Local middle schoolers launch into their future through STEAM program

STEAM Aviation program at Columbus Middle School

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)- Some local middle schoolers are launching into their future with the help of a new Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math program

Columbus Middle School sixth graders are the first in Mississippi to pilot the STEAM course “We build it Better” aviation program.

As technology in the classroom advances, school administrators are fighting to keep the attention and minds of the student on the chalkboard. At Columbus Middle School, students are launching into the future with the course “We Build it Better.”

The “We Build It Better” instructor Tameko Williams-Brooks shares how this course has taken off.

“The concept is through aviation, but it teaches workforce skills, workforce concepts, and things of that nature. So the program allows the students to come together with the concept of being prepared or preparing themselves for the workforce. So the curriculum is hands-on is STEAM related, so you have science, technology, engineering,  arts, and math,” said Williams-Brooks.

Not only were the students engaged in having fun but are seeing how learning can be fun.

“You have different learners. Most of our kids, what I have learned over the years, are more hands-on. The lecturing is old, so we are kind of meeting our students where there are educationally, I really feel that hands-on activities are way more beneficial,” said Williams-Brooks.

As industries embrace science and technology, We Build it Better also prepares these students to think about landing jobs outside the norm.

“We hear the old cliché, when you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, and usually we hear the doctors, the lawyers, and teachers.  Well we know that there are other professions besides those three general professions, so the students we will have the opportunity to research other professions throughout the curriculum,” said Williams-Brooks.

The students say they’re learning a lot in this new and unique course.

“I like it because it’s about lifelong skills like we need for our future,” said Jacobi Baldwin, a student at CMS.

“How to do things in a workplace and how to build things,” said Rishyra Johnson, a student at CMS.

“How to work as a team, what to do and not do in a workplace,” said Mariah Gandy, a student at CMS.

So we build it better, so we are building it together we are learning it together,” said Williams-Brooks.

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