Nurturing the Scientists of Tomorrow!

Over the past few years, the District leadership team and Board of Education have invested lots of time and resources in building our programs in STEM, Environmental Education, Robotics, and Science Research. For several years, during the “Common Core Madness,” there was such an emphasis on preparing elementary students for NYS exams in ELA and math (because those tests had such high stakes---and what I think about that whole mess would be enough to fill another whole blog post :-), that real science learning was sometimes neglected. The fun of nature walks, experiments on worms, talking about what makes weather happen, and thinking about natural phenomena took a back seat. I remember talking to teachers (in a different district; I wasn’t in Long Beach then), and one was in tears because she could no longer “fit in” what she saw as her best teaching—cultivating the curiosity of children through science.

Last year, even in the middle of COVID, we prioritized putting STEM teachers in each of our elementary buildings. Their job is twofold: 1) they support the regular classroom teachers in their daily science lessons, and 2) they provide a STEM “special” for grades K-2. During this past summer, the teachers wrote curriculum to infuse more coding, engineering, robotics, and a capstone end-of-year project in each grade. Get ready to hear your children talking about programming robots, building and testing balloon-powered cars and bridges, as well as acting as Marine Engineers! They may be utilizing our soon-to-be-built elementary greenhouses, or investigating the factors causing erosion, or perhaps using a sling psychrometer to measure relative humidity! One of my favorite things is to pop in to one of our elementary classrooms during a STEM lesson---you can just see how truly engaged and excited the students are.  And our elementary Innovation Labs have been upgraded through a generous grant from Senator Todd Kaminsky’s office.  Our elementary scientists are just buzzing these days! Take a look: 

At the secondary level,  I am sure that you all have seen photos of our beautiful greenhouse at the Middle School. We are working with Jones Beach Nature Center to develop an Environmental Education curriculum for grades 6-12. The Nature Center and Cold Spring Harbor laboratories are new partnerships for us. Cold Spring Harbor will be providing professional development for our science teachers, and will also be advising us about how best to use our natural resources to create good experimental spaces for our students.  They will also work directly with our science research students on their projects. Future expansion of our secondary environmental education program may include rebuilding a dock at the high school, as well as the flow-through bay water system, which would allow students to do real-time experiments on bay water species.

Two years ago, we began a new high school robotics team. Despite the craziness of 2020 and 2021, our team placed sixth in the county robotics competition last year. They are already planning for this year’s entry. For those of you not familiar with the competition, the students build and program a robot who then competes in a series of complex tasks. The students win points for effective design, for the robot’s speed in completion, and several other areas. They also learn from other teams---it’s a very collaborative atmosphere where everyone wants to learn new ideas to take back for next year’s round of contests.  

Finally, another of our “crown jewel” programs is our science research program at the high school. I am sure you read recently that one of our seniors had her work published in a professional science journal. Her piece, entitled “The analysis of antimicrobial benefits of Populus balsamifera,” has to do with a potential remedy for bacterial infections. Can you imagine how far this student is going to go if she is already publishing professionally!  In past years, we  have had other students publish, win awards, and achieve amazing professional-level research. So, this year, we will be making some decisions about growing this program, with advice from Cold Spring Harbor and other partners. That may involve bringing science research down to middle school, hiring additional staff, or creating other university and lab partnerships for our students to do authentic research.

I think there may be students among us now who will win Nobel prizes, will discover cures for diseases, and will invent ways to make life better for all of us!