STEAMed Magazine April 2015 | Page 5

STEAM team of six teachers at Drew’s K-5 campus, the technology, The STEAM partnership work that we have been able to do at Drew art, robotics, STEM lab, and engineering teachers - yes, this is a K - 5 comes closer to something akin to pure research in science than school with an engineering department - and I also rope in the music anything I’ve experienced at any other school. Feeling encouraged to and dance teachers when I can. Last summer the school opened a be innovative fosters camaraderie and collegiality. As the saying new building across the street with a Junior Academy and Senior goes: “We’re building this airplane as we are flying it!”. So hand me a Academy and I’ve begun to partner with senior academy teachers, wrench! too. Together we create STEAM projects and document them to share with other schools and with the steady stream of visitors who come through Drew. I’ve never been at a school that gets toured by visitors from around the state and around the country as much as But, of course, what’s important in the end is what the students get to do and whether or not it serves them well as learners, not how much fun the professionals are having. Drew does. My ‘home base’ at the school is the engineering lab and groups touring the school always want to come in there to see what’s happening because so few elementary schools have an engineering department. A film crew from Edutopia spent a week at the school this fall. So we are in sort of a fish bowl. Fourth grade students using the Tinker Yard as a research tool for their Avian Architecture project at Drew Charter School. Design Thinking A shared focus on design thinking is what keeps the different STEAM partners at Drew stitched together. Drew has two full time art teachers and two large art rooms where a good blend of traditional media and digital media are used for design challenges. [The art and engineering programs at Drew were recently featured in a ‘Profiles of Quality’ report published by the Southeastern Center for Education in the Arts.] My first visits to Drew, arranged by the school’s partners at Georgia State University’s music department, and hosted by the two art teachers, were for a series of Art & Math infusion workshops. These workshops led to an improv outdoor sculpture “jam” with fourth graders on a site adjacent to the school’s main entrance, which was co-coached by the engineering teacher, Courtney Bryant. This sculpture only remained on site for less than a week, but it created 5