Educators at Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools have observed that the newly launched STEAM program for elementary students in the district is allowing the students to collaborate and communicate with each other, as well as be creators and critical thinkers. Using science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics as part of the program, students are starting to embrace and grow in all of these areas, said Tony Marinelli, a STEAM teacher at Jefferson Elementary School. “This idea of resilience — I tell my kids all the time are you going to be perfect the first time you try this and they will say, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” he said. “They are learning it is OK to fail, to be wrong and it’s OK to learn from mistakes. That’s how kids grow. The best thing about this is this is happening with our littlest learners and it’s going all the way up through grade five.” According to Superintendent Patrick Ward, a group of STEAM educators within the district worked throughout the spring and summer to launch the program for kindergarten through fifth grade students in the district’s elementary schools. “One of the things we talked about last year was assuring our students in all of our elementary schools had access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), and art,” Ward said. “This is a new opportunity for all elementary kids. STEM and art for all elementary kids is a priority that I’m looking forward to seeing developed.” With STEAM offered at the district’s School of Innovation, Ward said Willoughby-Eastlake had a great model and prototype for the programming. Gail Myers is among the STEAM educators and runs the lab at Grant Elementary School. Myers, alongside Marinelli, had a hand in training the educators for the program and has expressed that it’s awesome they took on the challenge. “This should be the class every student wants to go to and it is,” Myers observed. “Students are popping in, ‘When do I get to come back?’ We have a rotating schedule, so the kids know they get to come about once a week and for some of the smaller buildings, more often. They want to be with us as much as possible.” Marinelli recalls when Ward asked him if he’d be willing to help create this program. “He looked at me and said, ‘We don’t have the money to buy a curriculum,’ ” Marinelli said. “You’re going to have to design it yourself. I’m fortunate I was able to work on the curriculum along with Gail.” Currently, as part of the programming, one of the kindergarteners’ projects is to build structures within their community, such as the fire or police station, and then create a mini community. Among the things first-graders will be doing this year is modeling materials in motion. Second-graders are focusing on circuits. “They love it,” Myers observed. “I gave my students a pile of components and a little board that you snap them to, and I said you kids all need to make that light come on. It was awesome to watch them figure it out.” Third-graders are focusing on designing things and fourth-graders are delving into 3D design. Fifth-grade students’ focus will be on differences they can make in their community, which is to include meeting with various city officials and presenting to them. “One of the things we did on purpose is we wanted to make sure there was an alignment in two directions,” Marinelli said. “We wanted a vertical alignment that matches from kindergarten to grade five, so as they progress through those grades, these activities and our curriculum align together. We didn’t want it to be just separate things that had no connection to each other.” The STEAM educators also focused on having a horizontal alignment within the program so that when looking at a particular grade level, where students started at the beginning of the year, where they are in the middle and where they wind up at the end aligned, Marinelli said. “It is based on the concept of design-thinking,” he said. “As I told my students, engineers don’t start sticking things together, hoping it works. There is an actual process they go through. We wanted to make sure that everything we had in our curriculum was focused on that design process.” As the educators designed the program, they wanted to make sure students were actively doing something, Marinelli said. “We created three Project-Based Learning or Problem-Based Learning,” he said. “We also wanted to make sure we were going to give them a big problem and they were going to work on that every time they came in. The goal is to come up with their proposed solution.” Going forward, digital portfolios may be implemented within the program. “Starting with kindergarten, it would be great to have a record of what they’ve done so that by the time they leave fifth grade, they would have a record of everything they have done in STEAM,” Marinelli said.