By Colin Cahill (he/him), Paul Lawrence (he/him), and Miche McCall (they/them)
All aboard the STEEAM train! This is a blog to showcase the project of three Oberlin College Students at Eckstein Middle School in Seattle. Our goal is to assist in developing project-based, experiential, and interdisciplinary learning for the students of Eckstein. Over the course of the month of January, we will be working with students, teachers, administrators, and parents, to develop a platform for these ideas to flourish, and conduct research and reporting on how our ideas work in the classroom.
How did three college students from a small liberal arts school in rural Ohio end up teaching in a busy city in the Pacific NW? The answer lies in Oberlin alumnus Jessica Levine. Jessica has been teaching Science and Sustainability in Seattle classrooms for over a decade, earning the Patsy Collins Award in 2016 for Sustainable Education, as well as being a Boeing Centennial Scholar in 2015 (Jessica also has her own blog on sustainability education, check it out here). For the past 6 years, Jessica has been working with Oberlin students during winter term (a month in January where Oberlin Students can pursue an independent research project) inside of her own classroom. However, one of the problems with teaching at Eckstein that could never be solved with a single TA is that teachers can’t get outside their own classrooms enough to communicate with one another. So, starting this year, Jessica has launched, along with the three of us, the STEEAM Eckstein Winter Term Internship. The goal of this internship is to allow Oberlin students to draw upon their unique, interdisciplinary educational experiences and also serve as “pollinators” of the classroom, taking ideas and concepts from one classroom, and bringing them to another.
Over the course of January, we’ll be updating this blog with posts about our work, things we’re learning, projects we’re starting, and all of the weird quotes we hear kids say!
Full STEEAM Ahead 