Daniel Hale Williams Elementary School created monthly STEM Club with help from IUN students
At Daniel Hale Williams Elementary School’s back-to-school night last summer, Tomeka Pope watched her students engage with Indiana University Northwest students. The pre-professional IU Northwest students were conducting different STEM experiments.
Seeing her students’ interest in the subjects, Pope, Daniel Hale William’s STEM teacher, had an idea. The school didn’t have a STEM Club – why not create one?
“The students were excited and interested in it and they asked me if we could do more, which is what created the STEM Club,” Pope said. “They’re (still) really excited, which makes me excited because these are things that they can learn and pick up for the future.”
Pope contacted Hamza Nasar, president of IU Northwest’s Chemistry Club, to see if he’d be interested in partnering to start a STEM Club at the elementary school, also located in Gary.
In addition to IU Northwest, which oversees the STEM programming, Pope also partnered with local electricians who manage the robotics section of the club. The club, which comprises around 25-30 K-5 students, meets monthly for two hours. The students spend half the time learning robotics and the other half STEM.
A senior neuroscience major in the pre-medicine program, Nasar obviously has an interest in science. But he remembers when he was a kid – he didn’t exactly have a positive view of the subject.
“When we were first doing our demos (during the back-to-school night), I thought these kids wouldn’t be interested at all. It’s the iPad kid generation, I didn’t think they’d be interested in seeing an actual experiment take place,” Nasar said. “But the kids were so entertained that we kept doing more and more experiments and we actually ran out of materials.”
While interested in volunteering at the elementary, Nasar wasn’t sure where to start. He thanks Linda Wozniewski, Chemistry and Physics Lecturer at IU Northwest, who helped create lessons for the students. With years of teaching experience, she developed curriculum and hands-on experiments to keep the kids interested and engaged.
At the February meeting, Wozniewski enthusiastically went through her lecture, introducing the students to different forensic techniques such as fingerprinting, footprints and liquid analysis. From there, several IU Northwest students – including Nasar, Rami Alnahass, Mina Mahmood, Haider Choudhry and Mohammad Abdeljaber – guided the eager elementary school students through different experiments.
Each month presents new lessons to be learned in the STEM Club. Eventually, the students will take the different skills they learned to solve a crime.
After some basic introductions, Wozniewski steps back and watches her students manage the experiments, staying nearby for support. What does Wozniewski hope the elementary students take away from this experience?
“A love for science,” Wozniewski said. “I have been a scientist for about 70 years, so my interest began when I was about their age.”
Fifth-grader Steven Williamson is one of those students whose interests may lead to a future STEM career.
“I like doing science and STEM,” Williamson, 10, said. “We do a bit in technology and I’m good with technology.”
Sparking that interest in STEM is key. Last summer, Pope recalled an event where a speaker talked about how he was failing classes and getting in trouble. That speaker discovered STEM and is now working professionally in a STEM-related field.
“I love STEM because it teaches them a different way of looking at things when it comes to learning,” Pope said. “The student that might not be engaged in the classroom, I can get them to do an activity or something with STEM. They’re still learning, but they’re doing it differently.”
“My goal is for the students to see early on that there are other options and start thinking about what they want to do,” Pope said.
Thanks to this work, the IU Northwest American Chemical Society Chapter (Chemistry Club) won an American Chemical Society Student Communities Award honorable mention, the first time the club has won an award since its founding.
And what keeps everyone coming back? Looking around the classroom at the faces of the elementary students, IU Northwest volunteers, electricians and teachers at the STEM Club, there’s one thing you won’t find – a frown.
“I think the biggest takeaway is that science can still be fun for kids,” Nasar said. “… We can teach kids that science isn’t intimidating, it can be fun and it’s not something you need to be bored about. It’s something that you can think about as a future career path.”
