By LAURA HAMMACK, guest columnist

Our school district has identified a key challenge. Far too many of our students are graduating from Brown County High School without the skills to be college-, career- and life-ready. In my last two columns, I detailed a state and local initiative seeking to find answers to this challenge.

The first column presented the Brown County Schools Graduate Profile to our readers. This profile serves as a commitment to our community that when students graduate from Brown County High School, they will do so with having been taught the indicated dispositions.

The second column detailed the new model of graduation requirements for all graduates in the state of Indiana, the graduation pathways. The pathways were deployed to ensure that all Hoosier students graduate with the necessary career, academic, technical and employability skills.

This column concludes this series with the second state initiative that has affirmed our rationale for addressing the key challenge of too many students graduating from Brown County High School without the necessary skills to achieve their personal success. The Indiana Department of Education recently issued its STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) strategic plan and we are currently preparing to ensure fidelity in deployment.

The vision of the IDOE STEM plan is: “All Indiana students in grades K-12 will graduate with critical thinking skills and be prepared for an innovation-driven economy by accessing quality, world class STEM education every day in the classroom by 2025.”

The mission of the IDOE STEM plan is: “Ensure Indiana teachers are prepared to provide every student in grades K-12 with an evidence-based, effective STEM education by 2025.”

There are three strategic objectives in the plan. First, the plan seeks to “improve STEM instruction” with the goal of 100 percent of Indiana K-12 teachers being trained in problem-based and inquiry-based approaches to learning by 2025. You may remember that the graduation pathways included satisfaction of the second requirement through both problem-based and inquiry-based engagement. This objective informs that requirement.

The second objective is “scale evidence-based STEM curriculum in classrooms” with the goal that 100 percent of Indiana schools will implement integrated evidence-based STEM curriculum by 2025. One of the outcomes of this objective is an increase in the number of STEM-certified schools. We are proud to share that Brown County Junior High School received that certification last year.

The third objective is “foster early STEM career exposure” with the goal that 100 percent of Indiana schools will create and sustain robust, STEM-related business and industry partnerships in order to inform curriculum, instruction and student experiences to foster college and career readiness. For this objective to be realized, we will need to expand our industry partnerships and simultaneously advance opportunities for students to engage in work-based learning experiences.

We are excited and challenged by this plan! In order to be strategic in our deployment of the plan, we are focused on being intentional with our resources so that we can meet the 100 percent indications by 2023. We are pleased to share that Brown County Junior High School is leading the way for our school district with the integration of a comprehensive overhaul to their professional development model to meet these ends.

It is exciting to see that the initiatives presented within the past three articles inform each other and support each other’s objectives. It is also exciting to see that the work we have already conducted within the Ready Schools process is being validated at the state level within both the graduation pathways and the STEM strategic plan.

We are committed to fixing the problem presented at the beginning of this article. Through intentional deployment of a career-focused approach where students explore their own career interests and experience the workplace firsthand, students will graduate from Brown County High School with the skills to be college-, career- and life-ready.