STEM City Tour

STEM City Coordinator Mindy Bell took Swedish science museum educator Kajsa Berg on a tour to some of STEM City's (aka Flagstaff's) STEM education sites. Kajsa is visiting as half of an exchange established by the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce. 6th grade science teacher Kaci Heins, from Northland Preparatory Academy, is the American half. You can read more about the goals of the exchange at their blog.

We began the tour at Sinagua Middle School. Teachers Gretchen Downey, Carrie Jenkins, Jenna Samora, Kathryn Wertz, and Jillian Worssam showcased student-centered learning in engineering musical instruments with recycled materials, plate tectonics with graham crackers, coding at your own pace, creating models of human systems, and doing investigations with dry ice respectively!

Our next stop was at Willow Bend Environmental Learning Center, where Director Moran Henn was meeting with Arboretum botonist Kris Haskins! Kajsa and I got our photo taken by some of the water posters in the Center.

We toured the collections as well as the variety of ecosystems represented at the Center. We then went to Francis Short Pond, where Willow Bend and the City of Flagstaff have just received funding from the Arizona Department of Game and Fish Heritage Grants to improve the educational value of this favorite Flagstaff site. This project is strongly supported by STEM City. The birds were singing and the fish were jumping!

Flagstaff Junior Academy is in the ol' Flagstaff Middle School building by the pond. We visited science and math teachers Elii Chapman, Todd Saunders, and Heather Berginc. Kajsa was taken by the open format of the middle school, popular at the time the school was built!

Our tour continued at the Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy, and then went to the Museum of Northern Arizona. Paleontologist David Gillette looks on as Kajsa creates models of plesiosaur teeth from the cast of an original tooth!

The Museum brought 300 teeth to the Flagstaff Community STEM Celebration!

The final event of the afternoon was a presentation at NAU by Addison Guevara, the STEM City intern that worked with Gretchen Downey on the Future City project at Sinagua Middle School.

We had a great time touring STEM City! If you want to know more about great STEM sites to visit in STEM City, please contact the STEM Coordinator.