As Oaklawn STEM Magnet School continues to embrace collaboration as part of its Professional Learning Communities pilot initiative, Principal Utana Newborn is optimistic it will receive model STEM designation before the end of the school year.
The Arkansas Department of Education's Division of Elementary and Secondary Education developed the Arkansas STEM Model program to recognize school districts that show exceptional instructional practices in STEM.
According to an accompanying memo on the STEM Model designation application, DESE notes, "Science, technology, engineering, and math intentionally come together as STEM to present a rigorous integrated approach to understanding and interacting with the world in which we live. STEM education provides equitable opportunities for students to engage in authentic experiences in the classroom that are linked to community, occupations, and the global world so that all students become STEM literate in their K-12 journey towards college and career readiness."
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As a program that provides a blueprint for schools seeking the designation, the memo says it connects Arkansas' STEM education system to Arkansas careers and career training opportunities.
At the Jan. 17 monthly meeting of the Hot Springs School Board, which met in the district's administrative offices in the historic Jones School building, Newborn said STEM and PLC are very much intertwined.
"STEM and the PLC process (go) hand-in-hand. Our mission is to become a model STEM school by the end of this school year. We started the Arkansas Model STEM process last year. We were designated as achieving, but at the end of this school year we are hoping to be, and we know we will be, a modeled school," she said.
Oaklawn was selected in spring 2021 as the fifth cohort for the Arkansas Professional Learning Communities at Work project. Newborn told The Sentinel-Record at the time the school would create action plans that focus on increasing student achievement through aligned curriculum, formative assessments, and proven instructional strategies.
The second and third years focus on deepening collaborative understanding while strengthening multitiered supports, she said, noting it "will benefit the community because as the teachers teach their students, they will grow up to be productive citizens of society and within the community."
She said at the board meeting that collaboration for the Oaklawn staff means to be able to talk with each other to ensure they are able to plan, look at data, and know the standards of what it takes to move students toward achievement.
"Just so they can bounce ideas off each other," she said. "So they can find solutions to problems that they may have in their classroom, to help new teachers to provide confidence in each other, and just to provide supports, provide instructional strategies -- just model for each other. Collaboration is very important because it's proven to move students where they need to be."
The school's fifth- and sixth-grade choir performed at the meeting prior to Newborn's presentation. Choir, she noted, represents just one of the enrichment programs the school offers.
"For this also, we look at the community student engagement and just some of our partners within our building," she said. "We don't just have choir, we have EAST (Education Accelerated by Service and Technology), we have robotics, we have Lego robotics, best IQ robotics, we have Junior Beta, and so these are some of our students that participate in those activities."
Newborn cited the districtwide mission of empowering each student to be college and career ready.
"What we do is we try to inform our students what some STEM careers are," she said.
To do that, Oaklawn has different speakers come in. She said they have had a commercial pilot, a military pilot, a news anchor, a weather person, a nurse, and others who let students know about careers that fall within STEM.
The school also holds special events such as STEM Day and STEM Night, in which the community may also get involved. Organizations come in and provide hands-on learning activities for the students and their parents.
"We always invite our families in because we want them to know what's going on in the school so they can experience some of the same things that their students are experiencing," she said.
"A lot of parents want to help their child at home but sometimes can't because they don't understand. So we hosted a K-2 curriculum night and we were able to talk to our parents and let them know what their kids were learning and to just give them some ideas on how they can help their child at home."
Members of the Hot Springs School District Board of Directors clap in recognition of Oaklawn STEM Magnet School’s accomplishments in its Professional Learning Communities’ initiative on Jan. 17. - Photo by Brandon Smith of The Sentinel-Record