Local Teachers Take a Turn at Learning

To help fill a pipeline of future scientists and engineers, local teachers are integrating STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics… into their classrooms. We went to see Nevada’s Project Recharge program in action.

School break, and the classrooms are not empty at Reno’s Swope Middle School. Reed High School science teacher Leigh Metcalf is leading this class, teaching energy conductivity…to middle school teachers. In the next classroom over, they learned how to build a circuit with switches and batteries.

The lessons are detailed and very hands-on. The middle school teachers will take what they learn in these classes to their grade school students…because if kids are going to have a good future, knowing tech skills is the way to go. As North Valley High School teacher Todd Markey told us, "Renewable energy and sustainability concepts are the way of the future. It’s the career of the future."

The classes we witnessed at Swope are there to get these local teachers geared up and trained on using STEM curriculum in their classes…to give them more confidence and interest in teaching STEM. They're also starting the kids early. The earlier they can get them interested in STEM subjects, the better off we're all going to be. Markey says to be effective, it should start in “Pre-K. Kindergarten."

There's no arguing that it's the future. The key here is coming up with ways to get the kids interested in it. Todd had his class doing a changeover to LED lights: "The students put the ideas together, the crunched the numbers and they also looked at one of the most important things. That's return on investments."

For future class demonstrations when school is back in session, new fans are boxed and waiting to teach air flow and resistance. Bins full of gadgets stand ready for electricity experiments….many that will be just darn fun. As 6th grade teacher Janice Dawn Pearson told us, "I can't wait to do some solar cooker hot dog with my students here while the temperatures are scorching here in August."

Did the teachers behave in class? Washoe County School District’s Sylvia Scoggin told me, "Of course they did." What about those “shhhhs" we heard from the teachers? "Well that's because they were so excited. They were already envisioning what it would look like in their classroom."

Middle school teachers from Washoe, Douglas and Churchill counties signed up to attend today’s (Monday’s) classes today at Swope Middle School.

Over the next five years, Project Recharge plans to provide training, curriculum and classroom resources to engage 100,000 new students, with grants from Tesla, the Nevada Governor's Office of Energy and the NV Energy Foundation.