ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Friday was the third annual “Mayor Ken Welch’s Team Accelerate STEM Day” where Pinellas County students get a hands-on experience at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.
It wasn’t just a day to watch the races, though. Students participated in various STEM activities, putting their knowledge to the test and seeing the science behind racing.
Seventy-five Pinellas County middle school students started their day at the Maritime and Defense Technology Hub in St. Pete.
“A lot more bricks, a lot more thinking, right, so take two minutes to discuss your strategy. Are you ready? Go!” said Cathie Mullins, who is the Secondary STEM Staff Developer for Pinellas County Schools.
They fired up their brain’s engine, with one of the day’s STEM activities called “Hanging Around” using Legos.
“We did a Lego challenge where we hanged Legos off the table and we tried to put it to the ground, but it was kind of hard because you had to weigh it from weight on the table to weight on the ground too,” said Aven Brantley, a sixth-grader at Hohn Hopkins Middle School.
Aven says this was a lot more challenging than it looks, but still a lot of fun. “I thought it was pretty cool because we got to do a hands-on activity instead of filling out a worksheet or something like that.”
Which is the goal. Mullins says the district recently created the “Office of Student Experience” for activities like this, taking the lessons outside of school.
“There’s all kinds of sneaky little learning STEM skills in here that they don’t even know they’re learning, they just think they’re having fun,” Mullins said. But then when they come to apply that in their classroom lessons they go, ‘Oh, I remember,’ and they can connect the dots on what they’re learning, and what they’ve seen."
And the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg offers the perfect lesson for middle school science.
“Forces, balance, weight vs mass, so they’re incorporating all of these lessons into hands-on activities in this particular room. They’re also learning about how does a race car balance,” Mullins said.
In the paddocks, students learned all about racing from the drivers, getting a firsthand look at how STEM and speed are connected, and it is experiences like this that Mullins says will last a lifetime.
Students from John Hopkins Middle School, Bay Point Middle School, and Thurgood Marshall Fundamental Middle School all participated.
