Power company donates money to support education in Idaho
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BLACKFOOT — A power company has donated $630,000 in grant funding to Idaho and six other states to support education.
The Idaho STEM Action Center in Boise received $10,000 from PacifiCorp Foundation, a nonprofit arm of Rocky Mountain Power, for their i-STEM program, which helps educators learn and provide hands-on experiences in their classrooms for students. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math.
The i-STEM program is offered at six locations including Idaho State University and College of Eastern Idaho. Educators attend classes called i-STEM Summer Institutes to learn new ways of teaching critical subjects in their classrooms. The teachers dive into a variety of STEM topics, including engineering with 3D printers, exploring outer space and wildlife conservation.
Each teacher is able to take a kit full of materials back to their classroom to share what they’ve learned and teach concepts to students in a fun and creative way.
“It’s incredibly important for employers like Rocky Mountain Power to help support these programs. We work to support teachers because they are really training our future workforce and so by having employers like Rocky Mountain Power recognize the need for this and to support it with funding is incredible,” said Kaitlin Maguire, executive director of the Idaho STEM Action Center. “We can’t do the work that we do without their support and so they are really leading the way.”
Maguire said the grant money is able to provide learning kits to 111 educators which reach about 6,660 students in the region.
One math teacher from Blackfoot has used the kit of materials from the i-STEM program and explained it’s a unique teaching style.
“We do creative incorporation of art and design, puzzles, logic and riddles. When I teach, I try to take my students through what I call, ‘different worlds of math’ every morning and afternoon,” said Shelley Nash, a 7th and 8th grade math teacher at Blackfoot Charter Middle School.
She explained her students love learning math and that some have said it’s their favorite class.
“They love doing the art and the hands-on activities. We’ve built towers,” said Nash. “It’s my favorite when a kid says, ‘I think I might understand this, this year.’ ‘I like the way you are teaching it. It’s different from my other teachers.’ We’ve had a lot of positive results from it.”
Maguire said across the state, the i-STEM program has reached over 400 educators each year.
“Programs like these allow teachers to learn new material and bring it back to their schools and the value of STEM specifically is it’s really hands-on project-based learning so it gets students to creatively think through problems and learn really important skills that they can take on, no matter what field they pursue,” Maguire said.