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Des Lacs-Burlington High School and Dunseith Junior High are among five North Dakota finalists in a $2 million national STEM competition.
At Des Lacs-Burlington, biology teacher Mary Eldredge-Sandbo aims to encourage her students to pursue science, technology, math or engineering careers by putting them in contact with potential mentors in the community or past graduates who work in STEM.
“We want to make those local connections to help the students realize that the sky is the limit,” said Eldredge-Sandbo on Monday.
At Dunseith, teacher Sherri Hoyt wants to empower her eighth graders to stand up to bullies and encourage others in the community to do the same by developing a multi-media campaign. On Monday, her eighth graders were hard at work on an anti-bullying video that will be shown to other students in the junior high.
Other state finalists for the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest include Grant County High School in Elgin, Legacy High School in Bismarck and Minto School District.
According to a press release, the five North Dakota schools are among 255 state level finalists in the nation for the contest, which encourages teachers and students to solve real world issues in their community using classroom skills in science, technology, engineering, and math. Each of the state level finalists will receive two Samsung Galaxy Tabs for the classroom’s use. Next, teachers from the five state finalist schools will submit a lesson plan outlining how they will address the challenge with their students while working with their communities.
Eldredge-Sandbo said a state winner for North Dakota will be named sometime next month. There will be 51 state winners in all. Each state winner will earn $20,000 in technology for their school. From the pool of 51 state winners, 15 national finalists will be selected. The national finalists will pitch their ideas in New York to a panel of judges. Five national winners will ultimately be selected and share in the $2 million award. They will be honored at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.
According to Eldredge-Sandbo, some 88 percent of adults in Des Lacs do not hold a bachelor’s or a master’s degree. Of those who do hold an upper level degree, only 12 percent hold a degree in a STEM field. If the school receives the grant, Eldredge-Sandbo said the school might bring in speakers or use job shadowing or a variety of other methods to help students make connections with others from Des Lacs who work with STEM.
At Dunseith, Hoyt said there has been a bullying problem this year. She has tried to combat it by encouraging students to be “brave bystanders” who speak up and help when they witness bullying. This year, the eighth graders have been making an anti-bullying video. The students wrote a script describing a specific bullying scenario, made a storyboard for the video, rehearsed their parts, recorded the video and produced movie trailers. They will be showing the video to other students at the junior high.
If Dunseith wins the grant, they will be able to expand the program so that students can produce anti-bullying material for children at the elementary level in Dunseith and at the high school level and also involve the community to a greater extent. Students would also measure how effective the anti-bullying program has been by surveying people before the program and afterwards.
“Really, with or without the grant, what we’re doing is making a difference,” said Hoyt, who teaches exploring career decisions at Dunseith.
Hoyt said she can already see the positive impact from students learning to work together to combat bullying.
“We don’t have students going home crying (any more) because someone is making fun of them every day,” said Hoyt.