STEM Program—
Popular Summer Pick
S
tudents who are interested in science
and technology can use the summer to
prepare for West Mifflin Middle School’s
enhanced STEM program.
The middle school spent the last academic
year adding projects and expanding course
offerings related to science, technology,
engineering and mathematics. The program
will be expanded further next year, but
middle school principal Brian Plitcha says the
details are not yet finalized.
Last year Marci Hunnell offered a digital
media class to seventh grade students that
included several robotics and computer
coding projects that used the Scratch
programming language. Hunnell says
students who want to get an early start
exploring Scratch can visit scratch.mit.
edu over the summer. She also suggests
students can create an account at code.org to
start solving simple coding puzzles as well.
Although West Mifflin Middle School does
not offer any summer science or computer
camps, several other institutions do, such as
Carnegie Mellon University.
24 724.942.0940 TO ADVERTISE | West Mifflin
West Mifflin’s
enhanced STEM
gives kids entering
middle school a leg
up on science.
By Paul Glasser
Offering students the chance to explore
science and technology in middle school is
important because it exposes children to new
concepts they might not otherwise learn,
Hunnell says.
“If I had learned to do this when I was
younger, I might have done something related
to computers,” she says. “Programming is one
of those things that is the way of the future, and
there is a lot of demand for it in the job market.”
Hunnell also teaches the Accelerated
Curriculum Enrichment (ACE) program
and gave students a chance to use Scratch to
build and program robots. The students also
employed devices called Makey Makeys, which
are similar to motherboards, to control the
robots. Students in the ACE class displayed their
projects at a fair in April. One team built a harp
and another created a piano using cardboard
and foil. Both projects utilized Makey Makeys to
produce musical notes and create an interactive
experience. Although some students thought
a programming project would be boring, most
participants, as well as parents, enjoyed the fair,
Hunnell says.
“One dad said his kid was really into the robots
and thought it was a good experience,” she
recalled.
West Mifflin Middle School has also updated
the industrial arts curriculum to include more
science and engineering topics. The classes were
also extended from 12 weeks to 18 weeks.
John Ohnhaus, a technology education
instructor, used the extra time to teach seventh
grade students how to build a solar-powered