PHILADELPHIA – Sixth grade students from Edward Gideon Elementary school today presented to Mayor Kenney their community asset map built over the course of an eight-week STEM Mentoring program coordinated by the Office of Innovation and Technology.
For three years, the Office of Innovation and Technology’s Innovation Management team has organized the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) mentoring program. This year the fourth cohort of this program was hosted at Edward Gideon Elementary, a Philadelphia Community School located in the North Philadelphia Strawberry Mansion community. This is the first year the STEM Mentoring program took place in a Philadelphia Community School, with programming starting in late January and running through mid–March.
“As a City employee working in an elementary school, it’s exciting to watch students explore their potential in STEM learning and public service careers. Over the last eight weeks, OIT employees have been wonderful mentors to Gideon’s middle school students by showing them how the City uses technology to support communities and deliver services,” said Gregory Wright, Gideon Elementary Community School Coordinator. “Each hour-long session opened up new horizons for our students as they heard from OIT experts about their work, their educational journey, and how they learn and use technology skills to serve Philadelphians.”
The Office of Innovation and Technology’s STEM Mentoring program provides an avenue for the City of Philadelphia to encourage young people to realize their interests and potential in both STEM learning and public services jobs. The program was born from the US2020 initiative as a campaign to encourage companies to bring together 20 percent of their STEM employees to complete 20 hours of STEM teaching or mentoring per year by the year 2020.
“We want to promote and create more opportunities for STEM education in Philadelphia schools— especially for underserved and underrepresented students,” said Mayor Kenney. “Programs like STEM Mentoring are extremely important when thinking about how City employees can collaborate and contribute to the next generation of STEM professionals.”
Over the course of eight weeks, OIT employees serve as mentors to middle school students and teach them about how the City uses technology to support communities and deliver services. Each OIT mentor spends an hour sharing personal anecdotes about their work, their educational journey, and how they built their tech skills. Each session is hosted by a different department to provide students with a holistic perspective on the many uses of technology in City of Philadelphia departments.
“My students had an opportunity to develop leadership skills through small group learning and hands-on training. This year’s project of building an asset map for the Strawberry Mansion community made the children aware of community resources available to them such as neighborhood parks, recreation centers, and libraries. It also introduced them to the different STEM techniques that must be employed to create a functional asset map,” said Sharilyn Clark, Digital Literacy Teacher at Gideon Elementary School.
“From a City perspective, it is important that we continue to coordinate programs like STEM Mentoring which support youth development through teaching them about careers in government and technology,” said Digital Inclusion Program Specialist Bria Spivey. “With this type of programming, we are able to create meaningful experiences around public technology for residents.”
For highlights from the event follow @PHLInnovation on Twitter and Instagram.