Beyond Bunsen Burners

It seems like every few months, a new report comes out documenting just how far American kids lag behind their European and Asian peers in math and science. Having won a couple of world wars, the space race, and more than our share of Olympic contests, not being No. 1 in such vital areas is distressing to this alpha nation. That’s especially the case as technology continues to shrink the planet, meaning our kids will have to compete for careers with the best and brightest from across the globe.

It’s probably no surprise—American ingenuity and all—that an effort is on to catch up. If STEM (short for science, technology, engineering, and math) has become the hottest trend in learning, both locally and nationally, Kirkwood High School was ahead of the curve, opening a regionally recognized science building in 2007. Now, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) is upping the ante with a state-of-the-art, over-the-top center of its own, set to open in spring 2014.

Here’s a look at those standout science programs. Is either school No. 1—or are they tied for the best in class?

KIRKWOOD

From the parking lot, Kirkwood’s Earl and Myrtle Walker Science Center looks like a typical high school, a box of beige brick with too few windows. But its 15 classrooms—five each for physics, biology, and chemistry—stand out from the crowd.

For one thing, they’re big, about 1,500 square feet apiece, combining what traditionally would have been separate classroom and laboratory spaces. That allows students to take what they learn in discussion and apply it immediately to a hands-on activity; there’s no need for teachers to wait a week to schedule time in the lab, by which time, the connection has often been lost.

The spaces are also versatile. “One of our design goals was to have as little bolted down as possible,” says Joe Bartin, the new chair of Kirkwood’s science department. The idea is that if science needs to be taught differently a decade from now, teachers will have the freedom and flexibility to adapt.

The classrooms are also technology-rich environments. Each room has a cart of 24 laptops, though within a few years, all students at Kirkwood will be given their own iPads. There are two projectors, one with a standard screen, the other with an interactive whiteboard. (The latter device is a 21st-century chalkboard, sans chalk. The teacher writes digitally, which removes the nuisance of having to erase and allows the work to be saved.)

Everything in the classrooms has a purpose. Metal beams on the ceiling are designed to bear weight, in case a physics project needs to be dangled. The floor’s tile pattern is a square-meter grid. “We kind of have a graph-paper floor,” Bartin says.

In the school’s previous science facility, equipment was scattered throughout various rooms, with limited organization. Now, each subject area has its own storage room, where labs can be prepped and students can stash long-term projects. There are two lab technicians dedicated to the building who keep track of the inventory and help set things up.

Kirkwood also boasts a burgeoning independent-research program, which helps students use high-tech equipment to find answers to difficult questions, the same way professional scientists would. The fancy gizmos—a gas chromatograph, an atomic absorption spectrometer—were gifts from Blanton Whitmire, who provided funding for a research collaboration between Kirkwood and Joplin high schools, in the wake of the devastating tornado in 2011.

After the disaster, students from Kirkwood used the equipment to determine that a soil sample from Joplin did not contain an elevated level of lead, good news for the impacted areas. “We want to get our students as close to doing science as possible,” Bartin says. “There is a certain amount of scientific knowledge we want them to have, but we also want them to be scientifically literate, able to gather information and analyze it independently.”

In many ways, this building was, and continues to be, a community effort. In 2005, voters passed Proposition I to fund construction. Then a private campaign to buy equipment raised $1.3 million. “I feel like that sends a message to our students that science is something that is important to people,” Bartin says.

In turn, the school has made an effort to bring the community into the building. In the summer, it hosts robotics and science camps. In the spring, there’s SciFest, an annual science-and-engineering festival; the hallways are filled with science-fair projects from across the district, while the classrooms host robotics teams, composting demonstrations, and more.

The building’s physical location on campus, between the math and engineering departments, has increased connections between STEM disciplines. Science-related extracurricular activities are popular: Chemistry students compete in a St. Louis–area titration competition called Battle of the Burets, with a shelf full of trophies to prove it, while Bartin leads an astronomy club that makes use of a portable planetarium.

But perhaps the best testament to the building is this: More kids are taking science classes. “Our enrollment went up high enough that we have actually hired an additional science teacher this year,” Bartin says.

MICDS

On a sunny day in August, we donned hard hats to get a sneak peek at MICDS’ new science-and-math building. Dodging heavy machinery as it came roaring past, executives from BSI Constructors walked us through the building, explaining the architectural concept over the buzzing of saws and pounding of hammers.

Once finished, the 80,000-square-foot, $40 million STEM cathedral will be the clear centerpiece of the campus. The JSM Charitable Trust, James S. McDonnell III, and Elizabeth Hall McDonnell contributed $21.5 million to the project, the largest gift in the school’s history.

Melding form and function, the building itself will be a teacher in areas such as engineering and sustainability. School officials are hoping it will be certified LEED Platinum, the highest designation for green building. Toilets will run on collected rainwater. Solar panels will provide electricity. The landscaping will include native plantings and permeable pavement, reducing runoff. Construction materials were purchased nearby when possible, reducing the building’s overall carbon footprint. The plans also include an 800-seat auditorium, a greenhouse, and outdoor learning spaces, including trails and gardens.

As at Kirkwood, classrooms and laboratories are combined.(MICDS is using the term “clab,” which high-school students are sure to mock.) The idea here is to feed students’ natural curiosity. When a question is asked, rather than simply giving an answer, a teacher can say, “Let’s find out,” and launch into an impromptu demonstration. A research lab full of cutting-edge equipment will provide students with more opportunities to solve problems.

It’s part of an overall shift in the curriculum to a model for learning based on inquiry and discovery, rather than memorization and tests. MICDS has experimented with flipped classrooms, where a student might watch a video lesson on trigonometric functions at home, then apply that knowledge to building something in a group during class time.

“It’s through that kind of work that kids will ask interesting questions and be compelled to understand and learn more,” says head of school Lisa Lyle. “As we have moved to a more inquiry-based approach, students are sitting in the hallway arguing with each other and reaching out and contacting experts. It’s transforming.”

Math and science classrooms will be interspersed, emphasizing the connections between those disciplines, and teachers will share open office space, rather than being assigned to specific classrooms, trading in that feudalistic model for a more collaborative one. Instead of introductory biology or chemistry, students will take classes called STEM 1 and STEM 2, breaking down the barriers between subjects.

Bob Shaw, the chair of the science department, was giving a tour of the school recently when someone asked about a water rocket. Was it science or engineering? The answer was neither. It was a math project. “We’re trying to take down those silos and have people be more cross-connected,” Shaw says. “That’s how real life is.”

To give students an even greater understanding of math and science in the real world, MICDS will be partnering with professionals in the field, including those from nearby Monsanto and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.

Shaw hopes they can start a cycle that goes something like this: Scientists come to teach and mentor at MICDS. Then MICDS students grow up to work for those companies. Then they send their children to MICDS. How’s that for sustainability?