STEM to STEAM

by Gerald First

Steve Jobs said, “I didn’t invent anything.  I looked and saw what was there that no one else could see.”  As I work in schools, I have noticed that the difference between elite 21st century educational curricula and run of the mill 21st Century educational curricula is not STEM, but STEAM -  Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics.  In order to be a creator and  innovator, in order to use the tools of problem solving, in order to gather and evaluate evidence to make sense of information and make decisions, one must think like an artist, not just analytically, but also synectically, creatively joining disparate pieces of information to discover what is there that no one else can see.

A Glenfield Middle School student at work in the STEAM lab.

At Glenfield School in Montclair, NJ, I am collaborating with Delia Malloy-Furer, the STEAM teacher to incorporate storytelling into her 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classes.  Stories of UFO’s, the Jersey Devil, and Buried Treasure, became the trigger for discussions of astrophysics, ecology, evolution, and geology.  An updated performance version of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” triggered a lesson on biology and brain activity.  Drawing, performing and writing follow ups, reinforced the academic information and led to further discussions of philosophy and ethics as the students considered the difference between, truth, legend, and propaganda, as well as the legal and moral definitions of life and death.

I am also collaborating with Ms. Malloy-Furer on a project in the seventy-eight seat Sky Scan Planetarium that is housed in the school.  Based on my book Imagine the Moon, the show’s script  combines a storytelling performance of myth, music, astroscience, and history, with astronomical displays and digital art as well as rod and shadow puppets designed by Terry Burnett.

The role of the teaching artist is often misunderstood. Too often it is characterized as entertainment. We are asked to perform at an assembly, create a performance, give the students an experience, and “Oh yes, you can visit a classroom,”  but the real reason to have artists working with teachers is to inspire both student and teacher to look further than the test, consider more than the right answers. Artists inspire, as in the Latin “to breathe.”  When an artist works in a school, learning becomes a common breath, a communal connection that has a physical and psychological reality. We become as one and draw upon and appreciate the depth of humanity’s multiple intelligences. Recently, while working with a STEAM concept, in a special-needs classroom, the students wrote this poem that expresses their feeling about coming to school to work with a teaching artist.

Frozen in time, Stuck in traffic,

Creeping to school along the same week-day path,

Emerging from the vehicle as if it were a cocoon

Woven from a caterpillar, 

We, ready to change, with

Fluttering wings of chaotic laughter, 

Make greetings of good morning 

As we drag our feet.

Hundreds of stairs rise up.

Our wings once curled are ready to open.

With a slow steady pace we march

Down the hall and into our room,

Where our wings, now dry, emerge 

To show our bright colors. 

One could not ask for a better recommendation to have teaching artist in the schools.

  

Storytelling and S.T.E.A.M.

by Gerald Fierst

Gerald Fierst and Friends

 Having worked as an artist in education for four decades, I have been dismayed, over the last decade, at the attack that arts education has experienced within the call for standardization.  Since creativity is an individualized experience, standardization has been the excuse that schools have used to reduce the “frills” and save money. Thankfully the pendulum is starting to slowly swing back, as parents and local districts realize the failure of standardization as a true measure of a good education.  At first, the call was for instruction in STEM - Science, Engineering, Technology, Mathematics;  the rationale being to prepare our children to get jobs in the 21st Century. The United States ranks far down the scoring list in these field. Now, however, enlightened and progressive school districts are realizing that simple mechanical skill in these fields does not give an advantage in a global economy. Creativity is necessary to apply STEM to discovery and innovation. Therefore, Stem is being replaced by STEAM- Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics.

I first encountered this 21st Century thinking while working as a storyteller for the library system in Singapore. The government had brought me to work there to perform and run workshops in the schools. They explained to me the although Singapore ranks highest on standardized testing, they realized that their school system was merely preparing the students to do what is already there, and that to succeed, one must look at what is there and see what not one else has seen: to realize what can become.  During that same period, officials from the military also approached me, asking if I could teach senior officers to tell stories. They explained that their officers did not tell stories of failure and that the same mistakes were made over and over again because no one ever questioned the patterns they had been taught. The hero’s story that inevitably includes tests and failure which lead to  transformation and discovery was the skill that they wanted to practice and respect; and which they believed would inevitably lead their country to a better life and global leadership.

With Storytelling Arts, I am working on two extraordinary projects that incorporate this same educational philosophy. At Passaic Valley High School, Dr. Joanne Cardillo, the superintendent of Schools, has Paula Davidoff and me in a three-year residency, mentoring a team of teachers to use storytelling in the classroom.  She has also introduced us to the Little Falls Middle School with the hopes of starting a similar project with 5-8 grade teachers. Thus, students will eventually enter the high school with a storytelling culture incorporated into their academic sensibility. I find this a visionary ambition. The whole school district will be using storytelling as an educational tool to support abstract thinking and syncretic association. This is an ambition to build a creative community.

In Montclair, at Glenfield Middle School, the STEAM science teacher, Delia Maloy Furer, also operates a 78 seat fully equipped planetarium. Last year, I published Imagine the Moon, a book targeted for use in STEAM classrooms. Delia, puppeteer and sound designer Terry Burnett, and I have collaborated on a planetarium installation using performance, music, and the stars to teach myth, astrophysics, science, and history. We hope to offer this show to other districts as well as Montclair. The objective is to teach and also to inspire.

All of this used to be called good teaching. Great teachers are artists. Preachers, teachers, and storytellers, are all of a pattern, creating a moment of inspiration when possibility becomes connected to the practical. Stories aren’t just entertainment, or they wouldn’t have been passed down for millennia. The process of storytelling is the pathway to discovery. Genius is the Genie which the process of storytelling liberates from the imprisonment of assumption. When the A is placed into the STEM program, the formula is complete and magic happens.