School: Platte County High School
Class: Environmental Biology
Instructor: Christy Sandell
Client: Girl Scouts of NE KS and NW Missouri: Volunteer Services
Problem: How can we design engaging and accessible STEM experiences for young learners that community leaders can easily implement?
Summary
Students partnered with Lori Hanson from the Girl Scouts of NE Kansas and NW Missouri to create a collaborative project for students. The challenge: develop comprehensive activity plans to help local Girl Scout leaders guide their troops through earning STEM badges. Students worked in teams to create detailed plans that included scripts, supply lists, timing, possible field trips, and suggested local experts. Each team also produced a short video explaining their plan. These deliverables were shared with the Girl Scout council for feedback, with some plans potentially being implemented by local troop leaders. The project emphasized student ownership, real-world application, and community collaboration.
Takeaways
In the future I will be more organized on my end. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on my students since they hadn’t asked for this learning experience, so I was a little loose with my requirements. Next time I will be more organized and demanding of them. They can rise to the challenge; I just need to be more clear with my expectations.
Advice
Have fun learning right along with your students! It’s 100% ok to not have all the answers and to tell your students you don’t have the answer and that you will learn along with them. It’s imperative that we start trusting our students with learning as adults and performing tasks as adults because we don’t just need them to memorize random facts; we need them to be lifelong learners with all the soft skills the working world needs them to develop/have.
Standards/Learning Targets
- Students focused on the NGSS Science and Engineering Practice Standards