Photo courtesy of Alisha Waters & Emma Rendek
Jefferson Junior High School teachers Alisha Waters and Emma Rendek were awarded an Express Grant last spring titled, “Sci-Tech Club: Empowering Students Through Hands-on STEAM Activities.” The grant funded the purchase of lab materials for students to access real-world science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) concepts beyond the classroom.
When creating Sci-Tech Club, Waters asked herself, “where are limitations in class? And how can we extend on what we’ve been learning in class to, like, make it content? There’s not enough time in the day for us to do some of these labs or we don’t have the resources to do [them], so being able to break into smaller groups is a lot easier.”
When new sixth grade students look in the science classrooms, they often ask about the more stereotypical science labs they had seen in movies. Students tend to be disappointed to learn that volcano labs and soda with Mentos labs are not part of the junior high curriculum. Rendek and Waters noticed this, and decided to implement those labs into the Sci-Tech Club agenda.
“They’re like, ‘When are we going to do the volcano and stuff in class,’” Rendek said. “So we do a lot of those stereotypical things in Sci-Tech Club too. We did soda and Mentos outside in the winter last year, which was so fun. Just those stereotypical things that can get messy and just be fun, which we can’t really do in a class because of resources and the number of students.”
Sci-Tech Club provides students with more than just fun science labs, though. Students approached Rendek and Waters about running their own STEM course during club meetings, which allowed them to develop skills in leadership, public speaking, and confidence.
“We’ll just sit back and [students are] running a coding course,” Rendek shared. “I think that’s where we see that next step of interest and a true love for [STEM], and maybe they see themselves with a career in STEM and wanting to share their interests with others.”
In their Express Grant application, Rendek and Waters shared that their goal was “to create an inclusive space where students can experiment, create, and collaborate while building critical thinking and problem solving skills essential for their future academic and career success.” Through Sci-Tech Club, Rendek and Waters created that safe space for students to socialize with like-minded peers.
“We get a lot of students who are having a hard time finding a place at Jefferson,” Rendek said. “They might not fit in with some of the other clubs, so they find some sense of belonging in our club.”
“I think it’s something that the kids look forward to. They just really find it as an outlet for something that’s engaging, and where they can be who they are,” Waters added. “We’re silly, we’re funny, we’re nerdy, and we just own it in the club.”
Sci-Tech Club is open to all Jefferson students from sixth to eighth grade, which gives them the ability to form friendships across grade levels and bond over shared interests.
“There’s a particular two students who came together at the club,” Rendek shared. “When they were at the club, they were able to form new friendships and make a group of friends together. It was really cool to see that they came as a pair, but then they ended up joining and making friends across all different grade levels, which is not something you often see in junior high.”
“We’re grateful for this grant, and we so appreciated having this grant last year,” Waters said. “We appreciate that we can continue having this club, so we thank NEF for that.”
