During part of the COVID-19 induced school shutdown of 2020, the work of remodeling Brownstown Elementary School in the Conestoga Valley School District (CVSD) continued. The work, which created the first Breniser STEM Lab in the district, continued for more than a year before being completed during the fall 2021 semester.
On Dec. 15, 2021, the lab was dedicated in honor of the late Beverly H. Breniser, who had been a CVSD teacher and principal before serving as the executive director of the Conestoga Valley Education Foundation (CVEF). CVEF has worked with the High Companies to provide grants to complete four STEM/Maker/Space Labs - one in each of the CVSD elementary schools, with all labs named in honor of Breniser.
Starting the week of Jan. 17, one teacher from each grade in Brownstown Elementary will be working along with principal Andrew Graybill and representatives of IU13 to train in the best ways to utilize the lab. "We will all be thinking about STEM and how to bring more of it here," said Justine Taylor, who teaches fifth grade at Brownstown. She explained that the program will introduce the teachers to the tools found in the lab so that they can become familiar with them and use them to do hands-on education with the students.
Brownstown math specialist Laura Gingrich said she has already used some of the tools that the grant purchased. "We have done things with the nesting place value blocks that go to 1,000. They're expensive, but having them here, all grades have access to them to understand ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands. We use these for multi-digit division," Gingrich said. "The math application is exciting. We have the tools to see math come to life."
Taylor has already employed lessons that use math and science together. "I have been teaching capacity," she explained, noting that students have been measuring water in both the imperial and metric systems. "We were measuring water and added salt to the water to see how the temperature has to go below 32 (to freeze)," she said. "We talked about the real-life application of salt on your driveway and how the kids need to know the roads are safer if we can find ways to problem solve. The kids got so excited."
Graybill is looking forward to the possibilities of meeting new science standards that will be prevalent in the next few years. "We have lots of fancy gadgets, and STEM teachers are really good at using them," he said. "The starting point with the IU13 is having a design experience per grade level per trimester. It might be a two- or three-day activity," he said. He noted that with the lab having just opened, the school is not using it comprehensively yet, but that is the goal for the next year. "There have been some neat activities," he said.
CVEF is a registered nonprofit organization committed to enhancing CVSD schools by funding innovative programs and classroom strategies. The organization set a goal several years ago to raise $100,000 for the four STEM labs. More information about CVEF, readers may be found at http://www.conestogavalleyef.org.
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