T
he children get a chance to try out these jobs, and many others, at Hofstra’s 3-year-old STEM Studio. Each activity encourages them to measure, analyze, discover, research, talk about and listen to each other’s thinking. The California Avenue School fourth graders visit Hofstra eight times a year. The STEM Studio also hosts visits from elementary schools in Freeport, Roosevelt, Plainedge, Herricks and Hempstead, which keeps the studio very busy. Each time the children visit, they work with the same Hofstra students and faculty members, so as each semester goes on they feel more comfortable, build bonds and more readily share their creative thinking. STEM, an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, has long been important to K-12 education. The goal is to spark children’s interest in these subjects by showing the wide range of applications and connections they have to everyday activity and information, and to each other.
Elementary Education. STEM Studio master teacher and Hofstra doctoral candidate Julia Caliendo is studying the role of the studio approach in teacher preparation. The STEM Studio is sponsored by Hofstra’s Office of the Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, the School of Education and IDEAS (The Institute for the Development of Education in the Advanced Sciences). The Motorola Solutions Foundation has underwritten the class visits to Hofstra. Dr. Jacqueline Grennon Brooks, Hofstra professor of teaching, literacy and leadership and director of the STEM Studio, says, “There is a lot of research that shows us that real learning cannot be measured by one Olympic-style event, such as a state exam. We offer problem-based learning and environments in which children solve STEM-based problems. The byproduct of this work is the children’s success on the state exam. But, most important, we are teaching transferable skills that apply to the many domains of the children’s lives.”
While the children see their regular visits to Hofstra as fun field trips, each of the tasks in which they engage strengthens She continues, “We like to think of the STEM Studio as an intellectual skills that are tested by the New York state everyday classroom. We want our classrooms to be assessment program. The STEM Studio serves as a clinical challenging environments in which learning to read, write, practice site for undergraduate and graduate students of speak and listen, and learning to compute, and learning to be a Hofstra’s School of Education. The STEM Studio complements neighbor and a friend and a peer are all one and the same, and the undergraduate STEM major for elementary education all integrated into the life of the classroom.” students, while extending the clinical experience of preservice teachers of all undergraduate Nicole Osovski, a STEM major at Hofstra, education majors. It also enhances is one of the students who works regularly “I feel like we’re helping them research opportunities within the with the visiting elementary school grow, not just as students, Master of Arts Program in STEM students. “It’s been awesome working but as human beings. with these kids,” Osovski says. “It’s really I get to know their personalities gratifying to work with them, because and how each student thinks. you open their eyes to new opportunities I want them to be able to take and a new way of learning. It’s more hands-on than classroom structure.” learning into their own hands
when they leave here. I want to help guide them.” – Nicole Osovski, STEM major
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