Full STEAM Ahead: Summer School @ South San Francisco

Young Audiences of Northern California recently finished a STEAM Summer School within the South San Francisco Unified School District (SSFUSD), which partnered four of roster teaching artists with fifteen classroom teachers from eight SSFUSD school sites. We provided professional development activities for planning and implementing arts-integrated Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics curriculum (or STEAM curriculum) with the help of Arts Ed Matters. Over the course of five weeks, teaching artists and classroom teachers collaborated together to conduct 268 hands-on, STEAM-integrated learning sessions with 350 students in grades 3rd through 8th.

The success of this program is evident in the survey results we received: summer school attendance was up from last year and many parents reported their children were more engaged and excited to attend summer school than the previous year(s). The fifteen classroom teachers who participated in the project are now equipped with arts integrated curriculum to use throughout the school year, and their hands-on, collaborative work with our teaching artists increased their comfortability in teaching through the arts from “very low” (pre-survey) to “substantial” (post-survey). Similarly, the four roster teaching artists that participated in this project have generated STEAM curriculum guidelines for their specific art forms.

We look forward to our continued work with Bay Area school districts to implement district-wide and school-specific initiatives that place STEAM learning on the front burner, helping to inspire children, to hone their creativity, and develop innovative movers and shakers for the 21st-century workforce.