Climate modeling and prediction is a complicated subject, but University Lab School teacher and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math coordinator Paige Zittrauer doesn’t think that’s an issue for her kindergarten class.
As a part of the occupations unit of the class curriculum, Zittrauer takes her class on tours of facilities at the University to show the kindergartners what kinds of opportunities are available to them in the future.
“We just want to give them, as kindergarteners, an opportunity to see and hear about what people do and how they do it and the tools they use,” Zittrauer said.
Last week, the class listened to climatologists at the Southern Regional Climate Center housed on the third floor of Howe-Russell Geoscience Complex at the University. Topics discussed included various forms of extreme weather and how computers are used to help predict and measure these phenomena. The children also toured the SRCC data center’s Squall supercomputer.
The tour came as a part of the curriculum taught at the Lab School, but also as a part of a larger effort by Zittrauer to help encourage the proliferation of STEM-themed education to younger audiences.
“Our school is trying very hard to work towards thinking more about STEM and how it belongs in school,” Zittrauer said. “The challenge is that people really think that STEM is a curriculum, but it’s just a frame of mind and a way of thinking about what you’re doing.”
The class also takes tours for non-STEM-related occupations. Recent trips included talking with the University’s College of Education dean and media relations personnel. Zittrauer hopes to also introduce the students to medical and sports opportunities with tours of Tiger Stadium and the PMAC. The trips are generally coordinated with the parents of the class’s current and former students.
In 2014, the Lab School was ranked as one of the top five schools in the state for STEM education by Children at Risk, a non-profit focusing on children. The ranking was sponsored by Shell Oil Company in reflection of the large demand for a skilled STEM workforce in Louisiana, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas.
The U.S. Department of Education has also identified early-childhood STEM education as an area of focus. In a statement, Russell Shilling, former STEM director for the U.S. Department of Education, said, “Unfortunately, we do not know as much as we need to about how to effectively integrate STEM into early learning … Work is underway at the U.S. Department of Education to identify best practices for introducing STEM in early learning.”
Currently, less than 5 percent of time in formal early childhood education settings is devoted to STEM learning, according to research presented at a recent conference on fostering STEM trajectories organized by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the New America research institute.
National Science Foundation statistics show that kindergarten is a key time for teaching basic math and science principles to children. Math assessment scores for first-time kindergartners showed a 33 percent increase between the fall of 2010 and spring of 2011, highlighting the rate at which children soak up information in their early-childhood years.