(upbeat music)

Hi and welcome back to the VEX Classroom. My name is Jason McKenna, Director of Global Educational Strategy for VEX Robotics, and thank you so much for joining me for this webinar where it's my pleasure to talk to you about the VEX Continuum.

Now, this is gonna be the first in a series of webinars that we'll be running over the course of the next few months where we highlight different schools and different organizations that are implementing the VEX Continuum. This is a question I've gotten a lot over the last six months as I've gone to different shows over the country and visited schools all over the country. People are asking about the VEX Continuum, they love it, they want to implement it, but they need more information about the actual how.

How are people incorporating STEM into the regular school day? How are they finding time to do it? Where are they actually doing the implementation, and how are they training their teachers to be able to do this? The focus of this webinar and future webinars that will follow will be to answer those questions by exploring different implementations from VEX in schools not only all over the country, but also all over the world.

So again, it's my pleasure to be speaking to you and thank you so much for joining me. Just in terms of logistics, if you have any questions during the webinar, go ahead and post your questions in the chat in Zoom. I will be happy to answer those questions towards the end of the webinar. If you have any questions, again, just put them in there. You can always contact me; my contact information is right up there.

And of course, if you have to leave early or if you have a friend that wasn't able to join us live this evening, as long as they've signed up for the webinar, they will receive a recording of the webinar. You can also check out this webinar and all the past webinars that we've done at webinars.vex.com. You could see a recording of this webinar or, again, all the past webinars that we've done.

The focus of this webinar this evening is going to be on the VEX Continuum. To kind of set the stage for you, let's first talk about what the VEX Continuum is, what do we actually mean by that? We have a great representation of it in front of me on my desk here. When we speak of the VEX Continuum, we are talking about the VEX platforms and solutions that span all the way down for students as young as four or five years old with VEX 123, all the way up through high school with our VEX EXP platform. I don't have room enough on my table to show you, but also the VEX Workcell platform even into college.

We have platforms and solutions that span from four years old all the way up through college for our students, and all of those platforms are supported by VEXcode VR. When we talk about the VEX Continuum, we are talking about the ability to provide you with a solution for students really at any age, and given the opportunity as a school system or even as a country, to be able to provide a STEM or computer science solution for all of your students across the entire grade span that you have.

Now, let's talk about why this is important. At VEX, we spent a lot of time, energy, and a lot of hours, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears putting together this VEX Continuum, so let's talk first about why. Reason number one is it's very important to start STEM early. There's a lot of research to support the fact that it's important to start STEM early for a couple of different reasons. Number one, research tells us that students as young as eight or nine years old form an opinion about their proficiency in STEM and STEM subjects, and once that opinion is formed, it is very difficult to change that opinion.

Students do not pursue STEM classes in high school or college, nor do they pursue STEM careers because of these perceptions that they form at a very young age. With products like VEX 123 and VEX GO, we are attempting to provide students with meaningful learning experiences to inspire them to become lifelong STEM learners. If they do want to pursue a STEM career, they feel empowered to do that. Even if they don't want to pursue a STEM career, they know more about the world around them and are able to engage in many different things because of the positive experiences they had when they were younger.

Secondarily, research supports the fact that starting STEM with very young students helps to enhance them in their core academic subjects. Math, reading, science—all of these subjects can be fostered and enhanced as a result of the hands-on, minds-on explorations that you can do with products like VEX 123 and VEX GO.

Unfortunately, terms like learning loss, the NAEP, and the Nation Report Card are things we are hearing more and more in the news. The natural reaction to that is to focus solely on those subjects. If scores are down in math, the instinct is to just do more math. However, research tells us that this would be a mistake. Using robotics and teaching skills like spatial reasoning, providing different entry points into subjects through tools like VEX 123 and VEX GO, is a more engaging and impactful way to help our students in core academic subjects like reading, math, and science.

Starting STEM early not only puts our students on a positive path towards STEM success, but it also helps them in other academic subjects that are important for their education. The base of the continuum, VEX 123 and VEX GO, accomplishes the goal of starting STEM early for our students.

Now, in terms of STEM subjects, the reason why STEM is so important is that it gives students an opportunity to solve authentic, real-world problems. All the things happening around us in the world revolve around STEM. They are not isolated to science, technology, engineering, or math alone. The real-world problems that scientists and engineers solve every day are STEM problems, involving all the distinct parts of STEM together. To create individuals who will solve the challenges of tomorrow, it is crucial to expose them to STEM.

STEM, like every other subject, is predicated upon the knowledge that students bring into the classroom. The number one predictor of student success in any class, whether it's a STEM class, science class, or math class, is the amount of background information the student brings into the classroom. This is why, in the United States, we invest in programs like Sesame Street. We want to give students an opportunity to be exposed to numbers, words, and phonics at a young age. This exposure provides them with background knowledge that allows them to take their skills further when they enter kindergarten and first grade.

There's a great quote that talks about the importance of knowledge from Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist, which really summarizes this well: "Knowledge is not just cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more, the rich get richer." In cognitive science, they actually refer to it as the Matthew effect. "In addition, factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes operate. The more knowledge that students accumulate, the smarter they become."

That applies to all subjects and all learning. This also applies to STEM, so you can have a great middle school STEM program, or a great high school STEM program. It would be better if you started STEM, however, sooner. Those students in middle school, if they're exposed to the engineering design process earlier, if they're exposed to coding earlier, if they're exposed to the process of iteration earlier, they're going to be much better at it by the time they get to middle school or by the time they get to high school. Providing students with this background knowledge in STEM and building it up like this via Continuum is very important to build STEM learners so that those learners, again, can go on and solve the problems of both today and tomorrow.

Now, the third reason why the VEX Continuum is important, as anyone in education knows very well, is that learning does not happen linearly. We need to have the ability to meet the students at their individual instructional level. We need to be able to accelerate for some students, and we also need to be able to coach other students. So what this means is, if you have a continuum, when you have tools that span different ages and different grade spans, it allows you the opportunity to give students and to reach students at their individual instructional level. It's a very important way to be able to reach all students in STEM, and that's, of course, our goal in STEM. We don't just want to reach a segment of students; instead, we want to be able to reach all students. How do we do that? By providing a continuum and a spectrum of products and solutions that is able to reach all students at their individual instructional level.

The key to doing that, the key to any change in education, is, of course, teachers. The better that we empower teachers, the more that we empower teachers, the more that we will actually be able to change education for the better. All the best processes in education, all the most positive change in education, has come from teachers collaborating with one another, having those conversations, and understanding how to enact change in their individual classrooms, in their buildings, or within their districts. So what a continuum does is it empowers teachers to be able to do that because now teachers are all working within the same platform.

This is why in education, we buy our reading series not for one classroom, not for one grade, but instead for a series of grades. There's a K to five reading series or a kindergarten through eighth grade reading series, not just one for one particular classroom or one particular grade. But unfortunately, in many buildings across the country and around the world, that's what you see in STEM. You have one teacher doing this, and you have another teacher doing something completely and totally different. The reason why that is, is until very recently, there wasn't an organization like VEX Robotics that provided a continuum of solutions like this. As a result of that, teachers were forced to pick and choose what they were doing in certain pockets and what they were doing in certain grades.

By having this continuum, teachers now have an opportunity to collaborate, engage in meaningful conversations, and form professional learning communities. This allows them to learn from one another and build capacity among themselves. Teachers learn best from other teachers, and if we know anything from the history of education, it is that impactful change has always resulted from teachers working together and enacting change. The only way teachers can collaborate effectively in STEM is if they are all working within the same continuum.

One of the great things about the VEX Continuum is that VEXcode powers all of these products. Whether you're using VEXcode VR, VEX GO, VEX 123, EXP, or Workcell, you are working within the same coding platform. This platform enables first, second, third, and fourth-grade teachers to collaborate with high school teachers on topics like VEXcode. It provides a commonality of resources, platforms, and tools that allows teachers to build capacity and learn from one another. Again, teachers learn best from one another, and this is what enacts change in education.

The last reason why the VEX Continuum is so important is that it allows districts and administrators to understand how to use their resources more effectively. I doubt you will find any superintendent, assistant superintendent, or minister of education who doesn't understand the importance of STEM education. However, they have a responsibility to understand how their resources are being utilized most effectively. Administrators need to identify where there are gaps in instruction, whether in math, language arts, or science. They want to see which concepts are not being taught at certain grade levels, which need more remediation, or where there is overlap. Without a continuum, it's impossible to do this. If teachers are working in isolated pockets within an entire administration of schools, it becomes very difficult to diagnose, remediate, or understand where certain skills need to be accelerated for students.

That is the job of administrators, and unfortunately, most are not doing this in STEM because there is no continuum to examine. They cannot look at their schools and say, "Here's where we are teaching the beginnings of the engineering design process, here's where we take it to the next level, and here's where we really extend it." Or, "This is where we introduce students to block-based coding, this is where we transition them to text, and this is where they're fully in text." It's difficult to have those conversations without a continuum, and that's why many schools don't do it. With a continuum, you can examine those resources effectively.

To sum it all up, why is the continuum so important? Because we know it's crucial to start STEM early. We understand the importance of background knowledge for students as they enter and progress through school. Learning does not happen in a linear fashion; instead, we must be able to remediate or accelerate where necessary. We need to build capacity among our teachers and use all resources effectively in our schools. This is why there is a continuum of core academic subjects in our schools. Now, with VEX, you have an opportunity to do that with STEM.

So now that I've talked about the importance of it, how do you actually do this? It's like, okay, you've convinced me of the importance of the VEX Continuum.

Thank you for your attention and commitment to improving STEM education. Let's work together to make impactful changes in our schools.

Now, how would you actually be able to implement this in your school or in my school? That's the purpose of the interviews that I'm going to show you right now. The first interview that I'm going to show you here in a few moments is with the local school district that we've been working with that implemented the entire VEX Continuum K to 12 across their entire school district. This is a great story of leadership, starting with the superintendent and the assistant superintendent, implementing this change, and then the hard work of getting the buy-in of the teachers to do that change and making sure that it is being implemented effectively within the entire school district.

So now let's learn about how the Woodland Hills School District was able to implement STEM, the VEX Continuum, K to 12 in their school.

Music Cue

Welcome back to the VEX Studio where today, this afternoon, it's my pleasure to be speaking with Mr. Eddie Willson. Eddie, how are you, my friend?

I'm great, sir, thank you for asking. So first, before we kind of dive into everything about all the wonderful things going on at Woodland Hills, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself first?

Yeah, absolutely, so I've been in the world of education for over 20 years. I started as a middle school math and science teacher in North Carolina and then worked my way through D.C. as an assistant principal and director of instruction, and then came to Pittsburgh. So I've been in K-12 education for a long time and I'm excited to be the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction here at Woodland Hills.

Tell me a little bit about Woodland Hills.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first and foremost, best district in Western Pennsylvania. Obviously. Clearly. But also, we're an amazing district, we have 3,200 scholars. We were formed 41 years ago, actually, as one of the last districts in the country to be court-ordered to have racial integration. And so we're really excited about our diversity. We have 75% students of color, 25% white students, 65% free and reduced lunch. So a lot of really great assets in our community and also a lot of challenges. You know, we like to consider ourselves a small urban district, we're adjacent to Pittsburgh, and we have all of the same richness that the big city does as well as a lot of the same challenges.

That's terrific, thank you for that context. Now, speaking of challenges, yourself and Dr. Castagna, the superintendent, took on quite the challenge this year in which you are implementing the VEX Continuum K to 12, beginning with VEX 123 with your youngest scholars and going all the way up through the Workcell with the students that are in the high school. So kind of talk to me a little bit about the importance of STEM and why you thought it was important to implement VEX K to 12 as opposed to just in the elementary school or just in the middle school or in a pocket.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think that first and foremost, you mentioned Dr. Castagna and his vision, and the beauty of our district is that, when I came on board, I said that we were going to have three areas of focus: rigor, relevance, and joy. And when Dr. Castagna came on board, one of the first things he said was that we need rigor, relevance, and relationships in the district. And that was before we had even met. And so we set out to find a program, an initiative that could really build in those three areas of rigor, relevance, and relationships, to really make sure that scholars were being pushed. Another thing that he identified when he first came on board was that we have K-5 schools that are called STEAM academies, but we really weren't incorporating STEAM anywhere, we didn't have the science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics that we said that we did.

Music Cue

Thank you for sharing your insights, Eddie. It's inspiring to hear about the dedication and vision at Woodland Hills.

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure to share our journey.

Music Cue

Thank you to everyone for tuning in. We hope you found this discussion insightful and motivating. Stay tuned for more stories of innovation and leadership in education.

We had some of those classes in pockets in grades six to eight and in nine to twelve, but we really didn't have it K-12. When he and I started brainstorming, we began thinking of ways to incorporate STEAM district-wide K-12. That's the primary reason to go K-12. We spoke to some districts that have piloted VEX and robotics in middle school or only elementary school, and I think that's valuable. However, I also believe that anything worth doing is worth jumping into wholeheartedly. We knew that our kids needed something that would push them, engage them, and provide real-world, hands-on, relevant experience now. We didn't see any value in waiting to expand that; we wanted to jump in feet first.

You talked about the vision of implementing VEX K to 12, turning the elementary buildings into STEAM buildings, as you mentioned. The question I get all the time, and I'm sure you've gotten it too, is about the how. How do you find time in the school day to incorporate it? So, talk about the schedule you were able to implement with VEX K to 12.

Yeah, absolutely. You're exactly right; the operations and logistics are the hardest part, right? We meet with parents and teachers, and everyone says, "Oh yeah, that sounds great, but how would we do it?" We sat down with all of our elementary principals and broke their schedule down into five-minute increments. We realized that we actually had a lot of what I like to call dead time in the day. We had built in an intervention period that was not being used well as an intervention period and didn't have the structure it needed. Additionally, we had two 15-minute blocks meant for playtime, unstructured recess, which were mostly being used for students to continue their work on their Chromebooks. Kids were not engaged, and it was where we saw some of the most behavioral disruptions in the day.

Through whittling down the schedule, we were able to build in a full period into the day for a VEX period, K to five. Every single student, every single class has a VEX period, and they love it. I've been to all three schools and seen kids in the VEX period in all three buildings. My own son is in fourth grade in one of our buildings, and the only thing he wants to talk about when he comes home is what he did in VEX. He's building rocket ships and-

[Music Cue]

We have some of those photos here, yeah, of the students K to five. It's really amazing, and I tell you what I also love, is that our educators are just taking it and running with it. We have some educators building mazes for robots, and kids in kindergarten and first grade are learning coding skills, playing with a robot, and they think it's play. That's exactly what it should be, right? Learning should be fun. When we're having fun, we should also be learning. That's exactly what's happening with VEX, and we're really excited about it.

The thing I noticed when I had an opportunity to visit some of the elementary buildings recently was how well the students were collaborating. It's really impressive. First of all, it's a testament to your teachers, who have the structure in place for students to be collaborative and effective, as you see here, with all the students working in groups. That structure was there. Secondly, it was impressive from your students because they haven't done this in two years.

[Music Cue]

Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences with us. It's inspiring to see the impact of VEX and STEAM education on students and educators alike. We look forward to seeing how this program continues to grow and benefit the community.

Thank you once again for your time and dedication to education.

Right, because of everything that's gone on with COVID, but they were able to come in and, you know, I was thinking about that 'cause you were talking about the third R, their relationships, and you kind of really see that in the classroom. But it's wonderful to hear that the students have taken it so well and they're enjoying it so much.

Yeah, absolutely, I'll even, I'll go a step further because, you know, obviously, we don't share IEP information with visitors in the building, but 30% of the scholars that you saw have significant needs in special education plans. Historically, for these kinds of initiatives, for new programs, those scholars then get pulled out of the classroom and their, you know, what's commonly referred to as their general education peers then get to experience the initiative while they get pulled into a smaller group.

We have scholars who are used to being in a separate environment who don't feel like they're a part of the community of the building working side by side with their peers and collaborating, like you said, and just being a part of a group, which is really a testament to the program and to the initiative and to VEX in general because it is easy and simple for kids to communicate then about an objective and a project that they're working on without feeling overwhelmed or frustrated.

Yeah, yeah, they don't feel, it's not too challenging that they feel frustrated, but it's not too easy that they're bored. Yeah, exactly. So that's K to five. What about grades six through eight?

Oh man, that's where we're super excited. So in sixth grade, every scholar is getting VEX in their science classrooms, so our sixth-grade educators have taken the IQ kits and they're really just incorporating them into the standards that are already there, right? So NGSS is putting out new science standards and our science educators are saying, well, you know, in the real world, we're gonna use robotics and we're gonna use computer science and coding to solve problems.

I've got sixth-grade science teachers that are talking about the effects of climate change and how we can use robotics and computer science to combat some of the negative effects of climate change, right? And they're doing that in every single unit, they're building on enrichment opportunities in all of their units. And then in sixth through eighth grade, we also have then a completely separate elective that is all VEX.

Scholars are operating robot tug of war battles and all kinds of just really great hands-on projects where they get to really dive deep into what it's like to build a robot and to use it in a relevant way. So we're really excited about that, and then the thing at the middle school level that I'm most excited about is that we're building a competitive robotics team.

Yeah, yeah. Right, you talk to anybody that knows anything about robotics and they'll tell you, oh, well, our team won XYZ competition, you know, our team just went to worlds. For a lot of our scholars, especially our scholars coming from low socioeconomic communities, the idea of getting out of Pittsburgh just for anything is really something that they don't get to experience very often.

To be able to do that, to be able to travel, to compete on the national and international scale for something that CMU does but that their community is not used to is really special. We know that the achievement gap is more of an opportunity gap than anything else, and that what we need to do is provide scholars with the opportunities to go out there and experience some real-world challenges and solve some real-world problems, and that's what VEX allows us to do.

That's, I love what you mentioned about the achievement gap being an opportunity gap because that's, there's a lot of research to support that and that's certainly true.

Okay, so then lastly, I guess the high school, right? And then the high school is where we get really into the meat of career readiness. Yeah. You know, we have focused since I came to Woodland Hills on ensuring that, when scholars graduate from us, they get to choose their path, right? They might choose to go to Carnegie Mellon, they might choose to go to CCAC, or they might choose to enter the workforce, but we want them to be ready to make that decision.

At the high school level, our computer science teacher is incorporating VEX, really focusing on the coding side. We are making sure that scholars understand how to use languages like Python so that they are then able to go into PNC, UPMC, Google, and other places, and keep up with the folks they are talking to. They understand what they're doing.

On the tech side, on the building side, what used to be a shop class is now a robotics class. We've got scholars working on building mechanical arms that can automate processes in a factory setting. They're working on what it looks like to build in a real-world environment and to automate some of the processes necessary to keep our economy running. They're able to go and talk to folks at US Steel about robotics, and the folks at US Steel want to hire them on site. No, they gotta graduate first. But we are really giving them the opportunity to choose their path after high school through a robotics program that incorporates everything from MIT-level computer science to hands-on technological work with robots.

You also are hoping to start a competition team at the high school. Absolutely, the goal is definitely to start a competition team at the high school. We talked a little bit about my background. My amazing wife and I were Odyssey of the Mind folks, and she was an Odyssey of the Mind coach at her school. The idea that we can build up competitions and competitive teams to give those same opportunities we were just talking about with the middle school to our high school scholars on a much more advanced level and scale is critical and huge.

Now, one of the things I really admire about what Woodland Hills did, what you and Dr. Castagna did, is that you didn't just invest in the hardware, but you also invested in your teachers. Every teacher teaching VEX has a VEX professional development license that they can use to ask questions and get more training to learn more about the platforms they are using.

Just talk briefly about the experience of your teachers with VEX PD Plus. Absolutely, anybody that's been an administrator will tell you that it is challenging, as it should be, to get educators to buy into a new initiative. A lot of times, especially veteran educators, will see a new initiative and think it's just like the last one they saw. Especially when you're talking about veteran educators who are not necessarily comfortable with coding and computer science, it can be a huge challenge and burden. When you're limited to nine PD days that are one-touch environments, which we know are not great for learning and change management, but it's what we've used in the last 40 years, it can be a challenge.

But with PD Plus, they've got real-time, hands-on PD available to them, and we were just talking about one of our educators in first grade at Wilkins that's going on to PD Plus, watching the videos, and then going into the social aspect of the platform and asking other first-grade teachers all over the country, "Hey, what'd you do for this? How could you incorporate the math standards for, you know, in VEX?" It's just amazing how bought in they are to this platform that then allows them to communicate with educators everywhere, and it lets them feel comfortable.

Right, we all want to be comfortable in our jobs, we all want to feel like we are able to do and that we don't look foolish, and even though we fail, we fail forward. PD Plus gives them that opportunity. They have the resources, they have somebody they can talk to, and most importantly, they have collaborative peers that they can work with to ensure that they're setting kids up for success, which is great.

That is great, and I look forward to it. Woodland Hills historically has been known as a football school. I think at one time, it had the most graduates in the NFL—most active NFL players of any public school in the nation, yes, sir. Well, I'm looking forward to when it becomes a robotics school and there will be participants hopefully at VEX Worlds at Dallas—

[Music Cue]

Yes, sir. Next year, that's what I'm really looking forward to, is it becomes as competitive in robotics as it currently is in football, and under your leadership and Dr. Castagna, I can certainly see that happening.

Thank you for joining us again here in the VEX Studio, and we'll see you again soon.

Thank you, sir.

That was a lot of great information from Mr. Willson about the great implementation that they're doing at Woodland Hills. Now, one thing that he did mention was the fact that his teachers are utilizing VEX Professional Development Plus, and we know how important it is to provide teachers with not just a one-stop professional development, but that ongoing support that they need.

And like I was talking about before, giving teachers the opportunity to collaborate and work with other teachers, so I just want to kind of show that off to you right now. This is the community in our VEX Professional Development Plus. You can see we've kind of given it a new makeover right now, and if I go to the VEX GO section, this is one of the teachers at Woodland Hills, Tina Dietrich, right here talking about how she was using the game Kahoot with VEX GO to be able to identify different VEX GO parts.

Again, this is one of the teachers in Woodland Hills talking about and sharing with other teachers her implementation of VEX GO, what they're doing with it. And then you can see the reaction of some of the other teachers involved, talking about how wonderful this is and what a great thing that's going on with that, so we love to see teachers communicating and collaborating with other teachers in VEX Professional Development Plus.

Now, we are working very hard right now to add some improvements to VEX Professional Development Plus. You saw the makeover; if you've been in the community but you haven't been in a while, that might look new for you. We just gave it a new coat of paint within the last two weeks. We're making some upgrades too, but we're also going to be adding some brand new courses to VEX Professional Development Plus to basically take you from just opening up your kit on the very first day to feeling confident teaching in all of our different platforms that we have with VEX, so stay tuned to hear some exciting announcements about new additions to VEX Professional Development Plus.

If you're interested in VEX PD Plus, you can always go to pd.vex.com and get a free three-day trial of VEX Professional Development Plus. This allows you to explore some of the great features that are beneficial for teachers at Woodland Hills. I'm confident it would work for you as well.

One of the perks of my job is the opportunity to talk to teachers not just from all over the country, but from all over the world. One thing you learn quickly is that there is no common implementation of robotics. Every classroom, country, and school district has its own challenges. Our job at VEX is to provide you with the tools and flexibility needed to implement VEX effectively, considering the unique challenges each school district and classroom faces.

The next interview we're going to share with you is from Dr. Rebecca Grella. It is one of the most unique implementations of VEX I have ever seen, and I've witnessed VEX implementations worldwide. This is a truly inspiring use of VEX, and as you'll see in this interview with Dr. Grella, you can't help but come away inspired. We're going to share it with you right now, and like I was, I'm sure you'll be inspired by Dr. Grella.

It is my absolute honor and pleasure today to introduce to you from the VEX Studio, Dr. Rebecca Grella, one of my favorite people I had the opportunity to meet a few months ago. She has a fascinating story about what she and her team are doing with VEX at Brentwood in the state of New York.

Dr. Grella, how are you today?

I'm doing great, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon to have a conversation about all things VEX.

So, talk a little bit first about your background and how you ended up in Brentwood.

Sure thing, Jason. By training, I'm a PhD scientist trained in ecology and evolutionary biology. My background is truly in ecology and evolution. I began my career in the early 2000s in Madagascar, where I fell in love with teaching and decided to pursue a teaching degree. I went back to school and earned that degree. I fell in love with the population of Brentwood 20 years ago, and 21 years later, here I am in the Brentwood Union Free School District, serving as an educator and research scientist in-house.

I have a lab here in the high school, which is a full state-of-the-art research lab. Rather than having a lab at a university, I have it here in high school. In that lab, we engage students in the art of scientific discovery with a twist on solving real-world problems. As you are well aware, real-world problem-solving relies heavily on coding and the integration of technology, engineering, and math, bringing all these multifaceted disciplines together as one. What we know as STEM is what I do here in the district.

Brentwood is the largest suburban public school district in the state of New York, serving approximately 18,000 students. We are also one of the largest in terms of footprint, with nine elementary schools, four middle schools, a freshman center, and a high school. We used to have two high schools, and now we have one.

That is such a fascinating story. For our audience, I know you, and I'll speak for myself, might not be that familiar or have never been to an actual research lab. You might hear about them or listen to a podcast by someone that runs a research lab or something along those lines.

So talk about, you gave me a little tour beforehand, and we'll throw some of those pictures in, but talk to me a little bit about what is actually in your lab. This research lab here in the Brentwood Union Free School District, one of the reasons why I put the lab together was that Brentwood is an underrepresented minority district. We struggled for years getting the transportation to the laboratory at Stony Brook University and our neighboring institutions. What I thought was, if students are having a hard time getting to a location, why not just bring the location to the students?

With a plethora of grants and a lot of industry partners, we now have a research laboratory. Rather than having students go out to the university to investigate various real-world problems, students work in-house here in the research lab. This research lab not only focuses on questions that are of emerging relevance for the environment, but also on solutions to real-world problems. For example, we have an engineering component to our program that challenges students to develop devices for students with disabilities. By encompassing both technology and science, we're able to bridge the gap and offer students an opportunity that they might not ever have had before.

In this research lab, students can utilize a scanning electron microscope, learn to code through VEX, learn to code in Python and various other languages. Students are engaging in real-world problem solving, and that's to me what STEM is all about.

I couldn't agree with you more, I wholeheartedly agree with that. So talk about VEX a little bit, how has VEX been able to help you with your goals of not only exposing students to real-world problem solving, but also connecting students with real-world scientists, as you're doing in your lab?

Sure, I am the PI on a New York State education grant called Smart New York. Our grant is titled Scientists and Teachers Engaging in Professional Development with University Personnel. The grant focuses on rolling out the digital fluency standards in New York State as well as NGSS standards. We've combined both sets of standards to develop a PD program, a professional development program, where we're training educators grades six through eight on implementing VEX within their classroom and within their club activities.

Now, what we've done in the past year with VEX is we've instituted the programs in nine elementary schools and at four middle schools. That's a big test when you think about it because Brentwood is the largest suburban public school district in the state of New York. But now we have trained educators in every building that have now been working with the VEX IQ and the VEX GO kits. For me, it's through VEX that I'm able to bridge the gap, again, between technology, engineering, and math and really utilize the kits as the go-to for STEM education for bringing groups of students together, for bringing educators together, and really focusing on those problems that matter, whether it be from coding in the virtual world, VEX VR, to working on the bots in person. We've been utilizing VEX all throughout our professional development curriculum.

One of the things I love about what you've done from some of our previous conversations is you've taken not only the robots but also the curriculum that we've created and you've made it your own. Because obviously, as you said, you are combining the digital literacy standards with the next-generation science standards. Because of your lab, there's a lot of different explorations and things that you can do.

So you're taking the Mars rover STEM lab, for example, and you're kind of adjusting it to your own problems that you're trying to solve or opportunities that you have because you do have that lab. Talk about that a little bit with me, please.

We often joke around about how the Mars rover has now become the marsh rover. The joke is because a lot of the work that my students and I do is in salt marshes. The questions that we ask in salt marshes are really related to how healthy these marshes are, particularly restored salt marshes. And Jason, if you aren't aware of salt marshes, they are blue zones; they sequester a lot of carbon. They're really critically important for protecting a lot of our shorelines. Our coastal ecosystems are critical, and these salt marshes protect a lot of our shorelines.

So what we've done is we've challenged students to come up with ways to utilize the Mars rover as a marsh rover. Yes, we have definitely gotten these robots very dirty, but the objective was to see if there are ways that we could program robots to essentially collect data in places that we couldn't get to. These design challenges have really taken off. They have allowed students to critically think about questions involving, well, if I'm using the robot, what else can I use to implement my investigation? What else can I use to help me in my discovery and in developing my questions for my research studies?

We've combined the marsh rover with our Mars rover curriculum that you offer, and we've really dug deep into the salt marsh as well as some of the activities in the marsh rover platform. One thing that we're really excited to work with you on at Brentwood, because it's such a large school district, is communication. Oftentimes, it's difficult to communicate the message out to everyone, so to speak. What do I mean by that? Oftentimes, and this is really one of the equity challenges that large school districts have, you have, you know, the nine elementary schools. Maybe five of them are doing great with it, but four of them are struggling a little bit with it. But you've kind of overcome that.

Now, to expand what you're doing with VEX, we're going to implement what I refer to as the lending library. This involves having GO kits and 123 kits so if a teacher, like a kindergarten or a first-grade teacher, wants to investigate VEX 123, they can do it in a very low-risk way. Talk a little bit about that and how you see VEX potentially expanding in the future at Brentwood.

Sure, one of the things I find critically important with rolling out VEX is making sure that the modules we're rolling out are vertically aligned so that educators from every grade level participating in our PD program are learning how they could scaffold the instruction for different grade bands. That's what I love so much about VEX, the ease of implementation for different grade bands.

What I find really important in a large district like Brentwood is providing the supports for the educators. We have professional development meetings every month in this laboratory. We're working with the implementation of VEX throughout the district by working closely with those educators. Those educators are in teams. What we've done is team up the middle schools with their surrounding elementary schools so that there is a dialogue between those educators. The elementary schools are using the GO kits, and the IQ kits are being used in the middle school.

So this partnership between these two groups, the elementary educators and the middle school educators, is where that dialogue takes place. That's where the magic happens. That's where, when you have these partnerships, no one feels alone in the implementation. I'm lucky that I have been working with our coordinator of STEM who has a great TOSA, a Teacher on Special Assignment, who's been going out and following up on the implementation of VEX. We're aware of what we have in the elementary schools, and we're also aware of what's going on in the middle schools. This partnership is critical.

And then we have tech teachers that are fully using VEX in their technology program. At the middle school level, technology is using the kits fully in their tech programs. It's a really interesting combination of instructional strategies in terms of how we're implementing, both at the club level or in full in-class instruction, as well as in courses in general.

With the lending library, one of the first things we have planned for the 123 kids is a collaboration here at the high school with my fifth-period research students, whom we'll call the science buddies. They will work closely with our special education population here in the high school self-contained special education class. These buddies will work with these special education students to ensure that the 123 falls into place with ease and that the students are learning, navigating, and discovering with 123. It's super exciting, and I'm really looking forward to that momentum.

For me, it's important that we differentiate instruction for all learners, and VEX offers that opportunity. In a district as large as Brentwood, we have a variety of different students with different needs, and I feel that VEX is the tie that binds, really bringing our program together.

That's so wonderful to hear. I love what you said about the tie that binds, the backbone of what you're doing. Secondly, how you get those teachers that are working with GO, for example, talking to the ones that are working with IQ, that's the power of having that continuum where you have those conversations. As you said, that's where the magic happens. That's a wonderful thing to hear and a testament to what we've tried to accomplish with the VEX Continuum, so thank you very much for sharing that.

Thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain the things you're doing with your research lab and all the wonderful things happening at your school. Thank you for joining us here this afternoon and thank you for joining us from the VEX Studio.

Dr. Grella, thank you again, and we'll see you again soon.

Thank you, Jason, and thank you, VEX. I appreciate everything you've done. Thank you.

Again, I hope you are inspired as much by Dr. Grella as I am. The implementation that they're doing at Brentwood is absolutely amazing. You'll be hard-pressed to find a more authentic implementation of STEM education. As she mentioned during the interview, VEX is the backbone of everything that they're doing. They're a truly remarkable story. Hopefully, that does inspire you with what you can actually accomplish with a STEM continuum and what you can actually accomplish with VEX.

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, we are going to try to run these webinars every few months because the two schools that we talked about are not just the only two schools that are truly doing amazing things with the VEX Continuum and STEM education. So, keep in the know with what we are doing with VEX so that you can stay up to speed with the VEX Continuum and all things VEX, again, in the upcoming weeks and months.

As a quick preview, by tuning into this webinar, I will tell you that our next webinar is scheduled for December 1st. We're really excited about that webinar because it's going to be the kickoff for Computer Science Education Week and the Hour of Code. We're going to be talking about all the wonderful things that you can be doing with VEX during the Hour of Code and to honor Computer Science Education Week. Again, we aim to expose as many students as possible to all the great things they can do with STEM and computer science and how VEX can be the catalyst that pushes all of that forward. So, stay tuned for that.

If you want to know how you can stay up to speed with everything VEX, you can follow me on social media. I tweet everything that's upcoming. You can also become a VEX insider. To do that, go to the VEX Robotics homepage, and in the bottom right-hand corner, where it says "be the first in the know," you can sign up to become a VEX insider. You might have seen this pop-up if you've visited the VEX website for different reasons. By entering your email there, you can stay up to speed with everything we have going on with VEX. Again, our next webinar is on December 1st, and we'll have more information coming up very shortly, next week, about how you can sign up for that webinar and join us to learn about all the wonderful things you can do with the Hour of Code with VEX and also for Computer Science Education Week.

If you have any questions about anything we talked about this evening, please feel free to reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to answer your questions. You can also reach out to your local sales associate. If you do not know who your local account executive is, you can go to sales.vex.com, which will provide you with the information to find out who your local account executive is. Again, use them to stay up to speed with all the wonderful things we are trying to provide for you at VEX Robotics.

You will receive a recording of this webinar in your email, but you can also go to webinars.vex.com to review this recording at a future date.

Thank you so much for joining me this evening. It was my pleasure to present to you these two great schools, Woodland Hills and Brentwood, and discuss their implementation of the VEX Continuum. Thank you for learning with me about the importance of the VEX Continuum and how you can implement it. I'll see you on December 1st for our next webinar, where we'll talk about Computer Science Education Week. I look forward to seeing you then.

(upbeat music)