Explore. Exite. Engage. Engineer!

THE PECK MISSION STATEMENT asks students to let their knowledge be guided by values. The profound message underlying this request is that knowledge, in and of itself, has no purpose. Only when students apply their knowledge for the betterment of family, community, country, or world, is that knowledge of any real or lasting value.

The application of knowledge to solve real world problems is actually a rather fitting description for the field of engineering—a profession in high demand these days. As the world grows in population, interconnectedness, and complexity, problems mount, solutions beckon, and the need for engineers increases.

Though for several decades educational institutions have been emphasizing STEM courses—even adding the arts to the acronym to create STEAM programs— there is a significant difference between an institution that offers STEM/ STEAM courses and a school that offers a truly integrated and inspirational STEAM program.

The major impetus for Peck’s energized STEAM curriculum came about in the 2015 Strategic Plan, Continuing Excellence: Explore. Excite. Engage. The aspiration of that plan is to “develop an integrated STEAM program with an emphasis on creativity, real world problem solving, collaboration, risk taking, and experiential learning.”

Peck will see this vision come to fruition with the completion of the campus master plan, which includes expanding the Lower School Science Lab and building out a STEAM wing in the Caspersen-Tomlinson building.

Director of Curriculum and Faculty Development Chris Weaver explains, “It is an exciting strategic plan in that, here at Peck, we have a place with really, really strong foundations. We were already known for our strong subject area teaching. Yet the strategic plan was still willing to focus critically on STEAM and go beyond teaching the disciplines to integrating them—and to do that in a courageous way.”

In the real world, people rarely work in silos. A biologist, for example will need skills in math, statistics, and perhaps programming. There was also an understanding about how kids learn. When students encounter something in a variety of contexts, that learning takes a deeper hold.

This intentional focus on an integrated STEAM program puts Peck in the vanguard of STEM/STEAM education. Faculty work increasingly to create opportunities for integrating engineering in alignment with Peck’s already sophisticated design classes and labs.

The Piñata Project

This integration between disciplines is particularly distinctive at Peck because it extends to the Lower School as well as the Upper School. The Grade 4 piñata engineering project is an excellent illustration of how age-appropriate engineering concepts can be infused in the curriculum, even in the younger ages, to invigorate a project and integrate learning.

As students explore the Spanish language and Latin culture, they might traditionally construct and decorate a piñata. The goal at Peck is to make sure the piñata construction is not simply an arts and crafts endeavor.

“The advantage that The Peck School offers in our curriculum is the collaboration between Science andEngineering specialists and teachers in other disciplines,” explained Dr. Katheryn Kennedy, Peck’s Lower School Science Specialist. “We leverage the integration potential between disciplines so that students are not just learning science and math as subject areas, and heading off to a technology lab for a tech course. At Peck it is a true collaboration between teachers and disciplines.”

The piñata project becomes an opportunity to teach young students some of the principles of experimental design. In their science classes, students look at the property of absorbency using multiple materials. They devise their own system for testing the relative absorbency of newspaper, toilet paper, paper towel, and wax paper.

Working in groups, students devise methods to measure how much water each product absorbs. Groups have decided to look at the change in weight of the paper when it is dry versus soaked. Others have soaked the paper in a volume of water and measured how much water remained after the fully-absorbed paper was removed. This year, Peck fourth graders came up with five unique strategies to measure absorbency.

The engineering process also involves collecting and recording data. Students are then required to create a basic presentation to communicate their findings. Ultimately they are taking charge of the design process and justifying for themselves the materials they will use in the project. In addition, they learn about trade-offs. For example, though paper towel is more absorbent than newsprint, its high cost makes it impractical for use in papier-mâché.

“So it is really informed design,” explained Kennedy. “It’s not that we are going to make this cutesy thing. The end product is going to be a piñata, but we examine the criteria that we each are using to evaluate

if we made a ‘good’ piñata. Students will be thinking about engineering their piñata throughout the planning and the creation process so they have a rubric for success.”

“The purpose of science is to ask questions and understand the world around us,” said Kennedy. “The purpose of engineering is to solve problems and improve our quality of life.”

Kennedy further explains that whether students are designing a clean water system, combating soil erosion, or designing something for a cultural purpose (such as with the piñatas in Spanish class), students can easily see that they’re not just designing something in isolation—but also learning about the communities, constraints, and criteria in which processes or products are used, and learning to develop creative solutions to real-world problems.

The capacity for seamless integration and collaboration within the STEAM program immeasurably expands with the opening of Peck’s new STEAM wing, planned for 2019-2020 following completion of The Peck Commons. Locating upgraded science labs near the art studios, the Robotics Lab, math classrooms, and the woodshop creates the physical environment necessary for students to readily make authentic connections between these disciplines, and develop creative solutions in a complex global environment.

“I’m excited by how much further we’ll be able to develop our STEAM program once the new science labs are complete, and we can take full advantage of the depth of collaboration and team teaching that the STEAM wing will support,” said Head of School Andy Delinsky. “And, in keeping with Peck’s ethos of Consideration of Others, our students will be poised to use their talents, passions, and creativity to make a real difference in their communities, and the world.”