Lt. Governor, STEM Students Learn From Each Other
Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds pays a visit to the highly-regarded STEM Academy at Hoover High School.
Hoover High School’s high-flying STEM Academy isn’t strictly a hands-on proposition, though there is plenty of that sort of activity, as witness the 3D printer in teacher Chris Knee’s classroom that got busy first thing this morning whirring together a project designed by one of Knee’s engineering students.
While it did its thing the students took seats to listen to the latest in a series of guests that School Improvement Leader Maureen Griffin calls the STEM Speaker’s Bureau. She likes to bring in practitioners to tell the students how they got where they are. Today’s presenter was Iowa Lt. Governor Kim Reynolds.
Besides the art of politics the field is getting more technological and scientific all the time. But those weren’t the contexts for Lt. Gov. Reynolds’ remarks. Instead she offered up a remarkably candid summary of her rise from small-town, rural obscurity to the second-highest office in the state.
“Coming from a very small school (I-35/Truro) I was able to try everything and I did,” she said. “Sports, drama, band, cheerleading, you name it. I was never one to sit on the sidelines and I’m still not.”
She started college at Northwest Missouri State but dropped out midway through and started working in the Clarke County Treasurer’s office (“Believe it or not, when I started there we didn’t even have a computer in the courthouse!”), an office she would later be elected to four times before moving on to represent that area in the Iowa state legislature. Eventually Governor Terry Branstad invited her to be his running mate and now she’s in her second term as his right hand.
But the lack of a college degree nagged her.
“So I went back to school,” she said. “I’ve been taking night classes at Upper Iowa University. I was up late last night working on a paper, in fact, and, if everything goes right (she crosses her fingers) I’ll finally graduate this year.”
Reynolds was eager to field questions and her audience was eager to ask some. When one girl wondered what sort of obstacles she’s had to overcome during her life the Lt. Gov. didn’t flinch.
“Well, I had an issue with alcohol abuse,” she admitted. “But I found there’s plenty of help available for people with all sorts of problems. You just have to be willing to accept it.”
After sharing her personal story Reynolds posed for photos with students and got a quick glimpse of what’s happening with STEM at Hoover, one of the first schools in the state to receive grant funding from the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council.
Griffin introduced her to one of the real success stories that are an inestimable perk of educators’ jobs. Sophomore Katie Bickel was designated for Special Education early in elementary school. She was assigned an Individual Education Plan, or IEP, that followed her into middle school. Sometimes such things can be become self-fulfilling prophecies that unintentionally limit a student’s prospects. In Katie’s case, when she was transitioning from Meredith to Hoover Griffin thought her “indicators” no longer warranted the IEP. She approached Katie and her parents and advised enrollment in the STEM Academy.
This morning the college bound ‘A’ student sat patiently and politely explaining the project she was working on in her engineering class to the Lieutenant Governor of Iowa. From SPED to STEM, it doesn’t get any more gratifying than that.
Reynolds also dropped in on geometry and physics classes before she had to leave. In the latter they were working with electric circuits, probably not realizing that they are part of one right there in the classrooms that make up Hoover’s positively charged STEM Academy.
