Martin, Los Cerritos, Spruce, and Sunshine Gardens Elementary Schools recently organized science festivals to help students and families learn more about educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
At Spruce Elementary, fourth and fifth grade students were learning how to make ice cream by combining milk, cream, salt, ice cubes, vanilla, and sugar in a plastic bag and shaking it for about 10 minutes.
Others were learning how to make slime or create electrical circuits with paper, copper tape, coin cell batteries, and gumdrop LEDs.
“It’s fun,” said Spruce Elementary fifth grader Francisco Gonzalez Menendez. “I really like it. We get to make a lot of fun stuff.”
Barbie Levasseur, president of the South San Francisco Education Foundation, said South San Francisco Unified School District’s (SSFUSD) PTA Council secured a $5,000 grant from the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) earlier in the year and used the money to help organize STEM festivals at the district’s Title I schools.
“Instead of doing an after school or weekend event. . .we wanted to focus on equity with our festivals and make sure that every student could do it, and we’ve heard the best way to do that is to do it during the school day,” Levasseur said. “It’s really important to make sure that the kids are getting this type of enrichment, where they get to cultivate a love of learning.” Parent and Spruce Elementary PTA member Jeanette De La Rosa agreed.
She said that while local biotech company Genentech sponsors a tutoring and mentoring program called Gene Academy for select SSFSUD elementary schoolers, a majority of students at Spruce don’t get to participate in the program.
“The science festivals give every single student. . .the chance to do two experiments today,” said De La Rosa. “I think it would be great to do it annually and do a science week and give parents more of an opportunity to come.”