STEAM
What is STEAM?
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics), an interdisciplinary hands-on future-focused learning approach, is an essential component in guiding our students to develop personal qualities and skills leading to international-mindedness, intellectual curiosity, adaptability, effective communication, creative expression, compassion, community building, responsible citizens, and an appreciation for cultural diversity.
How is STEAM part of IC’s mission to empower learners?
STEAM plays a leading role in IC’s mission to empower and guide students through an innovative learner-driven technology program. Moreover, the STEAM Innovation Center also complement IC’s Danielson Framework for Teaching. The Framework is a research-based set of instruction components, grounded in a constructive and demonstrable view of learning and teaching, with student growth as a core focus.
Why should IC teach STEAM?
Our children are inheriting a consumer-driven world with dwindling resources – continuously under threat by manmade disasters. The burden of repairs has fallen to them.
They are the key.
Who funded the STEAM Innovation Center at IC?
The STEAM Innovation Center was funded by USAID’s (United States Agency for International Development) American Schools and Hospitals Abroad (ASHA) initiative, which assists overseas schools, libraries, and hospital centers to highlight American ideas and practices. On November 12, 2021, US ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, officially inaugurated the center, congratulating the school on keeping its high standard of education despite the country’s difficulties. She also commended the efforts of IC to invite public and underprivileged schools in the area to use the STEAM center.
How does STEAM help our children?
It develops their ‘soft skills’ (personal characteristics that allow us to interact well with others) by encouraging them to ask questions, interview experts, collaborate in teams and present their work to an audience. It allows them to explore their creativity by giving them the opportunity to find solutions to problems that they may encounter in the real world.
Why is STEAM important after graduation?
STEAM jobs are projected to continue growing at a very high rate. The need for creative problem-solving and innovative workers is at an all-time high. New graduates are expected to understand and function in a STEAM-driven environment. Thus, the need to introduce STEAM as early as elementary school (To familiarize students with STEAM in their younger years, IC created ‘makerspaces’ - collaborative workspaces inside a school- and robotics and coding clubs in the Elementary School a few years ago).
What is the ‘A’ in STEAM?
Arts. It sparks creativity, spatial awareness, observations, tones the different senses, adds beauty to any project, and expands our students’ growth. A STEAM program must include artistic expression as it is central to the creative mindset of the approach. In addition, multimedia projects such as filmmaking, digital design, and photography now require scientific and technological skills.
How is STEAM applied at IC?
IC educators have worked hard to establish a customized curriculum. We have allocated a well-trained group of teachers to start implementing the STEAM approach. Their main task is to design updated lessons as dictated by the ever-changing STEAM world. They will train and coordinate with other teachers to help “STEAM-ify” their lesson plans. The objective is to integrate STEAM components into all programs and at all levels at IC Ras Beirut and Ain Aar. There is no specific STEAM class or hour; instead, it will be a new way of teaching what is already there.
IC has created ten state-of-the-art labs in Ras Beirut and Ain Aar and equipped them with the latest digital equipment, including computers, robots, electronic devices, digital design and 3D printing tools, woodworking, and metalworking equipment, in addition to creative and professional software curriculum resources. Each activity has an allocated workspace with seating, tables, and presentation equipment. Our physical plant engineers and technicians meticulously and continuously maintain our high-end equipment.
What is our final goal with STEAM?
Our goal is to empower students to become active learners. We want them to try to design and implement their visions and ideas. We want them to feel proud and excited about their learning journey as they build and present their prototypes and ideas to their parents, communities, or even online. We do not want our students to simply receive information; but we want them to question the world around them, identify the problems, and confidently find ways to approach and solve them.
The result?
A better world for our children and our children’s children.
A good read!
Third Way senior fellow Michael Itzkowitz tells CNBC Make It, STEM degrees “tend to have the strongest job prospects, so they can start earning a lot of money right after graduating,” .
