UD RiverMobile Floats Over to DRSS

By Dena Schaeffer

Many of you coming into school recently may have noticed the large vehicle parked outside in the parking lot the past two days. 

The RiverMobile is hard to miss!

The Rivers Institute at the University of Dayton has brought a mobile classroom known as the "RiverMobile" to teach students about various topics revolving around the idea of local water sources and sustainability through the following four stations: 

Station One informs students about water shed and water sources located in Dayton, Ohio, and how the water shed in Dayton affects the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico.

Station Two teaches the history of the formation of the water sources in Dayton as well as the Dayton flood of 1913.

Station Three explains how the dams in Dayton prevent flooding and how the Dayton aquifer works.

Station Four informs the students of their role in local sustainability.

This interactive RiverMobile also teaches students about the local water formations near Dayton about the history formation of rivers and aquifers located in Dayton and surrounding areas, as well as the aquifer below the Miami Valley. 

For the past two days, sixth and seventh graders have toured the mobile classroom and learned about those four topics. The US RiverMobile has helped connect what’s happening around the classroom to local topics. 

“For the seventh graders, [the RiverMobile] has allowed them to connect what they’re currently learning about the weather. For the sixth grade this fit perfectly into their study of how water shapes our world, it also tied into our sustainability class through showing students how our actions have consequences for people “downstream” of us” – Russell Nelson, Teacher

Incorporating the mobile classroom into the lesson plan is fairly new to the students, making it more interesting for them and creating an initiative for them to learn. 
 

“We learned a lot about sustainability and the water wells in Dayton. I think it was more interesting than a normal classroom environment.” – Abby Drewing, Student (7^th grade)

Thanks so much to the Rivers Institute for visiting our school!

STEM Students Take 1st and 2nd Place at Invention Convention Regionals

The Dayton Regional STEM School was well represented at the Southwest Ohio Invention Convention Regional Finals on Saturday at Central State University.  In the seventh grade category, STEM students won first and second place. The team of Apurva Makote and Surabhi Pasupuleti won first place and were awarded a $500 college scholarship.  Clare Ashcraft won second place and won a $250 college scholarship. Both projects have been invited to attend the first National Invention Convention in Washington DC (May 19-21).  More information about this event can be found at www.stemie.org.

From left to right: Claire Ashcraft (2nd place) and Apurva Makote and Surabhi Pasupuleti (1st place)

Nate Ashcraft was also selected as the 2016 Student Alumni Ambassador.  He gave a short speech in which he included the Five Qualities he has learned at STEM and how all the inventors demonstrated those qualities.

Nate Ashcraft was the 2016 Student Alumni Ambassador

Congratulations to all of the students who participated and placed in this competition, and many thanks to Ms. Lydy for going above and beyond in organizing and taking on another task for the good of the students!

DRSS Students Compete in FRC Regional Competition Last Week

On 31 Mar – 2 Apr 2016, the local FRC Team 3138 Innovators Robotics competed with 55 other FRC teams from 9 states and 3 countries at the Queen City Regional in Cincinnati, OH. The team finished by competing in the quarterfinals and winning the Gracious Professionalism award. They received this award for their effort on and off the field by helping other teams. A big part of the award was due to their effort to grow Robotics in the Dayton area. Two local Rookie teams who received mentorship from DRSS students received the Rookie All-Award, allowing them to compete in the World Championships.

FRC Team 3138

Along with the great team recognition, two DRSS students received the Dean’s List finalist award. This award is named after the inventor Dean Kamen and goes to student leaders participating on an FRC team. Only two students from each region receive this recognition and it is very rare for them both to be from the same team. Congratulations to Brianna Moen and Colleen Fulton for receiving this award! Both now head to World Championships this week to compete against the other finalists to see who will be the 10 Deans List Winners.

Colleen Fulton and Brianna Moen received the Dean's List finalist award.

The following students the FRC Team 3138 attend DRSS:
Keaton Bonds
Rachel Farmer
Colleen Fulton
Clarissa Milligan
Ean Milligan
Brianna Moen
Vidur Prasad
Anders Sondergaard
Adrian Taylor
Caleb Tracy

10th Grade Job Shadow Day a Success!

By Katie Marker

April 14^th, 2016 was 10^th grade job shadowing day, and it was a huge success! Many DRSS partners offered unique opportunities that provided the sophomores with important in-the-field experience. Students were able to shadow professionals in various occupations to prepare themselves for their prospect careers in the future.   

We’d like to thank our partners for providing job sites, as well as for making our goal of providing our students with real-world experience a success! 

Thank you to all of our job shadow sites for the 2016 10th Grade Job Shadow Day!

In order to recognize our job shadow partners, we wanted to share the photos from the job shadow sites. If you have pictures from the experience, please send them to arch.grieve@wright.edu!

Jonathan at Maple Tree Cancer Alliance

Sam at UES, Inc.

Alyssa at TriComB2B

Caleb, Bri, and Aja at Wright State's Psychology Department

Cara, Patrick, Austin, and Joseph at Integrity Applications Inc.

Chloe shadowed at Faith and Friends Radio

Carrin at Wright State's Theater Department

Adya at Bryan Dodd, DDS

Rachel at the Montgomery County Engineer's office

Jasmine at the Animal MD Veterinary Office

Tasha shadowed at the Charles and Renate Frydman Educational Resource Center at Wright State

Brittany shadowed at the Math Department at Wright State

Shivani and Sravanthi shadowed at the Pre-Health program at Wright State

Katie, Jessica, and Mickey shadowed at the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery

McKenna and Stephanie shadowed at the Rosewood Arts Centre

Gloria shadowed at Resonetics

Kellyn shadowed at the Wright State History Department

Huthayfa shadowed the Mayor of Beavercreek, Bob Stone

Multiple students shadowed at the Dayton Children's Hospital for a unique experience where they heard from multiple professionals in the health care industry about different jobs that are available in the medical profession

Dr. Brad Luckenbill with Amanda at the Pony Express Veterinary Hospital, Inc. for job shadow day

A Website for the Ages

By Vidur Prasad

The Dayton Regional STEM School’s DRSS Newsroom has been hard at work learning about journalism and creating stories for the school’s newspaper. With the guidance of Mr. Grieve, the group has been able to create many stories to cover the events at the school, as well as the work of our amazing students. The students have now taken that experience to launch their own website and newsroom, called “TheSTEM Inquirer.” The STEM Inquirer is a student newspaper to not only cover school events, but also have content from a student perspective. 

The STEM Inquirer is the first-ever student newspaper at DRSS and is the creation of Mr. Grieve Journalism class

The process of creating The STEM Inquirer began with the students identifying their areas of interest to fill the various roles. The main role, the Editor-In-Chief, Alex T. Smith, is the person who has final say on all stories that are published, as well as organize all of the different students to ensure that the newsroom runs smoothly. The second set of roles are the Managing Editors, who work for a variety of different topics and help glean content from across the school. The Managing Editors are Hope Ezell for Entertainment, Maddie Kelly for When’s Lunch—various short stories are published in When’s Lunch, Keshawn Mellon for STEM, Katie Marker for Opinion, A.J. DeUzetta for Advice, and Hiba Ahmad for Current Events. 

These students are not only learning how to run a newsroom and write interesting stories, but are also learning valuable leadership skills in corralling people to create an amazing product. The students have also created a weekly news show to go over events at the school and around the world. The News Anchors and Script Writers are Anna Crichton, Neeti Prasad, Maryam Boumahchad, Fatima Boumahchad, Emma Mason, and the Cameraman/Video Editor is Marc Ayala. This team works to supplement the written content that is posted on the website. In addition to creating a website to post the content, The STEM Inquirer is working to have a Social Media presence, led by Katie Jones. and Brianna Perkins. To supplement the written content, Tae Akridge and Dena Back are photographers, and go around the school to take pictures of events and breaking stories. To ensure that the web experience is optimal, The STEM Inquirer has two Web Masters, Chloe Johnson and Vidur Prasad. This entire team works together to not only get stories and information, but write and present the information in the best way possible.

The website is designed to allow people to browse all of the content in an effective manner. The stories are divided into five different categories: Current Events, STEM, Entertainment, When’s Lunch, and the Opinion/Advice column. Stories are also all displayed on the home page, allowing one to browse all of the stories at one time. In addition, the website has the latest webcast, and information about upcoming school days. As part of an effort to make it a reflection of what the student’s would like, features are being added constantly, from a quote of the week feature to a weather report. Polls are being added, modeled after Wright State’s WINGS system, to allow teachers and students to gain a better understanding of the student populace.

The STEM Inquirer will continue to flourish as the voice of the students, and DRSS Newsroom is proud to announce the unveiling of its website at http://thesteminquirer.wix.com/news.

Student Spotlight: Caven Stanley

By Alex T. Smith

It’s time for spotlight on another amazing and remarkable student that we have here at the Dayton Regional STEM School. Caven Stanley, an eighth grader, has attended STEM for three years. Starting this year Caven has chosen to serve the school community by volunteering his time as a Student Ambassador. 

Caven is an 8th grader at DRSS and serves as a Student Ambassador for the school.

Caven started out doing in school tours for adult visitors to the school. Working alongside one other student, Caven took groups of between five and ten DRSS Training Center guests around the school and talked to them about the recycling program, project-based learning, and the amazing qualities of our teachers. Since then Caven has continued to assist in giving over five additional school tours, and has even moved on to host students on the designated STEM shadowing days.

Caven said that he has had a lot of fun helping new students get a feel for the culture at our school. His favorite part was being able to tell them about the teaching style of the school itself, and he finds it rewarding to teach others about his experiences at DRSS to help draw them in. When asked about the students that he had hosted Caven said, "Most were awesome! Some were a little demanding, but I just talked with them to figure out what their interests were, to see if I could relate at all."
 

Right now, Caven is busy finding possible job shadowing sites as part of an eighth grade graduation requirement.  Caven is interested in a career in agriculture or landscaping, so he has been busy looking up places to get experience in that area, and making phone calls to check on their availability. Caven said from a young age he has always had a love and appreciation for farm machinery and landscaping. If Caven can find his dream job shadowing site he said it would involve industrial or mechanized landscaping. He’d like to be able to work around machinery but so far has not been able to secure a place like that on account of his age.

Caven told me that he thinks job shadowing is a really useful activity, because it will allow him get a taste of the fields that he is interested in. He also looks forward to getting inside information from professionals in his field about what colleges to look into, and hints for success in their career.

We look forward to having Caven’s help as a tour guide and shadow day host many more times in the rest of his STEM school career and wish him luck as he continues his search for a job shadow site. With his passion for volunteering and interest in agricultural science, Caven Stanley is another great example of the many bright and curious young minds at the Dayton Regional STEM school.

Leading The Way

By Anna Crichton

Nearing the end of their junior year, students begin the hunt for scholarships to college. Each scholarship looks for certain things in its applicants, and in this case, the Kettering Rotary Youth Leadership Award was looking for Fatima Boumahchad’s impressive leadership skills. 

Fatima Boumahchad is in her junior year at the Dayton Regional STEM School.

Fatima is currently an 11^th grader at DRSS, and has been attending the school since the 9^th grade. Ever since then, she has exhibited wonderful leadership skills. She is an active member of NHS, Keyclub, Student Government, and various other school organizations. You can always find her helping out a student or a teacher, and just being an overall positive person. So it comes as no surprise that she was nominated by teachers of the Dayton Regional STEM School for the Kettering Rotary Youth Leadership Award.
 

The Rotary Youth Leadership is a scholarship that gives students the chance to go to a camp between April 15^th and April 17^th. At this camp, students are given the chance to meet other like-minded people from various schools, discuss ethical and social issues of today, as well as participate in a variety of activities focused directly on leadership. Students attending this camp will focus on becoming better leaders to their peers. They will learn skills such as fundamentals of leadership, ethics of positive leadership, qualities of a "servant leader," importance of communication skills in effective leadership, conflict management and problem solving, and elements of community and global citizenship. At the end of the camp, students will attend a luncheon and be awarded a certain amount of scholarship money to help them further pursue their dreams of college. 

This is an amazing opportunity for Fatima, as it will expand her leadership skills and give her a step closer to getting into the college that she wants. When asked about what she was most excited about in regard to receiving this amazing opportunity, she said “I really do enjoy being a leader and I feel like this opportunity will help me learn more skills that a leader should possess.” Congratulations to Fatima for receiving this amazing award.

It's A Wrap!

By Chloe Johnson

After making abstract posters capturing the reality of genocides, the tenth graders will show off their artwork to the public. On Wednesday, April 27, 2016 from 5-6PM, Mrs. Bange, Director of the Educational Resource Center at Wright State University, will host a closing reception for the genocide posters. The event will be held at the Charles and Renate Frydman Educational Resource Center (ERC) on the campus of Wright State University. The resource center is connected to the College of Education and Human Services. Interestingly, the ERC also houses the Dayton Holocaust Resource Center. Furthermore, the ERC was named after Charles and Renate Frydman, both Holocaust survivors. Uniquely, between the months of April and May, the Jewish Holiday Yom HaShoah, or "Holocaust Days of Remembrance" is celebrated. Mrs. Bange said, “In 2016, it will be observed on May 4^th. We will have the artwork on display from mid-April- through mid-May.” From five to six, the public will be able to view the posters and hear testimonies from the tenth graders about the project and what it means to them.  For the past six years, the genocide posters have been displayed by the ERC. Mrs. Bange believes “there is nothing that is more special than seeing something artistic created by a young person.” Similar to the tradition, this year’s tenth graders will be displaying their work for the public to see and marvel about. 

Fatima Boumahchad explains to DRSS Board Member, Jennifer Winner, what her poster is depicting last year during the same event.

Additionally, the genocide poster project memorialized genocides using metaphorical images and bold slogans and statistics. This project has been going on for quite a while, and each year, students have different opinions on what their favorite part of the project was. For Brianna Perkins, a tenth grader who attends the Dayton Regional STEM School, her favorite experience was “portraying what she wanted to show about the genocide she read about.” The students read books that were connected to the genocides they portrayed in their posters. She also added, “It [the posters] did not have to be about people dying or be about a certain thing.” For example, her group’s poster was about the landmines that are still in Cambodia from the Cambodian genocide. 

Many students came to the event to talk about their artwork with guests, including many parents who came to see the posters.

In addition, this project is special because not every school teaches about genocides. The tenth graders are exposed to eight weeks of information about devastating genocides to compose an informational poster. This year, the genocide posters have lived up to expectations that previous classes before them set. Mrs. Bange stated, “Each year, these posters have been outstanding, perhaps each year better than the last.” The tenth graders are looking forward to this event. According to Katie Jones, a tenth grader who attends the Dayton Regional STEM School, she is mostly looking forward to seeing other peoples’ work because she did not get to see as many during the process of making the posters.

In summary, it is important to share these posters with the public because as a STEM student, we are taught to share our work and teach others. Like many students, Katie learned “They [genocides] happen more often than you think, especially now.” Sharing the posters with the public is significant for the tenth graders because they want people to learn what they have learned by participating in this project. 

If you are interested in seeing the tenth graders’ posters, come out and support them on April 27^th at the Charles and Renate Educational Resource Center on Wright State University’s campus. You won’t be disappointed.