Harlan students explore STEM careers through summer day camp

This summer, the Harlan Community School District designed an exciting “Kids Summer WBL Camp” to provide elementary school-aged students opportunities to explore STEM careers and to help them see the connection between the classroom and the workplace.

“This has helped us align our STEM programming from a younger level,” said Kyleigh Kumm, Harlan’s high school computer science and STEM teacher, who coordinated the Kids Summer WBL Camp with fellow Harlan teacher Sarah Fink.“So as we expand, these kids are going to have that exposure as they move to the middle school and high school level, which is something we’ve missed in the past.”

In May, the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council at the Iowa Department of Education announced pilot funding for an extension of their signature STEM BEST Program called STEM BEST Explore. The opportunity allows existing STEM BEST Program model partner schools to extend work-based and career-connected learning opportunities for students into the summer. It offers students more relevant and engaging lessons that directly relate to their world and their future work, ultimately strengthening Iowa’s talent pipeline for STEM-related careers.

“Through STEM BEST Explore pilot funding, the STEM Council is pleased to help extend opportunities for career exploration into the summer,” said Justin Lewis, bureau chief for Iowa STEM. “Providing these opportunities outside of the traditional school year better allows these funds to impact students that may otherwise not be able to take part in STEM programming.”

In partnership with local businesses, Harlan designed a summer STEM BEST Explore experience for grades 3-6 to explore careers around Shelby County. On the first day, the group visited the Harlan movie theater to learn more about business. The second day was drone-focused with demonstrations from two Harlan alumni who use agricultural drones and the Shelby County Sheriff and emergency responders who showed how they use drones in a crisis situation.

“(The Shelby County Sheriff) showed that they do training and they can get into every room at our elementary school in two minutes or less, so the kids were intrigued by that,” said Kumm. “The ag drones actually sprayed water over our practice fields so the kids were engaged with helping fill them up and figuring out a route plan and loading them in the truck, so they were very hands on with it.”

The third day included touring several areas of Myrtur Medical, a local hospital. Following the visit, the group returned to the school where they traced each other and then drove Ozobots to different parts of the body based on what they drew to put some of their learning into practice.

As a capstone of the entire summer experience, fourteen students, along with Kumm and Fink, visited Omaha's Kiewit Luminarium in July.

The day included a hands-on experience creating wind turbine models in the Luminarium’s maker space which sparked curiosity and creativity in the students’ minds.

“Getting the right blades was hard," said Beau, a fifth grader at Harlan Community Intermediate School. “First I did an inch size and it didn’t work very well and then I did six inches because I saw a lot of others had even bigger blades and it worked. So I realized the bigger it is the faster it goes, and smaller is slower.”

Students also had the opportunity to explore the interactive exhibits around the Luminarium.

“I liked the fingerprint thing where they analyze how special your fingerprint is,” said Searah, a fifth grade student at Harlan. “It said that my fingerprint didn’t have any matches so I thought that was pretty cool.”

Southwest Iowa Regional STEM Manager Casey Wenstrand joined the group for the day.

“I appreciate how Harlan is giving their youth the opportunity to discover STEM and the real-world through interaction with the environment and natural phenomena alongside the opportunity for self reflection and how they work and interact with that environment," Wenstrand said.

Kumm recalled multiple times throughout the day when kids came up to her exclaiming they had found an exhibit that expanded on something they had learned during an early camp session. She hopes to continue to expand these lessons and experiences throughout all grade levels.

“They’re starting to put that application together, which is great to see,” said Kumm. “Without STEM Best Explore, the kids wouldn’t have had experiences with some of these partners. Having the perspective of this being work-based learning and working with our community partners has helped us see that we could potentially utilize some of these partnerships at other grade levels. It’s going to be all kids getting that exposure during the school year.”