Tigidankay Saccoh Capstone

Capstone

When I started my capstone, I had a vision to engage kids from my area in STEM. By the end of the project, I hoped to gain a deeper understanding of how to work with younger kids. I also hoped to refine my coding and engineering skills. Overall,  my most important goal was to actually inspire the kids to pursue engineering when they get to highschool and college. These goals were appropriate for me because I have been involved with engineering every year at SLA. Personally, growing up in a school lacking in resources and with a weak STEM curriculum, I was not exposed to any substantive science, technology, engineering, or math projects until high school. I have had the privilege of attending a immersive, project-based high school. This is a privilege that unfortunately many kids hailing from my socioeconomic background do not have. Partnering with the West Philadelphia Community Center, in addition to my debate mentoring program, I explored several STEM related topics with a group of black children over 5 sessions.  During these sessions, I gauged their interest about circuitry, NXTs, and Arduino to design an event that is an appendage of my capstone. This event will be open to disenfranchised youth across Philly and will be funded by Braskem. I felt that I could not just cap my capstone at the five sessions because I have the capacity to do more given my funding. I will also be designing a website that will include all of the STEM programs I have participated during my high school career, to keep the kids engaged even after the two hour event is over. I will launch the website during the event to solidify the kids’ interest in STEM and ensure they will continue to pursuit STEM programs afterwards. I am so happy to have had this experience because I met a group of talented, underprivileged kids who taught me more about myself than I could have ever anticipated. The sessions became more about STEM and we had discussions about issues affecting black inner city youth as well. I really feel like I planted a seed of curiosity in their lives, but also acted as a big sister/mentor to these kids.

Bibliography:

Williams, Joseph J. “Bringing STEM Education to Underserved Communities.” US News, www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2014/05/29/bringing-stem-education-to-underserved-communities.

This source is effective in providing a basis for the impact of my capstone. My ultimate goal for my capstone is to create change within my community by exposing sixth and seventh graders to engineering. I think this will come in handy when I am articulating my pitch for Braskem funding. It specifically details a non-profit organization’s journey of bringing STEM to less affluent communities. Although my capstone is not a non-profit, I can still gain insight on why there is such a need for a capstone like mine. It will educate me so that I will be able to inform others on why I am doing my capstone, not with emotion, but with empirical data that highlights the lack of representation in the STEM field.

Camera, Lauren. “Low Income Students Nowhere to Be Found in Stem.” US News, www.usnews.com/news/stem-solutions/articles/2017-05-25/low-income-students-nowhere-to-be-found-in-stem.

This source is effective in providing a basis for the inquiry aspect of my capstone. When brainstorming ideas for Capstones, I knew I wanted to created change within my local community by using something I learned in high school.Before SLA, my knowledge of engineering was very minute because the science department at my local neighborhood school was terrible. I knew that I had to do my part somehow in exposing younger underrepresented kids in southwest to engineering before they apply for high schools, in hopes that they apply to SLA or schools offering similliar engineering programs. Over the years, I have learned that programs that preach about career opportunities do not really engage and inspire young children.  This article corroborates the fact that programs that allow low income students to work with circuitry and robots are the ones that actually plant a seed of interest.

“STEM Education: Helping a Generation of At-Risk Youth.” Evōk Advertising, 6 Oct. 2017, www.evokad.com/insights/stem-education-at-risk-students/.

This source will be effective in articulating the impact of my capstone when I am pitching for funding from Braskem. Exposure to engineering can inspire at-risk teens to focus on their academics and dissuade them from engaging in high risk behaviors and succumbing to peer pressure. This is the larger goal of my project, A lot of the time, low income, teens of color feel trapped in their situation. They do not see any form of social mobility in their neighborhood so they are often discouraged when it comes to school and their future. I want to solidify that confidence in them and make them realize all that they are capable of through these workshops.

Porterfield, Ph.D. Daniel R. “Bringing Low-Income Students Into STEM Education.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 31 May 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/dporterfield/2014/04/03/bringing-low-income-students-into-stem-education/#43b895963ae8.

This source outlines an initiative that already exist that is helping to enroll low income students into the top schools for engineering.I will use this source to justify why there needs to be intervention at a much earlier stage.  I want the kids in my program to become involved in various engineering programs during high school because engineering will expose them to a plethora of opportunities. Just by being involved with SLA’s robotics team, I have had access to scholarship, extracurricular, and mentorship opportunities. Being involved with engineering could even inspire the kids in my college to seriously pursue a college degree when they are older.

Wilson, Donald, and Marcus Conyers. “The Teenage Brain Is Wired to Learn-So Make Sure Your Students Know It.” Edutopia, 8 Nov. 2016, www.edutopia.org/article/teenage-brain-is-wired-to-learn-donna-wilson-marcus-conyers.

This source delves into the science of neuroplasticity and the teenage brain. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to expand. Neuroplasticity occurs during normal brain development when the immature brain first begins to process sensory information through adulthood.  This is important to teens because you can train your brain to study better and instill a growth mindset in your brain while you’re young. Neuroplasticity is especially high among teenagers, whose synapses are proliferating by the second. Teenagers are very impressionable due to this reason. I will utilize this source to corroborate why i chose sixth and seventh graders for my target audience. Their brains are developing and new information makes a resounding impact on them. I know that if I can get these kids to attend two or three workshops, the experience will stick with them for a long time.

“Article: How Do Electric Circuits Work? .” How Do Electric Circuits Work? | Discovery Kids, discoverykids.com/articles/how-do-electric-circuits-work/.

I will utilize this source to give a basic description of circuits so that they can understand it on a basic level.

Soclof, Sidney. “How Circuits Work.” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 21 Jan. 2008, science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/circuit.htm.

This source will help me create the curriculum for the workshops. It is informative and thoroughly explains how circuits work. I will refer to this article when I am trying to communicate what circuitry is and the components circuits entail.

“{{PageGeneralData.HeaderMainText}} {{ContextHeader}}.” Help 2 - Help 2 - Help 2 - Help 2 - Help Topics - Service LEGO.com, www.lego.com/en-us/service/help/products/themes-sets/lego-education/lego-mindstorms-nxt-software-downloads-408100000007850.

This source will also help me create the curriculum for the workshops. It is informative and is a library for the NXT software. Lego Mindstorms are very helpful  for understanding the logic behind engineering and coding. I initially wanted to frame my workshops on my summer internship working with Arduinos. Upon talking to my in school mentor, I realized that coding from scratch would be a hard feat for middle school students. Working with circuits and NXTs will inspire the kids to think about engineering in a building-block kind of way. Once they learn these rudimentary skills, developing raw coding skills in the future will be much easier for them.

Cawley, Christian. “DIY 10 Jaw-Dropping Lego Mindstorms Projects.” Make Use Of, 7 Sept. 2016, www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-jaw-dropping-lego-mindstorms-projects/.

I will utilize this source to introduce the kids to really cool lego mindstorm projects. I want them to get interested before I officially begin my presentations and demos. It would be really bad if they were bored while I am trying to spark their interest. I plan to show them the videos to get them hooked and then move onto some hands-on activities.

Fronderville, Tristan De. “How to Keep Kids Engaged in Class.” Edutopia, 3 Aug. 2009, www.edutopia.org/classroom-student-participation-tips.

This source explains how educators can keep the attention of the students they are teaching. This will be useful for me because I will be directly interacting with younger children and I do not have too much experience with this. The only experience I have working with little kids is tutoring them in basic algebra concepts. This did not require too much creativity, especially since their parents were making them come. My workshops will be voluntary so I need to make sure that they are interesting so that people actually come. I found some helpful tips such as starting class with a warm up using movement to keeps kids focused. I will incorporate these tools into my teaching.

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