Starting next school year, elementary school students in Franklin will attend a STEM class, just the same as they go to physical education or art.
At the high school, teens can enroll in a four-year curriculum that will help prepare them for a career in the medical field.
Franklin Community Schools received a 2018 Digital Learning Grant from the Indiana Department of Education that is being used to build the science, technology, engineering and math curriculum at elementary schools.
High school students can take a Project Lead the Way class in bio medical sciences, and an advanced placement computer science class is being added.
Intermediate and middle school students also will get more STEM lessons and have module offerings in such STEM subjects as automation and robots and medical detectives.
The schools already were moving toward offering students more STEM curriculum when the Indiana Department of Education began directing school districts to increase what they were offering their students.
“We just knew it was an area we needed to beef up a bit in our elementary school level,” said Deb Brown-Nally, executive director of curriculum and instruction at Franklin Schools.
The school district applied for the grant and will use them to buy supplies, she said.
Elementary school students will have STEM classes added to their rotation with classes such as gym, art and music.
Each grade level in elementary school has a module that they will complete throughout the school year beginning in kindergarten. Schools are hiring specialized teaching assistants to conduct the STEM classes that are offered, with a district-wide teacher overseeing the teaching assistants, Brown-Nally said.
“To have a really meaningful science and technology lesson is really hard to do,” she said. “This is one way to incorporate it into the daily schedule to make sure students have the same experience throughout the district.”
Franklin educators modeled their program off a similar program Clark-Pleasant used to implement STEM classes at the elementary school level, she said.
The goal is that a student who starts in kindergarten and has STEM classes all the way through fourth grade will leave elementary school with the basic STEM knowledge and education they will need in intermediate and middle school, said Brown-Nally.
“We live in a world that is science, technology and engineering based,” Brown-Nally said. “We want to make sure that our students are prepared and have the best experience possible.”
High school students will have the option of enrolling in a four year bio-medical program as part of Project Lead the Way.
Jeff Karns, science teacher at Franklin Community High School, heard about the program and approached administrators with the idea of bringing it to Franklin.
Project Lead the Way classes are known to be hands-on and project-based, which will allow the students to learn more and enjoy the classes more, while exploring what could be a possible career path, he said.
“It seems to be really career-focused to give the kids a flavor of what it will be like in a medical-related field,” Karns said.
He will go to classes this summer to learn how to implement the Project Lead the Way curriculum for high school students next school year. Students will enroll in a year-long class each year to complete the biomedical program, he said.
Other classes that cover the same topics, such as kinesiology and anatomy, may no longer be offered to make room for the biomedical program.
