Culver Community Middle School is working to achieve a “STEM school” designation. To help with that effort, school officials will soon be attending training sessions, with more coming up in January, according to Superintendent Karen Shuman.
“That’s like a three-year process, where the state comes and does an audit of the school,” she told the school board last week. “And with that audit, they give you a certain number of points and depending on how many points you have, it lets you know how much more things you need to do before you get labeled a STEM school. And it’s just a nice title to have. It’s one of the state’s initiatives right now, so there’s a lot of grant funding tied to STEM.”
Shuman also said the school corporation is stepping up its professional development efforts for teachers. “We dismiss at 2:15 on Fridays, and the teachers have an hour of professional development every Friday that is led either by [Elementary School Principal] Erin [Proskey], [Middle/High School Principal] Brett [Berndt], or teachers themselves,” Shuman explained. “So we needed to get them some PD on how to do good PD. So a lot of them are going to that type of training.”
Meanwhile, the school corporation continues looking at effective instructional practices. “Last year, we worked on identifying the 12 essential standards per content area in grade level and the effective teaching practices to create growth models with kids,” Shuman said, “so if you look at a particular standard, is a student at a mastery level of that standard or needs reinforcement in that standard?” Shuman said the goal is to look more at individual students meeting individual standards.
