STEAM Camp: Loads of Learning Disguised as Fun

Living creatures are discovered on Mars. Are they friendly or mean?

What do they look like?

Those are some of the questions a group of 21 middle school students had to answer during summer camp.

The goal of the camp, a collaboration between the Chattanooga Urban League and the Department of English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, was to engage the students with lessons in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics—known as STEAM— and introduce them to the idea that they might enjoy a career in one of the areas.

“We created a storyline,” says UTC Associate Professor of English Sarah Einstein, “and the campers used the elements of science, technology, engineering, arts and math to come to conclusions and resolve the issues that are laid out in the story.”

Einstein teaches a course in creative writing and another on writing storylines for video games, which was one of her jobs before coming to UTC.

The Martian storyline made students use each STEAM subject to finish the tale. Science helped hypothesize how Martians might look in the planet’s low gravity.

Were they nice? If not, how would you build weapons to protect the human explorers? Technology came into play.

Engineering, technology and math helped build the rockets for the trip to Mars and determine how Martian homes and buildings are constructed. Arts helped students write the storyline to its conclusion.

The summer camp is part of an Urban League/UTC program that works with underserved middle-school students in the Hamilton County School System.

During the academic year, an afterschool program also focusing on STEAM is held at Howard Connect Academy.

The program began in the 2021–22 academic year and returned when schools started classes in August. In teaching the STEAM subjects, Einstein says the program uses software that has the ability to create video games.

“There’s several different projects, ranging from making a little music video that’s interactive to a narrative for a video game,” she explains.

To engage students’ attention, she says the key is to start with something they already enjoy.

“We work to make sure that whatever it is that interests the student, we meet them there,” Einstein says. “For some students, they will be really interested in coding because they enjoy coding. There’s this great logic to that. Other students just want to tell a really great story.”

Arielle Nord, pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing at UTC, has been one of the camp counselors since the afterschool program started. Watching the kids get excited about different ideas is one of the highlights for her.

“It was interesting to see how kids go about learning new things. I haven’t been a sixth grader in almost 10 years now, but it is nice to see them get into learning,” says Nord, who graduated from UTC in May 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

One of the ultimate goals of the program, Einstein says, is to show students some careers incorporate the things they do for fun. It can be eye-opening for them.

“We would like for the students to know that, in fact, these sorts of careers are accessible to them and that they can succeed,” Einstein says. “There are a lot of jobs in these fields. They’re not all superstar jobs; there are production artists and that kind of stuff, but they’re good jobs.

“We feel like there’s not an awareness that these are jobs people can get and make a living.”