Valley Parents

Tech timeTech time

Educators, students discuss evolution of STEM subjects

VALLEY NEWS / REPORT FOR AMERICA —ALEX DRIEHAUS

Jeremy Ouellette, left, asks Jason Adinortey how he would set up a hard drive so it would fragment less during an information technology class at Hartford Area Career and Technology Center in White River Junction last month.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Building robots, connections

Archytas robotics team encourages students

By PATRICK O’GR ADY Valley News Correspondent

BETHEL —The language of robotic teams may sound intimidating to students unfamiliar with all things mechanical, but Sean Smith says that should not deter them from giving it a try.

“If you are on the fence, you should try it,”said Smith, a White River Valley High School senior and a member of the Archytas robotics team, during a team gathering last month. “What is really cool is you don’t need to be interested in the complex engines to feel you have a place. If you are interested in marketing or web design, there are all sorts of ways you can put that interest to use.”

The team, which has 14 active members, draws students from area schools including Woodstock Union High School and Middle School, White River Valley School and The Sharon Academy. Among them is Clara Shortle, a Woodstock junior, who is involved in the business side for the team, which has to raise all the money needed to build a robot and compete.

“I went to the 2019 kickoff and I found it interesting,”Shortle said. “There is great support from the teams and it is a good environment.”

Smith and Shortle, along with several other team members were organizing the large space in Bethel where they will be assembling and testing their robot as they prepare for competition early next year. The official kickoff —when teams learn of the game challenge and receive parts —is not until early January, but before then is a good time to learn the basics about robot design.

“We will have the most fun when we can build an incredible robot, and the best way to do that is to learn how to build one before the season starts,”Smith said.

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics is a worldwide event with regional competitions for teams trying to advance toward the world championship. FIRST was started by New Hampshire inventor Dean Kamen to spur interest in STEM

(science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field.

Smith joined Archytas for the 2019 competition, a year after it was started by Stephen Farrington, who owns an engineering firm in Bethel. Farrington had previously mentored a team his son had joined several years ago. He began Archytas upon a request from a couple of Sharon Academy teachers. Kimberly Barn hart, a Sharon Academy educator, works with the team alongside Farrington.

Bar nhart reinforced what Smith said about options for being part of the team that includes graphic and website design and marketing.

“Anything that would run a business, you have to do as a robotics team,”Bar nhart said.

Team Archytas, named for a Greek philosopher and mathematician who is credited with inventing a steam powered pigeon around 400 BC that could fly 300 feet, had its first competition in 2018 and did astoundingly well, reaching the world championship in Detroit. In 2020, Archytas placed 20th out of more than 200 teams after one event but then the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down.

of all academic backgrounds to get involved

to give away this year and are putting together packages for new teams to help teach them about robots before they get their kits (for the challenge.)”

Smith experienced that collaborative spirit when Archytas got together over pizza with a team from Rutland that helped them resolve a problem with their robot, which was accurately shooting balls into a hop per, but with backspin that was causing them to bounce out.

“They gave us a good idea to add another set of wheels in a different spot and that eliminated the backspin,” Smith said. “That’s the thing about First Robotics; it gets competitive, but it is also really collaborative. Ever ybody works off of each other’s ideas.”

dent at Woodstock Union High School, developed software for the team that allows them to scout other robots by recording their performances then compiling the data. Each person is assigned to follow one of six robots on the field at the same time during a 3 on 3 competition, he said. Smith’s software puts the data in a spreadsheet format. By reviewing the data, they can develop a strategy depending on which team is either with them or against them. The data can include, for example, a robot’s success rate in shooting a ball at a target.

“After four matches you know how they will perform and you can predict outcomes of future matches,”Danny Smith said.

Farrington said the kit they receive will have a lot of parts and a drive base but no instructions on what to build.

“Everything on top of the drive base the kids design and put together,”Farrington said. “Ever ything that manipulates the game pieces gets put together.”

MILLER, SHARON ACADEMY JUNIOR

Sharon Academy junior Luke Miller said the “hands- on lear ning”aspect of a robotics team suits his learning style. He offers encouragement to anyone who thinks they don’t possess the right abilities.

“I’d say give it a shot and experience it for a day,”Miller said. “Everyone has a role on the team. It is pretty (welcoming). If you don’t know how to do something, someone is sure to help teach you.”

Those pieces and what the robot has to do changes from year to year. At its workshop, the team demonstrated a robot from a previous competition. With separate remote controls, one student drove and another was the operator. As it wheeled and spun around the room, it pulled in soft balls that looked like over-sized tennis balls then shot them up in the air from the other side.

Robotics teams are competitive and while everyone does their best to win, there is a lot of shared knowledge. When Archytas began, the club was given boxes of parts from kits going back years. Now the team is paying it forward.

“We gave parts away at competitions last year,”Farrington said. “Now we are sorting what we want

The students do not know what to build for a robot until the game challenge —new each season —is revealed and they decide on their strategy for playing the game.

“The robot design and fabrication then flows from that strategy,”Farrington said.

Another team member, Danny Smith, Sean’s twin brother and a stu-

There are two or three competitions over a six week period as teams earn points toward the district championship and other awards. Archytas has won the Gracious Professionalism Award for sportsmanship and the team spirit award. Whatever the outcome next spring, Farrington and Barnhart are mostly interested in a strong effort in all facets.

“We pride ourselves on doing the best with what the students design and build themselves and with the resources we have,”Far rington said.

Learn moreabout FirstRobotics and Archytas at archytas.org.

Patrick O’Gradycan bereached at pogclmt@gmail.com.

“I’d say give it a shot and experience it for a day.. “Ever yone has a role on the team. It is pretty (welcoming). If you don’t know how to do something, someone is sure to help teach you.”

LUKE

Good things are happening in schools

By PAGE TOMPKINS For the Valley News

News of how the pandemic impacted test scores, controversy in school board meetings, and shortages of qualified teachers and leaders can tend to paint a sometimes discouraging picture of the state of our schools.

These are indeed serious challenges, but it is also important to remember that schools are places of hope and possibility.

At the Upper Valley Educators Institute, a graduate school of education in Lebanon, we have a ritual called “cool things in schools,”where people in our programs share inspiring, promising, and effective practices or moments they are witnessing. We do this in part to share great approaches, but we also do it to remind ourselves that —even in the face of challenges and complications —we are lucky to do creative work aimed at supporting the intellectual and emotional growth of young people.

In that spirit, I want to take a few minutes to highlight some of the cool things going on in our schools across the Upper Valley.

At the Ottauquechee School in Quechee, they center student voices as a vehicle for learning. One way they do this is through Student Led Conferencing. Student Led Conferencing puts students at the center of their own learning, asking them to reflect on their goals and progress together with their caregivers.

An extensive and growing body of evidence suggests that healthy, student-centered school climates are an essential element of continually improving schools.

Practices such as student led conferencing are an exciting piece of building a climate like that. (Learn more about student-led conferences at edutopia.org/blog/student-led-conferences-resources-ashley-cronin).

At Thetford Academy in Thetford, place-based learning in the community was traditionally an integral component of the environmental studies and outdoor education class. While getting out into the world was disrupted by the pandemic, teacher Scott Ellis has brought them back!

Students in his class visited the Whitman Brook Orchard in Quechee this fall to learn about grafting and pruning apple trees, and this week they did trail and clean-up work at the school’s adopted campsite in Haverhill while learning about conservation and environmental stewardship.

The high school design tech class traveled to Hanover to put the final touches on the energy efficient window inserts they had created for the Latham Library. And finally a team of middle schoolers attended a training on public health data and peer leadership as part of a youth-adult partnership project.

“We are excited to get students off campus to collaborate with partners, apply their learning in real world contexts, offer service to the community, and explore the greater Upper Valley,” Head of School Carrie Brennan said.

Placed-based learning, when connected to the core curriculum of the school, is a promising way to increase student well-being and deepen learning. (Learn more about place-based education at vitalcommunities.org/upper-valley-teaching-place-collaborative/).

One of the challenges I highlighted at the start of this column, —and one that is quite acute in many schools across the region —is a shortage of qualified school leaders. Mt. Lebanon Elementary School in Lebanon has been enormously successful in navi-

gating this environment through a commitment to investing in their leadership pipeline. The current principal of the school, Katie Roach, had a distinguished career as a learning specialist when the school and district decided to support her development as a leader, ultimately moving her into the role of assistant principal in 2015. This meant that when there was an unex pected principal transition at the start of the 2021 school year, the school had a seasoned and experienced leader ready to move into the role. Of course, this left a vacancy in the assistant principal position.

Fortunately, the school was already investing in the leadership development of Elisabeth Bailey, the school’s then speech and language pathologist. Bailey was serving as a UVEI principal intern at the school while pursuing her principal license, and she was being mentored by Katie.

Again, this meant that when the school interviewed for the open assistant principal position, there was an effective and well trained educator ready to take on the role.

Bailey was hired in the spring of 2022 and is the current assistant principal. The work continues, as the school is currently supporting one of their teachers who is training to become a literacy specialist; again through UVEI.

This commitment to investing in leadership capacity has helped them buck the trend of leadership shortages, maintain progress at the school, and support the growth of their people; even during difficult times. To me, this is an excellent example of what is possible when a school invests in their people.

These three very different stories about exciting things happening in Upper Valley schools give me hope, renew my commitment to what is possible and inspire me to continue working to build up our schools.

Do you know of other inspiring, hopeful, or exciting practices that I should highlight? I would love to hear it! Contact me at ptompkins@uvei.edu.

Tompkinsispresident oftheUpper Valley Educators Institute, where he also servesas a facultymember. To learn more about UVEI, visit www.uvei.edu.

Upper Valley Educators Institute’s Page Tompkins highlights place-based learning, leadership pipeline programs

COURTESY PHOTOGRAPH PageTompkins ispresident ofthe Upper Valley Educators Institute, where healso serves asa faculty member.

Learning and earning potential

Students thrive in Hartford information technology program

By PATRICK O’GR ADY Valley News Correspondent

HARTFORD —Harley Clark, a Hartford High School junior, knew he wanted to take classes at the school’s technical center since the fourth grade, when he visited with a class to work on an engine in auto tech.

Now enrolled in the center’s information technology program, Clark is enthused by what he is learning. He’s also excited about the post-secondary opportunities for employment and further education in the field.

“Coming here gives me a lot of opportunities with companies, internships and many pay for classes,”Clark said, adding that the earning potential is another motivating factor.

Clark and several other students in Jeremy Ouelette’s class at the Hartford Area Career and Technical Center were busy on a recent October morning formatting and upgrading hard drives on some old desktops. Working in pairs, they had disassembled the hardware and were busy replacing various parts, then checking to see if their work was successful.

“I’m trying to boost it as much as I can to its original specs,”Clark said about the desktop he was working on as he hit several keystrokes to check its performance. “All the internals are rigged together.

“The idea is to push it to its limit and see how far we can get. I want to get it to work as good as it can in the case it is in.”

Standing over Clark’s shoulder observing and offering a few tips, Ouellette said Clark had already installed a new operating system.

Ouellette taught information technology at Vermont Technical College for nine years before coming to Hartford last February. He restarted what had been a computer tech-

VALLEY NEWS / REPORT FOR AMERICA —ALEX DRIEHAUS

From left, Bryanna Thurston and Jason Adinortey complete independent work while Nicholas Brooks talks to instructor Jeremy Ouellette about how to determine whether an articleâs source is credible during an information technology class at Hartford Area Career and Technology Center in White River Junction.

SEE HAR TFORD S10

Hartford tech class sets kids up for work, more training

nology program, which had taken a hit when the previous instructor left and the COVID19 pandemic disrupted in-school learning. Ouellette took a fresh look at the program and came up with new content.

“It is, in effect, a new program,”Ouellette said.

There are currently 12 students —all high school juniors —enrolled in the program. Next year, students who participated in this year’s program will have an option to take a course on software engineering that is also taught by Ouelette. The new structure has two important goals. The first is to have students obtain industry recognized credentials in such topics as cybersecurity, networking and user support —all while earning college credits through River Valley Community College.

The second goal is to prepare students to pass the CompTIA A+ exam during the spring semester. According to the website, CompTIA.org, the certification is an industry standard for a career in IT and “the preferred qualifying credential for technical support and

IT operational roles.”

As the only industry-recognized credential, “it proves pros can think on their feet to perform critical IT support tasks in the moment. It is trusted by employers around the world to identify the go-to person in endpoint management & technical support roles,”the site states.

Ouellette said the IT program will get a boost next year as the center was recently approved as Amazon Web Services Academy.

“It allows us to offer training and gives us

Clark shines a light on the components of his computer, whichhe has beenreassembling and updating throughout the school year.

access to AWS resources and the lab,”he said. “The great thing about AWS Academy is they (students) get to actually use the platform and interact with it and do set up and storage solutions.”

Ouellette said AWS, similar to Google Cloud and others, provides computer resources that a user connects to remotely.

“They take care of the administration and updates, and you just rent time,”he continued. “The more you can give students exposure to the cloud platform the better off they will be. AWS-certified cloud practitioners show they have basic knowledge of services on that cloud platform. It will be really valuable. Very few high schools in the country have AWS.”

The IT program setting is not structured like a traditional classroom with a teacher standing before the students. Instead, students have flexibility to explore and experi-

VALLEY NEWS / REPORT FOR AMERICA PHOTOGRAPHS —ALEX DRIEHAUS

Fromleft,HarleyClarklooks onasRyanTownetalkstoinstructorJeremyOuelletteabout aprogramtosavearticlesas PDFs during an information technology class at Hartford Area Career and Technology Center in White River Junction.

HAR TFORD FROM S8

Hartford tech class sets kids up for work, more training

ment with the guidance of Ouellette, who noted that he does not need to motivate the class or work to get them interested in the subject at hand. The course is not required so it is easier to teach.

“Everybody here applied to be here,”he said. “They are really interested and want to learn this stuff.”

In the year-long IT program, Ouellette covers an array of topics including networking, hardware problem diagnosis, computer storage, hard drive formatting and best practices for cybersecurity that someone in an IT support role should know.

“The kids in the program are getting an amazing opportunity to get hands-on training to prepare them to get this credential and earn that college credit,” Ouellette said. “After a year, these students can walk into a job interview for an IT support position.”

The computers were donated to the center by Vermont Technical College and Hypertherm. While they are not the latest in technology, they do serve the purpose of giving students an opportunity to get hands-on experience with computer hardware.

In the class with Clark, were juniors Bryanna Thurston, of Mascoma Valley Regional High School, and Aiden Duprey, of Lebanon High School. Both said they are interested in pursuing careers in IT.

Ouellette said the students were formatting and converting hard disks on a computer to help organize data and then checking to see the conversion work (which it did) and they could still read the disk. From a practical standpoint, Ouellette said the skills the two are learning would allow them to increase storage on a computer by adding more hard drive space.

“I’ve been building PCs for a couple of years and I needed to get better at the hard drives and storage and now I am using that skill in a job I am working on in

an IT shop,”Duprey said, when asked about why he chose the course.

Thurston said her father works in IT at his company and they sometimes work together on computers so she wanted to improve her knowledge.

At the other side of the room, Ryan Towne, a Windsor High School student, and Jason Adinortey, of Hanover High School, were also working on hard drives

on their desktop. Towne explained that they were adding a hard drive but the two would appear as one.

“It is more practical for a home filing system and it is easier,”Towne said.

Another key piece to the class is teaching other skills that are relevant in any job setting.

“They will be communicating with people from different job backgrounds and working with people who don’t have IT knowledge so communication skills are really important,”Ouellette

said.

As the students continued their work, Ouellette said he is pleased with their progress and commitment. He is optimistic his primary goals for the students will be reached come the end of the school year.

“I want everyone coming out of this class to be able to get a job or to go on to further education and training,”Ouellette said. “I also want to help them decide which route to take.”

Patrick O’Gradycan bereached at pogclmt@gmail.com.

VALLEY NEWS / REPORT FOR AMERICA —ALEX DRIEHAUS

Above: Jason Adinortey, left, and Bryanna Thurston check what percentage oftheir computer’shard driveis fragmentedduring aninformation technology class atHartford Area Career andTechnology Center. Left: Harley Clark works on his computer during class.

HAR TFORD FROM S10

“I want everyone coming out of this class to be able to get a job or to go on to further education and training. I also want to help them decide which route to take.”

Jeremy Ouelette, instructor, Hartford Area Career and Technical Center

‘Making learning relevant and varied’

By LIZ SAUCHELLI Valley Parents Editor

Casey Sylvain is in her 10th year as a teacher at Grantham Village School, where she is currently teaching math, science and other topics to sixth graders. During Sylvain’s 18 years as an educator, she has seen STEM lessons play a growing role in the lives of her students. In an email interview, Sylvain shared her observations about education, her favorite parts of teaching STEM topics and how parents can help keep their kids engaged if they’re struggling. The interview has been lightly edited for length, style and clarity.

Question:How has STEM education evolved since you became an educator and what are some new teaching techniques that have emerged?

Answer: I’ve had the opportunity to watch science education evolve over the last decade, as we went from teaching science as an occasional event to making it a large part of our scope and sequence. Grantham has spent years building our science educational programming, particularly aligning our teaching to the Next Generation Science Standards and the NH Science Standards. Our teachers work collaboratively with many of the amazing facilities in the area, such as the Montshire Museum of Science and Dartmouth College.

One of the best changes, in my opinion, in science education has been our focus on science in the community: We take our students and teachers to visit Dartmouth College to work with their professors; our students and teachers work with the educators at the Montshire to build their scientific literacy with hands-on learning and collabora-

tion; and our teachers have written grants to build a strong outdoor learning area for all of our students to use to engage in nature-based learning.

I believe that the evolution of STEM education has centered on the “Out There Starts Here” motto of GVS. We truly believe that our students can learn from their community members and their environment. The primary difference in scientific education over the past 10 years has changed the focus to learning more about how and why things around us happen and what resources we can use to learn

more, rather than memorizing facts and the periodic table as we did as kids.

Q: What are some of your favorite STEM topics to teach and why?

A : I joke about the periodic table, but I love teaching the periodic table to kids! We spend time learning about the elements and why they are organized in a certain way on the periodic table, focusing on the why and the how, versus memorization.

However, my favorite project by far is definitely the STEM Fair. Each year the sixth graders

choose a topic that they want to learn more about that fits within the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) acronym to study, generate an experiment about, and collect data based on their experimentation. We begin the process in December with the kids learning how to generate a claim, how to gather evidence, and then how to present their reasoning. We end our projects in April when the kids present their work to the community in a huge STEM Fair event at GVS. The kids learn the scientific process by exploring a topic

Grantham sixth-grade teacher Casey Sylvain discusses the evolution of STEM education and how to keep kids engaged in tough topics

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF CASEY SYLVAIN Grantham Village School sixth-grade teacher Casey Sylvain, center, with her husband, Nicholas Sylvain, and their twin daughters, Caitlin and Gwenyth Sylvain.

Q&A: Grantham sixth-grade teacher Casey Sylvain

Q&A FROM S14

of their choice and interest; create testable scientific questions; and share their understanding and data with a scientific poster and public speaking. Some of my favorite projects over the years have tested the best way to remove skunk smell (yes, you can buy skunk smell on Amazon and no, it’s not tomato sauce!), finding the best method to catch fruit flies in the kitchen, testing the strength of the shapes of bridge foundations and structures and exploring the impact of temperature on magnet strength.

Q: What are some challenges you’ve faced teaching STEM and how do you keep students engaged in topics?

A : Kids love science! I can honestly say that keeping them engaged isn’t such a difficulty, as they want to learn more about their world and how it works. I find that embedding new technologies into the learning process is important. The kids share their learning in slide presentations, creating a website (housed by GVS), creating comics to teach about a chosen topic and designing children’s books for their kindergarten reading buddies.

We also focus on choice —the students are able to explore a portion of a general topic that they find interesting and then teach their peers about their chosen topic. We also focus on hands-on education, such as gathering samples and examining them under microscopes as we learn about plant vs. animal cells. These same processes are also at play in the younger grades. Our kindergarten teacher takes her students outside for their learning, exploring the outdoors and even having math class in their outdoor learning classroom. Our fourth-grade teachers work hand-in-hand with the Montshire Museum and they borrow materials from the Montshire to supplement their learning. Last year our fifth grade teacher brought back the trout —she has a large tank in her room —and the students raise and release trout under the supervision of NH Fish and Game. The key is making learning relevant and varied for the kids.

Q: It seems like subjects used to be taught to students in silos: i.e. math would only be taught during math class. But now, there seems to be more overlap and mixing between topics. What are some ways STEM topics are incorporated in art, English and other non-STEM subjects? Why is this important?

A : I’ve spent a lot of time interweaving

my math and science curricula, so this is a pet project of mine! Sixth grade math focuses on data collection and analysis, so we conduct experiments in science and then analyze that data in math. For example, we began the year learning about variables and constants in scientific experimentation, so the kids designed an experiment that would address how many drops of water fit on a penny. After conducting the experiment once, they realized that they needed to control for their variables, as they were obtaining vastly different data sets. We then wrote about their work in what we call a CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) in conjunction with the sixth grade English Language Arts teacher.

In the past, education has absolutely existed in silos. This is unfortunate, as nothing that we do in life is just one event and subject. When students see how subjects are interconnected they are more likely to apply what they have learned in other subjects. For example, students learn about the Great Rift Valley in social studies and the movement of tectonic plates in science, connecting the two to explain why we are finding more humanoid fossils in the Great Rift Valley. By aligning our subjects we are able to help the kids to put their learning into context and to understand the big picture and the “why ”behind what is happening at school.

Q: How can parents and other adults help support children who may be struggling to grasp STEM topics?

A : Read! The best way to help kids to learn about tough topics is to read to or with them. Even big kids love to be read to and short science books (particularly from the library) are great to read with your kids before bedtime. Short science videos are also a good connection, especially alongside books about the topic. As a mom of twins, I totally understand how hard it is to carve time out each day to explore learning with our kids. We’ve struck a balance by having family reading time each night: 20 to 30 minutes of me reading to them or them reading to me, with a book and focus that they’ve chosen.

I also recommend using the resources in the Upper Valley. We have access to great museums and activities, local libraries often have free passes available for families to use as well. The Montshire Museum, the American Precision Museum and the local historical societies are great places to start.

CASEY SYLVAIN

Valley Parents, T h u r s d a y,N ov e m b e r 10,2022

When students see how subjects are interconnected they are more likely to apply what they have learned in other subjects. .. By aligning our subjects we are able to help the kids to put their learning into context and to understand the big picture and the ‘why’behind what is happening at school.”

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