Brown County Junior High School is on its way to joining an elite group of state-certified STEM middle schools after the school board voted in support of a proposal last week.
But there was some debate among the board about the role that social studies and language arts would also play in the new curriculum.
STEM education is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific subjects: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
However, the STEM curriculum would be interdisciplinary, meaning all subjects, including language arts and social studies, would still be taught and interwoven, as they are now.
Only eight middle schools in Indiana are STEM-certified.
Superintendent Laura Hammack cited the school’s STEM lab and advances in engineering and technology as priming the school to receive certification.
Junior high administrators and teachers worked together to create the proposal, including working on weekends, Hammack said.
“That just really shows a real investment and that they care about moving this initiative forward,” she said.
The proposal requests $3,500 for “additional science resources” to support STEM education and an estimated $20,000 for social studies and language arts materials to support “interdisciplinary units,” like novels and electronic subscriptions for students.
School board vice president Judy Hardwick expressed concern about the way the money was allocated in the proposal.
“I don’t understand, you know, how when we’re talking about science and technology and engineering and math that you want social studies and language arts, and spend $20,000 on that, and you want $3,500 for STEM,” Hardwick said.
Principal Brian Garman said the school already has most of what it needs for a STEM curriculum; additional money for STEM is for materials that have yet to be determined for specific lessons.
“It would be sort of getting the cart before the horse to spend hours and hours and hours developing a curriculum if you weren’t supportive of that initiative,” Garman said.
Hardwick continued to question how novels, electronic subscriptions, resource materials and other things were related to STEM education.
“STEM certification is about more than just science, engineering, (etc.). It’s an interdisciplinary approach to education. It is the belief, which I believe wholeheartedly, that no discipline exists in a vacuum. All disciplines are interrelated. All information, all knowledge is interrelated,” Garman said.
“If we’re going to have a truly interdisciplinary approach to education where we connect the dots for kids in all of these areas, then we have to be creating units of studies around common themes,” he said.
Board president Stephanie Kritzer, secretary Carol Bowden and member Steve Miller Jr. agreed on the importance of having language arts and social studies incorporated into STEM.
“If you read novels and you think big … you think outside of what is right here and what you know to imagine something more and then you start thinking how that could be, how could we let that happen?” Kritzer said.
“If I didn’t learn how to communicate, if I didn’t know about philosophy, religion, I have no way of talking to my patients,” said Bowden, who is a physical therapist.
The initiative was approved with a 5-0 vote.
School board approves personnel changes
School board members also approved the following Feb. 2:
- A proposal to create an intramural high school soccer club, an intramural junior high and high school soccer club and a coed intramural soccer club.
- Separating BCJHS library assistant Angela Denton effective Feb. 3. This was not a termination.
- Separating BCJHS cafeteria worker Casie Gray, effective immediately. This was a termination. “There weren’t any concerns related to anything involving students,” Superintendent Laura Hammack said.
- Separating special needs bus monitor Phillip Cook, effective immediately. This was a termination because Cook was filling in as a bus monitor until the original returned, Hammack said.
- Separating Van Buren Elementary School paraprofessional Ashley Hendee, effective Feb. 9. This was not a termination.
- Separating Brown County Intermediate School after-school care worker Ciara Butler, effective Feb. 1. This was not a termination.
- Appointing special needs bus monitor Kevin Johnson, part-time with no benefits, $10.25 per hour, not to exceed five hours per day.
- Appointing VBE long-term substitute teacher Judith Hamilton, $242.73 per day, M-5 rate, effective Jan. 23 to end of school year. She is a replacement for Melinda Case.
- Appointing VBE long-term substitute teacher Karen Kirby, $242.73 per day, M-5 rate, effective March 29 to April 12. She is a replacement for Hamilton.
- Transferring BCHS cafeteria worker Linda Hawkins to BCJHS cafeteria manager, full-time with benefits, $12.25 per hour, six hours per day, effective Jan. 23. She is a replacement for Danyeil Ferguson.
- Transferring BCHS cafeteria worker Laverne Mays from part-time to full-time with benefits, $10 per hour, 180 days per year, six hours per day, effective Feb. 3. She is a replacement for Hawkins.
- Transferring BCJHS paraprofessional Coral Hamlin to library assistant, full-time with benefits, $12.25 per hour, 6.75 hours per day. She is a replacement for Angela Denton. The vacated paraprofessional job will not be filled.
- Transferring VBE paraprofessional Angel Deckard from part-time to full-time with benefits, $10.25 per hour, 7.25 hours per day, effective Feb. 8.
