Mission & Vision
STEMspires goal is to inspire young mind to pursue the STEM field by engaging them in middle school classrooms. To do that we are going to be working with middle school teachers from low-income schools to create kits for a lesson that they are going to be teaching in order for those students to be engaged in what they are being taught.
Why low-income middle schools?
Low income schools typically have students who come from underrepresented communities, and they have a lack of resources to properly engage their students. If we specifically target those schools, we could provide those students with a better learning experience, and their young minds could potentially form an interest in pursuing a career in STEM. This would help not only help students learn, but it would also increase diversity in the STEM field..
How do we plan to achieve our solution?
We are working with a teacher from a low-income middle school who teaches a STEM subject, and we are meeting with them to plan and create two sets of kits for two individual lessons. These kits will be created based on our knowledge and the teachers expertise to be engaging to students, easy to understand, easy to teach, and properly teaches what needs to be learned in the lesson. We will then create the two sets of kits and implement them into the classroom, and revise them based on student and teacher feedback.
How are four high school seniors able to complete this project?
While we are working on majority of this project ourselves, that doesn't mean we don't have help. We have the expertise of the teacher from the low-income school who we are working with to create good kits that teach STEM lessons properly. We also have help from mentors from higher-income STEM schools such as Mr. Ellworth. Mr. E teaches chemistry and physics at Charlotte Engineering Early College, and he has lots of experience teaching engaging hands-on lessons in his classroom. As our mentor, he is working with us to create a sample set of kits for his classroom, and he is going to be there whenever we need support or advice on how to create engaging kits.
Additionally...
Not only do we have the support of our mentors, but we also need outside support for fundraising. We are planning to do two sets of kits for a classroom of about 25-20 kids, so if the students are in groups we would end up having around 12-15 kits to make, which doesn't seem like a lot, but for us that would still require a sufficient amount of funds to create. We are hoping to do a bake sale a family church, we will be hoping to get supplies from DonorsChoose, and we have a GoFundMe if you would like to donate. Any amount (even $1) would be greatly appreciated! Learn more about our project costs and funds on our solution implementation page
