Families tackle tasks at STEM night at Woolley Elementary

Nearly 300 students and parents attempted engineering challenges during the first Family Engagement STEM Night recently at Woolley Elementary School.

Among their tasks: building a tower to support a 12-ounce bottle of water using three pieces of paper and a few inches of tape.

“We couldn’t get the water tower to stand,” said Diana Ganzon, the mother of kindergarten student Christopher.

The majority of the participants Feb. 22 at the school, at 3955 N. Timberlake Drive, did manage to get the tower to work. The organizers shouted out the heights of the successful towers, with many ranging between 20 and 25 inches. The second challenge was to build a tiny parking garage from index cards that would support a toy car. Nearly every participant succeeded in that task, despite the varied designs.

“I’m just good at building stuff,” said Keith Dickerson, the father of second-grader Kamyah. “I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid. We build things out of dominos at home.”

The school hosts regular literacy and math events, but in part because fifth-graders will take a science test at the end of the year and a standardized SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) science test the following year, district schools are focusing more on science this year.

“Because science is as important as it is, we thought it was time to bring science into the equation,” said Darryl Wyatt, the school’s principal of seven years.

The event was sponsored by the English-language-learner division of the Clark County School District. Donna Williams, project facilitator for the division, introduced the science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, concept to participants and explained the experiments while Miriam Arsic translated for Spanish speakers.

“We do events all over the valley,” Williams said. “This is probably our most popular one.”

When Diana Ganzon and her son worked on the tower, they struggled to create a stable base.

“When he started on his garage, he was so scared that it wouldn’t work,” she said. “I told him not to worry, that the worst thing that could happen is that we’d have to do it again. I think we did pretty well on that one.”

Williams said failure is part of learning.

“The hardest thing about being a teacher is not telling them what to do, but we want them to struggle,” she said. “It is that struggle that makes for improvement.”

To reach East Valley View reporter F. Andrew Taylor, email ataylor@viewnews.com or call 702-380-4532.