SMCOE Hosts 27th Annual STEM Fair

The 27th annual San Mateo County STEM Fair, sponsored by the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE), Oracle and Gilead, and held at the Hiller Aviation Museum March 1-4, 2015, promises to be the biggest ever with more than 450 students and 82 judges participating. Students in public and private schools, and homeschoolers in grades 5-12 have been invited to submit projects by grade level in eight different categories that align with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Projects vary in complexity and subject matter, and run the gamut from technology to engineering to physics. Some of the titles submitted so far this year include: "Newton vs. Adidas (Grade 6)," "Just Microwave It: Developing Latent Fingerprints with Microwave Radiation (Grade 8)," and "Don't Be Tacky! Derivitization of Glass Surfaces with Polymers to Enhance Lubrication in Artificial Joints (Grade 11)."

On March 1 and 2, students will check in and set up their projects. Judging and interviews will take place on March 3. On March 4, from 5:30-7:30 p.m., the STEM Fair Open House will be open to the public. Students will learn if their project garnered an award, and all the projects will be available for viewing.

On March 12, from 6:30-9:00 p.m., the awards ceremony will be held at SMCOE. In addition to first and second place and honorable mention awards by grade level and category, several companies such as RecycleWorks, the Sequoia Audubon Society and RAFT will also offer special awards. Students who win awards have the option to submit their projects to the Bay Area Science Fair and the California State Science Fair.

The 82 judges are members of the community, many of them scientists who work at Bay Area companies and organizations such as Genentech and USGS. Many return to be judges year after year.

Several new features have been added to this year's fair. The STEM Fair website provides tips for students and teachers, online registration, and a schedule of events. A YouTube video gives tips on how to be a great STEM Fair judge. Students, too, can watch the video so they'll know what to expect from the judging process. And in addition to the awards by grade level and category, students will receive personal feedback from the judges.

In past years, parents dropped their students off at the fair. But this year parents and siblings are invited to climb up to the mezzanine level of the Hiller Aviation Museum where they can visit science stations set up just for them, participate in a maker space and try out flight simulators, as well as have a great view of the STEM Fair from above.

Schools Embrace Personalized Learning Through New iZone Initiative

Thanks to the help of the iZone at the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE) and the Mastery Design Collaborative, several school districts in San Mateo County are on their way to becoming pioneers in the new world of "personalized learning " through the Redesigning School Initiative.

The focus of this initiative, coordinated by iZone at SMCOE, is to incorporate personalized learning both at the system level and at the school level. Two small school districts--Brisbane and the Court and Community Schools at SMCOE--are working on developing strategic plans that embrace personalized learning while two other districts, San Carlos and San Mateo-Foster City, will pilot personalized learning at four school sites.

 The strategic planning group kicked off in December, and teams from the San Carlos and San Mateo-Foster City districts convened together in February for the first time.  "It's a fairly complex environment right now with things evolving in technology so it was a nice opportunity to sort through all the cross currents in online learning," notes Tom Keating, Director of 21st Century Learning and Education Technology for the San Carlos district and project manager for the personalized learning pilot in his district. His district has already been piloting personalized learning so he says they are eager to look at this arena in a more comprehensive way and move into the planning/ implementation phase.

"We think of this as a six-month design boot camp," says Samir Bolar, 

Co-Founder of Mastery Design Collaborative. "It's an opportunity for schools to create a new school model and reimagine what school could look like as they strive to meet the needs of every student. It's all about learning by doing, testing hypotheses, running pilots and developing school-wide plans."

In the coming months, teams will confer within their own districts as well as have the opportunity to visit schools that have implemented personalized learning in the Bay Area, such as Design Tech High in Millbrae, Rocketship in San Jose, and Summit Charter High School in Redwood City.

Once they have visited other school sites, the goal for the San Carlos and San Mateo-Foster City districts will be to design their own personalized learning pilot in their school classrooms this spring and then fully implement personalized learning next fall. San Carlos plans to pilot at Terra Linda and Central Middle Schools while San Mateo-Foster City is in the process of merging two schools, the Bayside S.T.E.M. Academy and Parkside, to form the Bayside S.T.E.A.M. Academy, which will have a personalized learning focus.

"This will be a learning experience for all of us, and it's good to have a small cohort to start so we make sure we are doing the most for the schools that we can," says Kathryn Marinos, iZone at SMCOE Coordinator. "Our main focus is to make sure teachers' voices are heard because they are the ones who will be implementing the personalized learning model."

For the Court and Community Schools at SMCOE, the Redesign School Initiative provides an opportunity for exploring a different way to engage their diverse group of students, who come in with distinct needs, varying credits and skill levels. "We also see this as an opportunity for students to design their own learning,and for our students this could be the motivation they need to finish high school," says Dr. Joan Rosas, Associate Superintendent at SMCOE.

"Educators are not used to designing things," notes Mary Kay Going, Assistant Superintendent, Education Services, with the San Mateo-Foster City School District. "We're used to 'here's your curriculum-- now go forth and teach it,' so it's exciting and a little bit scary for us to have the freedom to design."

"Personalized learning doesn't just mean technology," notes Toni Presta, Superintendent of the Brisbane school district. "It flows from what we know about learning--we learn better when we are interested in a topic. And it can help us to meet the diverse needs of our students; some have gaps in skills while others need to go deeper. Personalized learning will provide us with a way to give students a choice in learning."

Suspension and Expulsion

Rates Drop in SM County

Suspension and expulsion rates are dropping in San Mateo County and throughout the state.  In January California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced a dramatic 20 percent drop in the number of students expelled in 2013-14 across the state and a 15.2 decline in the number of students suspended. This marks the second year in a row of declines in both areas.

The new figures come at a time when the California Department of Education (CDE) is working with districts around the state and the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE) is working locally to implement innovative programs that reduce suspensions and expulsions, including some known as "restorative justice."

In 2012-13, SMCOE, in conjunction with the San Mateo County Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Commission, hosted a three-part symposium for school district personnel focusing on the disproportionate rate of suspensions and expulsions for students in different demographic subgroups and how to strengthen discipline practices and interventions that encourage positive student behavior as opposed to simply punishing through suspension and expulsion.

Through this symposium, district teams had the opportunity to come up with a plan for addressing suspension and expulsion rates at their schools. Some schools sent teams to the International Institute for Restorative Practices in Pennsylvania for further training and incorporated Positive Behavior and Intervention Supports (PBIS)  into their plans, and continued this work in 2013-14. The County Office assisted, providing coaching for school teams, through Networks for Success and its Positive Behavior Network.

All this work has paid off. "When you shine a light on things that are not going right and focus your attention on the issues, it makes a difference," says Mefula Fairley, Administrator, Educational Support Services at SMCOE. Statewide, suspensions dropped from 5.1 percent in 2012-2013 to 4.4 percent in 2013-2014 and in San Mateo County the rate dropped from 4.0 to 3.5 percent.

"There was a movement statewide to redefine the catch-all term 'willful defiance,'  and come up with more creative solutions to handle behavior that would not involve sending students home or missing learning time," notes Brian Simmons, Director, Accountability, Innovation and Results, at SMCOE. Willful defiance, which could mean anything from talking back to a teacher to acts of physical violence, could be grounds for suspension.

Jon Sanchez, assistant principal at Ralston Middle School in Belmont, was one of the school officials who attended the SMCOE symposium, and took the opportunity to make some changes at his school. "I had recently suspended a student in special ed for willful defiance, so the symposium really hit home for me. I went back to our school, looked at our data and saw that there were a disproportionate number of special ed and minority students being suspended. So we made it a priority to address the issue." Staff at Ralston have been working hard to take a proactive approach and provide alternatives to suspension.  "We have seen a change in school climate," he notes. "We wouldn't have done this work without the efforts of the San Mateo County Office of Education illuminating the issue and guiding us in this work."