DECATUR, Ala. — Faith Plunkett, Instructional Technology Coach for Decatur City Schools had a dream, and it involved a bus. " I saw a school district with a bus about seven or eight years ago, and it's always been a dream to have one for Decatur City Schools," Plunkett shares. " I pitched the idea to my superintendent about two years ago and I was able to secure funding thanks to the Decatur City Schools Foundation and two years later, here we are. This is the product of a lot of work."
The Decatur City Schools STEAM Engine is a mobile STEAM lab for elementary students. This lab will roll between 12 elementary schools, serve over 4,000 students, and provide an innovative Steam learning experience designed around the Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards.
"The bus has three main goals," Plunkett shares. " The first goal is to provide innovative learning experiences to our students that align with our computer science and math standards. So, every time they board the bus, they're going to learn something new and it's going to align with what they're learning in class, but also align with our math and computer science standards."
"The second goal is to provide professional development to our teachers," Plunkett continues. " So, we have these new standards, but we need to train our teachers to teach them innovatively and outside of the box. So, this will provide a hub for our teachers to do that. The third is we are going to roll this class into the community, into some of our highly populated areas, and provide different services to our families, such as workforce development and also like mental health services."
Plunkett also shared that the idea came about because she wanted to meet kids where they are when it comes to learning and kids today love game technology.
"You know, these days, we're competing against video games that the students have at home," Plunkett shares. "So, let's make learning innovative. Instead of doing things on worksheets, let's make it creative and provide them a creative outlet."
The bus will also serve as a professional development hub for faculty and staff. The STEAM Engine will visit community neighborhoods and provide workforce development training, parenting sessions, language classes and more to parents in the community. " The goal is to take it into some of our communities and have parents fill out job applications and help them with things that they might not have the Internet connection for," Plunkett shares.