After a year-long hiatus due to the pandemic, Riis was delighted to resume our after-school programming at Riis Academy – P.S.171 this year, especially our STEM classes. Generously funded by Con Edison, our STEM specialist, Karioki Crosby, engages students in weekly discussions and lessons to increase their knowledge of and interest in STEM subjects.
Students began the year by discussing architecture and the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels, on new architectural developments. They looked at various models of floating cities as potential solutions to these problems. Students also participated in impactful discussions around STEM careers, combatting stereotypes that might prevent them from having an interest in the fields. For example, students learned how engineers do more than design robots or drones. A person who loves animals may be fascinated by the field of biomedical engineering and want to build a prosthetic leg for a cat or dog. A person who loves sports may want to design a safer helmet for football players. These transformative discussions have opened students’ eyes up to the breadth of career options available to them and have helped them visualize themselves in these roles.
Mid-year, students were introduced to physical computing and working within digital environments, giving them the ability to create models and prototypes aimed at solving the real-world problems they had been discussing. They have been practicing working in JavaScript, learning concepts like loops, variables, conditionals, functions, and values.
Through participation in our STEM program, students’ confidence has grown immensely, and they have begun creating their own algorithms and questioning their initial assertions about what an engineer is, and who can become one. The STEM lessons are also increasing our students’ overall digital literacy, and helping them recover lost learning due to the pandemic.
We are really grateful to Con Edison for supporting our program and all our future engineers!
