classroom set of 35 and $13 for a teacher magnetic set. With the donation, they can actually purchase these beneficial resources.

"Their brains are still at a very concrete level and we're trying to teach them abstract things," she said. "They benefit immensely by instead of having to imagine doing an operation with two things that I don't know what they are. They have two things that they can see that they can put together and that transfer of knowledge is extremely important when they're moving from the levels of brain development."

Stacia Studer, director of curriculum and instruction with SJSD, said she's excited to see the community support from Optimum. It will help them transition learning from concrete to abstract.

"We need experiential learning. We need the experiments to happen. We need our students to be scientists," Studer said.

Studers said that students are the ones who initiate creative projects. They want to become mathematicians, they want to become scientists. With this funding, their ideas are able to come to fruition.

"Just being in the work, using manipulations, experimenting, playing with things, those are all things we want our students to do," Studer said. "We are wanting our students to collaborate and to work together to, gosh, be problem-solvers for our future."

Recently, the district rewrote curriculum for math and science. Now, teachers will be able to further improve student outcomes with these STEM projects.

District leaders are excited to see what teachers come up with to challenges their students.