Exposing STEAM pathways

Inspiredu worked all year to increase interest in the steam career pipeline and expose our youth to that specific path. We held 4 different sessions weekly and partnered with 2 organizations. 

One was the Atlanta Smart Academy located in Southwest Atlanta on Monday and Tuesday for one hour each. It’s an after-school program for grades 5th-8th and they work on projects following the sequence of steam- Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. 

One of those projects included a Halloween vision board to choose a role and make a presentation about a particular job role that was made up of costumes, settings, and coworkers. This gave them an opportunity to understand the roles which people play in real steam fields. Another included students creating basic muscles of the human skeleton and using play-doh to place muscles where they belong. Some of these students were equipped with laptops from our warehouse through our family learning workshop so they were able to engage in all the projects.

We also worked with Dubois Integrity Academy in Riverdale, Ga, late semester every Monday and Thursday.

The program was an hour-long held through the Meta “engineer of the week program.” The students had to think through prototypes and stats about various products. The products had to have a purpose and solve community issues like traffic, homelessness, hunger etc. 

During this program, a specific group of 3 girls chose to develop a project around traffic issues. They thought through ways pedestrians would be impacted and developed an underground sidewalk and built it using cardboard and other common materials like playdoh, buttons, and hot glue. They created better ways of accessibility with traffic lights that were much bigger than the norm for people with disabilities. 

 At the end of this project, they had to present today and this particular group won the “innovation award” with a medal for the group and certificates for each student in the group.

In the upcoming year, we plan on taking them on a field trip to NCR to do activities with the staff and hold a Q&A panel to answer questions about their potential career paths.