| Learning curve: Cannon River STEM School begins its third month |
By: Corey Butler Jr.
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Posted: Saturday, October 31, 2009 11:54 pm
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Cannon River STEM School third-grade teacher Ryan Johnson works with Jack Kelly on math. CRSS opened this year and focuses on science, technology, engineering and math. (Corey Butler Jr./Daily News)
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After two months at the Cannon River STEM School, Tabbetha LaPanta said her third-grade son, Luke, learned something new to say.
Unprompted, she said, he offered up one day that school on the whole was “pretty fun.”
“I don’t know if I’ve every heard him say that before,” LaPanta said.
She was one of many parents eager to send their kindergarten through sixth-grade students — the school expands to seventh grade next year and eighth grade the following year — to an upstart school based on science, technology, engineering and math.
LaPanta, who also has her fifth-grade daughter Maddie at the school, said it has been nothing but a positive experience so far.
“I feel really lucky for them to get in,” she said.
She’s not the only one.
With six grades and one teacher for each class of 20 students, staff positions were limited.
For most of the teachers, working at the Cannon River STEM School is in line with their idea of the perfect teaching position.
“It’s a totally different experience than I have ever been a part of before,” said third-grade teacher Ryan Johnson.
He previously taught three years in the Bloomington School District.
“It was very cookie cutter there,” he said. “They told you what to teach. You didn’t have a lot of freedom.”
At CRSS, where teachers helped develop the curriculum and order the books, it’s a bit different.
“It can change day-to-day, depending on what (students) need,” Johnson said.
That freedom in teaching also drew first-grade teacher Sarah Olson to the school. She spent the last six years teaching in Florida.
“I felt like I was losing a lot of my creativity out of my teaching,” she said. “I wanted a change and a challenge.”
And she’s got it.
Most days, students are outside learning and experiencing
the world around them. They keep journals of the ever-changing environment and teachers implement state standards into lessons plans to comply with the law.
Getting everything in order for the year has been the only real challenge, Johnson said.
“I took all the third-grade standards and I laid it out for the year,” Johnson said of pre-school year preparation. “I’m introducing all the different standards and concepts just like the regular schools, but I’m doing it in a different way.”
While reading, writing, math and the rest of the required education is integrated into journaling and other outdoor education, Johnson said the traditional classroom setting is still there with independent reading, creative writing and math. It’s just further cemented by the journals, he said.
But Johnson said the STEM slant gives education an advantage in his mind.
“When you use nature as part of your curriculum to help kids understand more about the world around them, they are able to understand things around them much more easily,” he said. “They are able to make connections. They are learning real life things.
“Nature is something that is always happening.”
And students have taken to the new school.
“It’s awesome,” 9-year-old Anna Forslund said. Last year, the third-grader attended Lincoln Elementary.
Daniel Drevlow, an 8-year-old who last year attended Faribault Lutheran School, said he enjoys the science-based approach.
Currie Putrah said she has enjoyed being outside and using her journal to track the changing seasons. In it, the 8-year-old keeps track of the temperature and time while making observations and sketching what she sees.
“We’re learning a lot about trees,” she said.
JoBeth Thompson’s kindergarten class journals, too, and she said in two months, she has seen great improvements as students sketch in greater detail.
In all, she said the first two months have gone well and she’s ready for the winter, recently purchasing boots and snow pants.
“I think it’s gone smooth,” Thompson said.
— Staff writer Corey Butler Jr. may be reached at 333-3135. |
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