David Crockett students were able to step outside of the classroom and use their skills in different ways during STREAM day.
By Collin Brooks
Classes at David Crockett participated in a STREAM day on Dec. 14, a day that brought together different classes from the science, technology, reading, engineering, art and math realms in order to collaborate for a day.
“It’s about all of the classes having a common theme, even if it’s just for a day,” said David Crockett Biology teacher Twana McKinney, who helped put the day together. “It’s just an opportunity for them to leave the classroom and apply the techniques that they have learned.”
One of the more unique pairs was Hope Pritchard’s Spanish class and Mark Good’s construction class. The two classes collaborated on a small table that was built from old pieces of the David Crockett basketball floor and featured Talavera tiles.
Pritchard’s class learned about the hand painted tiles from Mexico before helping to lay them on the table which the construction class made Good said.
“We can see an opportunity for an ongoing relationship,” Good said.
David Crockett student Amanda Fink prepares the table for tiles.
The construction class also made a human bubble — which was formed when a rope with a hula hoop was pulled from a tire filled with bubbles.
David Crockett computer and design teacher Guy McAmis hosted a former student, Daniel Silvers, who presented some information about the ETSU digital media program, which he will graduate from in the spring. McAmis said that he likes to introduce his students to an array of topics so that they might find something they want to pursue.
“What I like to do with my classes is I get about an inch deep and about five miles wide,” McAmis said. “My actual class is drafting, which is putting ideas on paper so people can build it. But I pull in kids that like to do video games or fashion design and all types of different kids, so I like to incorporate all kinds of different ideas in my class so that kids get a better idea of what is out there.”
Mathew Desjardins an academic advisor and adjunct faculty member at ETSU explored the different classrooms and presented STREAM from a computer science aspect, showing different physics, computer and businesses classes how they can use code.
“It’s just like a foreign language, the sooner that kid’s are exposed to it, the quicker they can pick it up,” Desjardins said. “It’s a way of thinking, so the sooner you expose them to coding, the more and more people are going to want to do it.”
But technology was also used in English classes, as Sharon Clark’s 11th grade class read stories on Chromebooks and then used science to predict how they thought the stories might end.
“They have really enjoyed it,” Clark said. “This shows us how everything interconnects and that it’s not just individual subjects.”
A probability and statistics class examined double stuffed Oreos to measure their filling, while geometry and forensic classes were also able to join one another as they investigated a crime scene with blood splatter to try and decipher how the crime happened.
David Crockett student Jake Gouge watches as ETSU student Kendal Nelson works a problem on the board. Photos by Collin Brooks
“We measure in millimeters the length and the width and then we measure in angles to find out the angle of impact,” said math teacher Ginni Story. “When I told them that we were going to be investigating blood splatter, they asked “How we could use Geometry for that.”
“It’s amazing and intriguing to all of the students, including myself,” she said. “They are engaged and intrigued.”
Forensics teacher Cherie Wolfe said that students were surprised at everything that went into solving a crime scene.
“They are surprised about how much math is utilized in science,” Wolfe said. “But they are also getting a lot of knowledge and perspective about how that joins together and creates who did the crime.”
The A-part of STREAM stood for art, which is excluded during many other collaborative days. But David Crockett art teacher Kay Grogg said that a lot of art is based on science and where the pigments come from.
“A lot of times they would grind up the minerals to make paint,” Grogg said. “And then they would add it to the right type of binder and that took the right kind of chemistry to make sure they would stay together.”
Helping students understand the concept that it is important to take everything you learn from one class and use it in another was the most important part of STREAM day.
“The idea of STREAM across campus was, no matter what acronym you used, every class incorporates this concept,” McKinney said.
