February 1, 2010

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Big Footprint 
(and other anatomical pursuits)

 

We call ourselves the small school with the big footprint. That phrase has been put into practice this year with our exciting partnership with Westerville City Schools. It is one of the Franklin County districts who send students to Metro. The funny thing is, this year, Metro is sending students to Westerville, along with one of our teachers.

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Last year, we began a biomedical sciences course and offered it at our satelite classroom at COSI. Peter DeWitt, who previously has taught biology and chemistry at Metro, was excited to pilot this course with Project Lead the Way material. With so many students interested in careers that center around health and medical sciences, Metro wanted to take the course further this year. We reached out to the districts we serve, and Westerville was anxious to get involved.

 

One of our goals is to transfer what we are learning and developing about education to other STEM schools, but our first mission is to transform the way education is delivered in our own backyard, right here in Franklin County. Westerville Central High School is a large, modern building with many choices for students. What could Metro offer that it didn’t already have? We proposed to move our biomedical sciences course there to share it with them. The course “Bodies” was born and is being taught in tandem by our Peter DeWitt and Westerville’s Pam Hayes (who just happens b2ato be the wife of Battelle staff member Tim Hayes). Peter and Pam have a full class made up of students from Metro and Westerville.

 

The class is four hours each day all year. For that, the students get high school elective credit in biomedical sciences, human body systems and biomedical research, and they are getting Ohio State University credit from a professor who comes to teach them Biology 113 and 114. The students are engaged and are learning content that is well beyond what is normally presented in most high school courses.

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What is the future for this program? The idea is that Westerville will be left with this course to implement on  their own in the future and Metro will take this course or a similar one to another district. It is our way of giving back and spreading the fun to the partner districts that trust us with their students.

 

Follow along with the students as they progress through this course by keeping up with the blog created by Peter and Pam at: http://metrocentralstem.blogspot.com/

 


Read the Columbus Distpatch article.

 

 

 - - Posted February 1, 2010 - - 

 

Diana Wolterman is on a special assignment at Metro High School, where she will play a key role in furthering the collaboration between the private sector and education, including special projects to connect Battelle staff with the activities in the school, assisting with tours and visits, developing and implementing new experience-based curriculum support, and helping to document the process of creating a new STEM-focused learning experience. Diana also will document Battelle’s successes and missteps at Metro to help the organization learn from the experience and make good decisions going forward at Metro and in other educational activities.