Today’s Education: STEM or STEAM?
By Beverly French, Envison Board Member and Arts, Culture & Entertainment Signals Team
“If you had two sheets of newspaper and ten inches of tape, how tall a structure could you build with them? ”
That’s the sort of question Rutgers Prep lower and middle school students are asked every week in JoAnn Miller’s STEAM class. Combined with the IDEAS program (Innovation, Design, Engineering, Application and Skills), Ms. Miller’s class and others at Rutgers Prep are meant to give students in grades one through eight opportunities to explore their regular classroom work in a teamwork scenario, using problem solving, observation, experimentation and creativity.