Powhatan High School to hold STEM Expo

Contributed Report

The Powhatan County Public Schools STEM Expo will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23 at Powhatan High School.

The STEM Expo showcases the school division’s STEM courses, programs, clubs and resources in a fun way. This event is different from an open house in that high school teachers and students have created activities to engage younger PCPS students. There is a wide variety of learning that falls under the STEM umbrella, and this is an opportunity for parents to see what piques their child’s interest. It also affords parents the chance to learn more about STEM education in PCPS. Over 50 K-12 teachers, coaches, librarians and administrators volunteer at this event, so if parents have specific questions, they can route them to the person who can best assist. The high school student volunteers are also a great source of information.

The STEM Expo is primarily funded through grants, as is much of the technology that will be showcased. Over the past five years, Dominion, Verizon, The Powhatan Education Foundation, and Bob and Karla Curtis have been incredibly supportive of STEM education in Powhatan.

Other facts that may be helpful:

„ In the past six years, over $100,000 in grants have been awarded to PCPS to support STEM education.

„ The Powhatan High School library has a large, well-equipped maker-space that houses a collection of supplies and equipment for students to use for school and personal projects, including 3D printers, a laser cutter, several green screens, and video and audio equipment.

„ Powhatan High School offers 46 different STEM courses, including a plethora of less traditional electives: Game Design and Development, Cybersecurity, Computer Systems Technology, Launch: A Design Thinking Capstone Project, Engineering I and II, Veterinary Science, Agriculture Fabrication and Emerging Technologies, Firefighting, Sports Medicine, Construction Technology, and Electricity.

„ The Powhatan Middle School Innovation Lab provides cross-curricular lessons that integrate STEM into all content areas. So far this year, there have been over 3,300 student visits to the Innovation Lab for 31 different lessons, and every student has had at least one opportunity for a lesson in the Lab.

„ Powhatan Middle

School students have the opportunity to work on independent STEM projects during ACCT. Some of their favorites include solar and battery powered cars and creative cardboard structures.

„ Each elementary school houses a STEM Lab where STEM coaches work with classroom teachers to provide lessons for all grade levels, and teachers can check out materials or bring classes in for hands-on lessons. Students also study and care for worm bins, giant hissing cockroaches, ants, and brook trout, Virginia’s state fish.

„ STEM Days are held in each elementary school for every grade level, K-5, where students explore a science topic in the morning and then apply what they have learned with an engineering challenge related to real-world topics.

„ PCPS has three full time STEM coaches who develop curriculum, collaborate with teachers and conduct STEM lessons with students.

„ PCPS offers a variety of activities to engage students in STEM, including summer and after-school camps, special events during the school day, field trips, and STEM-based clubs and competitions. Frequently, community partners collaborate with PCPS in these endeavors.

Jimmy and Jean Jackson of Powhatan celebrate their 65th anniversary today, Feb. 22. they have one daughter and son-in-law and one stepgrandson.

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10-year-old girl buried like that and then there are hundreds and hundreds of people coming.”

Kilic sat down with the Powhatan Today on Feb. 15 in his office at Classic Granite and Marble in Powhatan, where he is CEO, to talk about the devastating earthquakes that have killed at least 46,000 people in Turkey and Syria, with numbers still rising. He only returned home to the United States on Feb. 10, still raw and worried for the family, friends and others he left behind.

Kilic wanted to share his story not only to describe the devastation but to promote how people can help. Even while he was still in Turkey, staff at his company in Powhatan were organizing donations of items and funds to send to Turkey.

The company, with the help of partners and people in the community, has already sent two truckloads of needed items to the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., and is sending monetary donations to the Turkish Philanthropy Fund, which is supporting the immediate relief efforts and ensuring that survivors and first responders receive critical resources, including food, housing, medical aid and water. The link to donate is https://donate.tpfund. org/team/480722.

Susan Oguchi, Classic Granite’s marketing manager, said they took the time to thoroughly vet where donations would be sent as they recognize that there are opportunists who use tragedies to create scams. Once that was in place, they reached out to all of their community and business partners, who quickly responded with donations requested on the initial lists of needed items as well as monetary donations.

Kilic said he was grateful for the support they have already seen from so many people, including those they have never met.

“It is good to know there are still people out there that care. It doesn’t matter what country, it doesn’t matter who you are. This type of natural disaster, it could happen to anybody,” he said.

Kilic said he was fortunate that all of his family survived the earthquake, although their homes were impacted to varying degrees.

Classic Granite has six employees in Turkey who work in its computer aided drafting department, Oguchi said. All six of them survived but lost their homes and have had to go stay with other family members, sometimes splitting up households to make it work. Another employee at the company in Powhatan had his entire hometown leveled.

Kilic was at his parent’s home in Adana when the first earthquake hit at around 4:15 a.m. The epicenter was near the city of Gaziantep, which was only about 150 miles away.

The sound woke him up first,

“like a deep rumble coming from the earth.” Then everything started shaking. He said he expected it to stop since most earthquakes don’t last that long, but it just kept going.

“When it happened the first time I thought that is it for me. It did go through my mind I might not make it out of this one,” Kilic said. “Usually I am very calm and composed but I was shaken. I am trying to go down the steps and my whole body is shaking because two minutes is a long time with that intensity. I am thinking ‘it is going to stop now, it is going to stop now.’”

During the earthquake, he stood next to a column, the strongest part of the house. He described looking out the windows and they were “moving 20 inches back and forth.” Later, in the kitchen he would find the refrigerator moved 3 feet away from the wall.

When the shaking finally stopped, Kilic’s first priority was getting his mom out of the twostory house. A neighbor had to help get her down the stairs be-