STEM Education at East Baton Rouge Public Schools

Sponsored by East Baton Rouge Parish School System

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education and is becoming a driving force in the education field. In 2017, East Baton Rouge Parish School System started a STEM network to develop a framework for STEM programming, helping to solidify what the experience looks like for kids from Pre-K to 12^th grade; thus, STEM programming can become more widespread in all classrooms and be easily and effectively implementable. The end goal of having a solid STEM network is to continuously identify educational experiences that will put students on career paths. According to Keila Stovall, executive director for the Foundation for the East Baton Rouge School System, the driving question behind building this network is “How do we expose students to experiences that let them glance at their futures?”

STEM experiences are inquiry based in that they teach students to ask questions in order to find solutions pertaining to the specific project on which they are working.  They also use hands-on learning with helps further the students’ knowledge by allowing them to apply what they’ve learned in their classrooms. 

Last summer, the Foundation hosted a summer camp for 150 teachers, where they were able to learn the rudiments of coding, fool around with Legos, and build robots. The goal of the camp was to inspire teachers to go beyond just the standard curriculum, to provide a unique educational experience for the students that both challenges and rewards them.

East Baton Rouge Parish School System has several STEM initiatives and programs, one of which is Robotics. Several schools have robotics programs and several others are building them. Teachers working in this area were trained by the Carnegie Mellon Institute. The Robotics programs are heavily STEM focused in their academic pursuits, allowing students to utilize their knowledge in all four areas to build robots. In the process, the students also learn how to work as a team. The projects require them to think critically and analytically as a team as they work to bring their ideas to life. The Robotics program also allows the students to participate in competitions that require them to describe and defend their work, which teaches them to sharpen their communication and rationale skills.  These programs are all about the student experience: putting into practice what the students are learning in the classroom and applying their new knowledge.  

Another great STEM program in action in EBR Schools is the Aquaponics program at Brookstown Middle School. The students in the program have been raising catfish with a plan to use the fish waste as fertilizer to grow lettuce. It’s a marriage of aquaculture and hydroponics known as “aquaponics.” That’s a new word to pretty much everyone involved. Now wise to the idea, the students have become big fans.

The school aquaponics lab is the brainchild of ExxonMobil electrical engineer Ronnie Morris, who spent $6,000 of his own money to buy the equipment for the middle school. This project is the perfect example of what we hope to do in more schools. Finding someone who has the expertise and resources and wants to invest in the students’ future. Programs like this allow students to take a vested interest in a project and learn how to apply their knowledge to recognize problems, work together to solve them, and expand their knowledge and network as well as resources along the way. “Programs like this allow students to see themselves differently,” says Stovall, who remembers one student telling her on a recent tour, “It’s okay, I’m an aqua-scientist.”

The STEM initiative underway is very student-centric, always on the look out for new ways to engage the students for a more meaningful educational experience, one that allows them to see themselves in STEM jobs and show them that these careers are attainable.