The 2023-2024 School Year has been an exciting one for all things STEAM! Please read about some of the experiences that our schools, students, teachers, and administrators engaged in throughout the year related to STEAM Education. We look forward to sharing even more in the 24-25 School Year. Have a great summer!!

The Paterson Public Schools Science Department has sponsored several activities this year to promote STEAM across all grade bands.

The STEAM Expo provided students in Grades K-8 who were nominated by their schools as the first place winner in their school based event to share their inquiries and innovations. Students also participated in activities such as William Paterson greenhouse and campus tours, coding with Legos, and a library scavenger hunt.

The Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine hosted our 2024 Annual District High School STEAM Symposium, showcasing the ingenuity of 34 high school students from Paterson P-Tech, Rosa Parks Fine & Performing Arts and Paterson STEAM high schools. These young innovators presented a diverse array of research projects and visionary concepts spanning across various disciplines. From pioneering environmental sustainability solutions to revolutionizing classroom learning experiences, the symposium was a testament to the students' passion for innovation and problem-solving. The event was further enriched by the inspiring keynote address delivered by Dr. Bilal M. McDowell Bomani, an Eastside High School Hall of Famer, who shared his personal journey and insights into the STEAM field, igniting a spark of motivation and aspiration among attendees. The event not only celebrated these budding scientists and engineers' achievements but also inspired collaboration and exploration, fostering a community of future leaders dedicated to addressing real-world challenges and pushing the boundaries of what's possible in STEAM fields.

Students from STEAM High School, P-Tech, International High School, JATS, AHA, Schools 6, 8, 12, 20, and PAGT participated in the Young Women’s Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) hosted by the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University. The conference introduced seventh to 10th-grade young women to careers in STEM through hands-on activities, small group presentations, a science demonstrations and a keynote address. The students spent the day learning about a huge variety of STEM careers and networking with prominent female scientists and engineers from around the world.

Students at the 21st Century Community Learning Center afterschool program at SFLS/School 6 learned about the technique that creates the illusion of movement in their STEAM Club. During their weekly stop motion animation classes, students produced a variety of animation films including papermation, claymation, and Legomation. This summer, students will sharpen their stop motion animation skills with new short films on the topic of UN Sustainable Goal 6: Clean Water And Sanitation.

The following Schools installed school gardens, renovated

rain gardens, improved existing gardens or planted trees through the trees for schools program.

In addition to providing place-based hands-on learning resources these green spaces provide solutions to Climate Change .

PS # 16 : PS # 28; PS # 15; PS # 21; PS # 12;

PS # 24; PS # 2; PS #1 ; NRC; JFK; PS # 10; RC; PS # 25

Dr. Hani; PS # 9 ; PS # 5 ; JAT

Students in Grade 2 participated in Family STEAM Night, an evening dedicated to exploring the wonders of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics through the enchanting world of "Iggy Peck, Architect", a book by Andrea Beaty. After listening to the story in class, students were joined by their families for a night of educational fun, engaging in hands-on activities that sparked creativity and encouraged problem-solving skills.

1. Combine AI ChatGPT with pedagogy

Similar to when the internet became more widely used in schools, teachers shifted away from students memorizing information—since they could Google to find factual answers—and instead focus more on the application of such learned knowledge. Teachers’ roles shifted from being importers (or, some say, gatekeepers) of information to facilitators or guides. ChatGPT will encourage educators to continue focusing on those higher-order thinking skills of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Instead of the A, B, Cs, and 1, 2, 3s, P21’s Frameworks for 21st Century Learning touts that today’s classrooms must focus on skill sets based on the 4 Cs: creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.

Arlo.co

And although not research-based, the Learning Pyramid illustrates the levels of knowledge retention, with “teaching others” as the most active and most effective method. So instead of having students write a persuasive essay on a topic, how might they use ChatGPT to craft? And then, how might they use their critical-thinking skills to analyze the construct of the AI ChatGPT-generated argument and craft feedback as a teacher would?

2. Administrative work and instructional planning

ChatGPT has a practicability that’s hard to dispute. For example:

• In terms of efficiency, it aids teachers in many administrative tasks such as writing emails, developing instruction, generating examples of solutions, crafting a poster, or providing word problems.
• It can streamline instructional planning, whether outlining a unit, crafting formative assessment questions, curating slides on a topic, forming rubrics, or generating discussion questions. Teachers can still put their artist’s mark on these materials and their methodologies, but they won’t have to “recreate the wheel” as often.
• Students can create flashcards with questions and answers, generate practice quizzes, ask for summaries, and even debate with the chatbot to understand various points of view. Companies like Quizlet and Duolingo have already integrated the chatbot into their apps.

3. Ask the right questions

Part and parcel of critical thinking is being able to ask well-formulated and carefully constructed questions. As Albert Einstein said, “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.” Such an art goes beyond the 5 Ws (who, what, when, where, and why). Good questioning is a practice for organizing thinking about what one doesn’t know. Questioning speaks to curiosity, a hallmark of a lifelong learner. With technology like ChatGPT, today’s students will learn how to craft the right questions to spark their own quest for exploration and discovery. Questioning also requires empathy, and in asking questions, we improve our emotional intelligence, which then begs more questioning.

4. Personalized learning

Probably one of the most intriguing aspects of ChatGPT examples to explore will be how it can help personalize learning for individual students. ChatGPT can create content with constraints or specifics in mind, whether it’s differences in learning styles, abilities, or even language. Imagine asking for a summary of the March on Washington in only images, a breakdown of the laws of gravity for a first grader, varied explanations for the causes of World War I, or the steps to solving an algebra problem in Korean. The ease of differentiation of content comes from asking a question. For both the teacher who needs to personalize lesson plans and the student who needs to personalize studying strategies, ChatGPT could be a game changer.

Teachers and students at STEAM HS recently wrapped up several months exploring their worlds and identities through photography with Young Audiences Teaching Artist Erik James Montgomery. In a series of workshops, professional learning communities, and an after school residency, the STEAM family used first-person experiences to understand how photography can be used as a creative expression of writing and identity, and as a way of building community.

Ms. Storch's 4th grade art students worked in collaborative groups to create murals based on the art and culture of the aboriginal tribes of Australia. Inspired by the sounds of the digeridoo, students' creations portrayed a sound and story in the same way that aborigines passed on their native stories without written words.

STEAM High School teachers, administrators, and members of the PPS Office of STEAM Education attended the AILI Conference in Princeton sponsored by NJPSA/FEA in July 2023. The conference focused on exploring equity and culturally responsive instruction through Arts Integration. The learning experiences also provided district and school teams with opportunities to share their Arts Integration journey during the conference Gallery Walk, at a table highlighting examples of lessons, units and student work. For 2024-25, participation has been expanded to include teams from School 24 and RPHS.