STEM IN THE MIDDLE

Metro students were invited to help launch a program aimed at helping middle school students get interested and excited about STEM careers and to hopefully reduce the number of future high school dropouts. The program, known as STEM in the Middle, is a peer-mentoring program that exposes middle school students to science, technology, engineering and mathematics by engaging them in activities with older, high school students who are already interested in these subjects.

The program is sponsored by Ohio Department of Education (ODE), KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and COSI. The first event was held at COSI in May with 35 Metro students and 80 middle-school students from Eastmoor and Franklin Alternative middle schools in Columbus. In October, the students gathered again to strengthen the relationships, and they will continue to hold events and communicate with one another as they go beyond the relationships built at COSI. ODE plans to track patterns of course selection over the next few years to see if the middle school students stay interested in STEM coursework.

Metro and the middle schools hope to serve as a pilot for other schools in Ohio, and it might become a national model. ODE program leaders believe that middle school students mentored by older students will feel connected to role models who care about them and can relate in ways that adults sometimes can’t. For many low-income and minority students, role models are usually sports and entertainment figures who are rich and famous. We’re hoping they start to look up to their Metro friends and want to be like them. Older students can motivate younger ones by sending the message that it’s okay to be intelligent and interested in being a chemist, engineer or airline pilot.  

Our kids always love to plan a party – so they organized, planned and coordinated the events along with the sponsors. During the events, our students were responsible for groups of younger ones, guiding them through exhibits, talking to them about what they were seeing and experiencing. They shared a pizza lunch and discussed why STEM is important in education – from their own perspective.

A day of fun and learning… and hopefully a lasting legacy for our students to see how the choices they make can pave the way for others to follow. When they look into the faces of their new friends, they have to think of the route they took to Metro, the decisions and the sacrifices they made, and understand what we’ve been telling them from the beginning – they are the hope for tomorrow’s students!