Features
How It’s Done: A STEM Experiment Proves Success
6/1/2011 By:
By Sascha Zuger
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Principal Dan Liebert listens to a Tech Valley student project presentation.
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School systems across the country
are answering the call by the Obama
administration to increase STEM
opportunities so students can develop
the scientific, technological, and mathematical
skills necessary to succeed in
college and tomorrow’s workforce.
Tech Valley High near Albany, New
York, is a prime example. It is a regional
public high school with a STEM focus
that is open to students in 47 school
districts throughout seven counties in
the New York state Capital Region.
Utilizing a project-based and studentcentered
learning philosophy, the tiny
100-student school contributes to the
high school reform movement while
teaching 21st-century skills and abiding
by New York State learning standards.
“People were apprehensive that
with this approach, the kids would
have difficulties getting into college,”
principal Dan Liebert says. “We have
kids in the Ivy League, Cornell, NYU,
University of New England, as well
as SUNY colleges, many of whom
achieved early action or early decision,
so that myth has been put to rest.”
The school garners more than 100
applicants to fill the 40 incoming slots
each year and has an annual waiting
list. “Our students come from a random
lottery, but they want to be here,”
Liebert says. “One student rides a bus
two hours each way to be at school.
As a principal, you want students to
be engaged and self-directed, but tell
a 14-year-old who’s been sitting in
rows, listening, for eight years that
they have to be responsible for their
own education and they won’t know
what that means. You have to give
them opportunities to direct their own
learning projects. We give them the
responsibility to handle a laptop on a
one-to-one ratio and find someone in
the community doing what they are
interested in.”
Great emphasis is put on creativity
and innovation as the school not
only prepares students to succeed
within the New York Regents and
Advanced Regents diploma system
but guides them in acquiring realworld
experience through extensive
partnerships in the business community.
“One student interested in environmental
science shadowed an exec
at a paper-manufacturing plant with a
zero carbon footprint freshman year;
worked with a baker using applied sciences
her sophomore year; interned at
an architectural firm for two weeks as
a junior; and completed a semesterlong
mathematical study at a hospital
her senior year, running statistics on
success rates of certain procedures,”
Liebert says. “By the time the kids are
juniors and seniors, their ability to be
articulate, self-aware, and self-directed
is enormous. The proof is when they
go one-on-one with an industry executive.
Their comfort level talking with
the executive and discussing their education
is very powerful to see.”
A wealth of businesses and government
agencies help design, teach, and
assess team projects that students
tackle to solve problems both theoretical
and concrete. This exposes students
to valuable in-the-field elements
of prospective occupations, like hiring,
operations, and policy, and projectdesign
work.
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Tech Valley students break into small groups to complete their self-directed projects.
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“We’re hearing universally from
partners like GE, IBM, and
GLOBALFOUNDRIES that yes, we
need people who have content,
because you can’t think critically about
nothing,” Liebert says. “But we also
need people who have the ability to
apply what they know.”
Making connections between reallife
problems and concerns that kids
can relate to fosters out-of-the-box
thinking within the confines of scientific
theory and processes. “Probing the
Hudson”—or as it is known around Tech
Valley halls, “Is the Hudson Nasty?”—
determines whether the Hudson River
will be safe for swimming next year.
“You can teach data-collection procedures,
how to analyze data; make
scatter graphs; and publish an investigative
report out of a PowerPoint presentation
or textbook, or you can teach
them on the river,” Liebert says. “We
start with the end point: How would
you make the Hudson healthy? They
have to determine what they need
to know to answer that, starting with
questions: Would you drink the water?
Would you eat a fish from that river?”
Along with experts at the Beacon
Institute Center for Advanced Environmental
Technology, the Hudson
River Basin Watch, and the New York
State Department of Environmental
Conservation, students integrated
analysis and scientific inquiry and used
the proper informational technologies
and applied mathematics to meet New
York State Math, Science, and Technology
Standards 1, 2, 3, and 7.
“We measure our students
on cooperation, communication,
and critical thinking as well
as content, a wider spectrum
of learning outcomes than just
test scores,” Liebert explains.
“Universities and heads of industry
really respond. By the time
the kids reach their junior or
senior year, they have had many
interactions with industry people
in pharmaceuticals, chemical
materials, nanoscience, and
emerging technologies as well
as alternative energies, like solar
and geothermal power.”
Teachers utilize digital project briefcases
to build curriculum and store
project plans. Students have access to
their own server and email accounts.
By using the latest tech to communicate
collaboratively with team members
and compile their data and findings,
they create an eportfolio that
showcases their work so that it can be
assessed by current teachers as well
as prospective higher-level admissions
boards and employers.
“Never in four years have I had to
answer the question ‘Why do we have
to learn this?’” Liebert says. “It’s no
longer sufficient to teach to content
only. You have to deliberately teach
skills that will help them in the workplace
and in higher education: the
ability to problem-solve, to think critically,
to apply what they know. With
the preparation the kids have received
after four years at Tech Valley High
School, we are 100 percent confident
they are ready for anything.”
With such impressive success
achieved through this hands-on, projectbased
approach to STEM integration,
Tech Valley High School has proven the
rule that STEM works.
Tools They Use
¦ Adobe Design Premium Suite CS3
¦ Atomic Learning
¦ Google SketchUp & Google Earth
¦ Real Lives
¦ NXT Software
¦ Pasco
¦ VideoPoint
¦ SolidWorks
¦ Inspiration
¦ Norton AntiVirus
¦ Cisco wireless network
¦ HP laptops
¦ Promethean boards
¦ Xerox printers