When we think of education, we think of students sitting at desks beginning as early as first grade. Students attend elementary school, middle school, and go off to high school. Outside of the classroom, students may be encouraged to join clubs, activities, sports, and to participate and be part of something, but this time is on top of academics.
Students feel pressured to be part of something, to be effective doers and motivators in a community for a variety of reasons; a resume for a college application, a topic for a personal essay, and just to feel a sense of self-efficacy, confidence and belonging within a community.
All too often, this pattern follows students to college. In colleges that are rooted in providing a diverse, liberal arts education, students enter as first years and immediately think about their next path. They often don’t feel capable or have the skills to immerse themselves in a profession. Many apply for fellowships with their robust resumes of extracurriculars and strong transcripts, with the plan to attend a graduate school, which may finally land them in a profession. This pathway is long, arduous, expensive, and often not desired, practical, or realistic for young individuals in today’s society.
Now, more than ever, it is imperative to respect the enormous changes in our economy, society, and within our communities as we educate our students from elementary school all the way up to high school and beyond. Learning answers in textbooks or on videos played on the smart board, taking obsolete standardized tests, and failing to lean into community resources surrounding us, may not be the best way to proceed in education. Of course, we all understand the challenges of trying to shift a whole curriculum and way of learning that has been embedded in our society since tiny little schoolhouses.
Let’s be honest, we spent nearly a year using technology to teach our students during COVID. We developed and were forced to innovate and navigate different platforms for learning and tools to engage our students from outside the classroom. We cannot go back to the classrooms and pretend that this innovation and interconnectedness does not exist. Instead, we need to use these tools and lessons to provide more accessible resources, partnerships, and innovative teaching methods into all our schools.
This fall, thanks to a grant from the Williams College TIDE Program (Toward Inclusion and Diversity and Equity and funding from the North Adams School District’s 21st-century program, along with support from the Berkshire Innovation Center, we – myself and some of my college students -- initiated a new afterschool Robotics Club at Colegrove Elementary School. The program has been a perfect example of a collaboration that pools skills and resources to positively impact students across the board. It also shows just how ripe Berkshire County is with opportunities to engage students in STEAM education, which is foundational to the future of education.
Williams College students want to be active participants on campus, but also in the communities that surround our campus. College can no longer be limited to textbooks, classrooms, learning answers, writing research papers, problem sets, and traditional final exams. Students in college need the skills to interact with different populations and to learn how to create and impact and make a difference within communities. Foundational knowledge from the expertise of professors is important, but students also need to practice their learned skills in the real world so that they leave college having learned how to interact, ask the right questions, and use collaborative resources. Our local children need the same skills and need to start practicing them at an early age. Luckily, we live in a community ripe with intellect and opportunity, we just need to continue to find ways to connect all our resources.
How students think and perceive themselves as members of a community starts at a young age. In our rural community – struggling with an opioid crisis and staff shortages at schools and health care institutions -- it is imperative that we use our resources to empower our youth to believe that they can impact the world they live in and that they can graduate from school and go into occupations of their choosing.
October 21st marked day one of the new after-school Robotics Club at Colegrove. The energy amongst the 15 elementary students, the four Williams College students, the coordinators from the North Adams Public Schools and the BIC has been nothing but magical. “Do we get to do this every week,” exclaimed one student the first week the club met. “It works; it’s dancing,” another student shouted after programming the robot they built together. In this club, there are no barriers to learning, there is no judgment, there is just a team commitment to building Lego obstacles, robots, programming, and learning, as well as a strong mentor/mentee relationship that has developed with the college students, the BIC, and North Adams afterschool team.
There is a unity that defines the future of teaching, learning, collaborating, and maximizing community interconnectivity to allow all individuals and communities to reach their full potential. The footprint of programs such as the Robotics Club at Colegrove, with multiple partners collaborating, is a fantastic model what the future of STEAM education and innovating learning can look like.
This year, there are over 30 teams from across the county participating in the Berkshire Innovation Center’s Berkshire Robotics Challenge, including our two teams from Colegrove Elementary, the first teams from North Adams in as long as anyone at the school can remember. The season culminates with a county-wide competition at Wahconah High School in March. The robotics clubs are a great example of interactive, project-based learning that teaches self-efficacy, interpersonal skills, and teamwork. Students learn facts, but more importantly they learn to ask questions, find answers, and flex their curiosity. These are building blocks that lay a foundation for success for students of all ages – elementary through college.