Metro STEAM Academy champions hands-on learning and collaboration

This story first appeared in STEM in Iowa 2024, an annual special section distributed in The Gazette that provides an in-depth look at how this educational pathway is having an impact in the classroom as well as in future workforce pipelines.

Metro STEAM Academy engages high school students in community and project-based learning that integrates workplace skills through an ever-changing list of projects.

Students conceptualize and create everything from weather balloons to wooden plaques, metal signs and 3D-printed planters. There are event T-shirts, holiday decorations and a gingerbread scale model of NewBo City Market's planned expansion. Thanks to a new greenhouse, students are starting seeds for commercial farms and growing plants they sell for profit.

The Iowa Governor's STEM Advisory Council selected Metro STEAM Academy as a model STEM BEST (Businesses Engaging Students and Teachers) program. Teachers and business professionals work together with students to create projects that prepare students for STEM careers in manufacturing, information technology, bioscience (agriculture and medicine), finance and other industries.

The academy model keeps students with a core group of instructors, in this case, Matthew "Chuck" Tonelli, a science teacher; Shannon Ellis, a history and robotics teacher; and Matt Secl, a career and technical education teacher. The teachers' curriculum combines aspects of each core area to create a well-rounded learning opportunity. Metro STEAM Academy teachers integrate core content with a focus on careers and technical education.

"We're hands-on here," Tonelli said.

A whiteboard documents the long and ever-changing project lists for each quarter. Most of the projects come from the community.

"It isn't very often where we don't have 10 things in the works," Secl said.

The program's foundation is collaboration between the instructors, adapting to student and teacher interests and community requests.

"We do a lot of things that follow just what we're curious about," Secl said. "We launched weather balloons because we want to say we did it, and we want to see what's out there."

The group has repeated some projects, such as launching weather balloons as a class and adapting to work with partners, but Tonelli said most projects are one-offs.

Rather than just getting feedback from a teacher, students also get comments from the community — their clients and customers — who are paying money for the products and services. It's always a learning opportunity.

"We're not providing arbitrary assignments that need to get done to a standard. We're providing them an opportunity to make something that somebody needs or to address an issue that's a real issue in the world," Tonelli said.

Shannon Ellis, history and robotics teacher at Metro STEAM Academy, works with students. (Submitted photo)

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Metro STEAM Academy students plant a variety of seeds to grow in the academy’s new greenhouse. (Submitted photo)

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A Metro STEAM Academy student displays a plant before it’s placed in soil to grow in the academy’s new greenhouse. (Submitted photo)

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Shannon Ellis, history and robotics teacher at Metro STEAM Academy, helps students with construction projects for their new greenhouse. (Submitted photo)

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Metro STEAM Academy students and teachers work with area programs such as Iowa BIG and other schools, including Kenwood Leadership Academy and Johnson STEAM Academy. Working with younger students allows the Metro high school students to engage as teachers.

Students experience industries and businesses firsthand, including advanced manufacturing, CNC machining, 3D printing, waterjet cutting and more. They become project managers, marketers, salespeople and entrepreneurs.

"We've built a reputation in some ways for the things we approach and how we do it. Through word of mouth, we have a lot of partners and potential partners," Secl said.

The STEAM Academy is always changing and evolving based on student interests and project requests from community partners. They often ask themselves, "How can we take an entrepreneurial model and tie that into the world of science?" Secl said.

Agricultural opportunities expanded during the 2023-2024 school year for students with the addition of a greenhouse. That aspect of the program includes elements of flora culture and agronomy tied to manufacturing, entrepreneurship and community outreach.

"Little elements of each content area end up building a well-rounded and reliable curriculum for us that we get to be really proud of at the end of it. Not only do we get to talk about those things, but we get artifacts, we get things that are tangible that we can share with the community," Secl said.

Staff and students constructed a grant-funded educational and commercial greenhouse that is used year-round as an outdoor learning space. Metro students play a key role in planning and creating projects for the greenhouse.

Food Inc. is an integrated biology and U.S. history class. Students learned about the history and science of growing, processing and eating food — and solving today's ag issues. Students were hands-on with hydroponics and learned to program a FarmBot. This robotic farming machine can do everything from planting to watering.

The first collaborative greenhouse project involved the nonprofit GROW at Kazimour Farm and Orchard. The students started pumpkin seeds in the greenhouse and planted more than 100 seedlings at the farm in May. Come fall, they'll see the harvest. Next school year, what happens in the greenhouse is likely to be different and based on something the students are curious about or that a community partner brings to them.

Tonelli said that any time a teacher repeats something, it becomes more like a real classroom experience and less like a real-world experience.

“If I'm a teacher, and I know the outcome already, then it's not as fun, engaging or real. So we are some of the few teachers in the district whose curriculum, work and projects are ever-changing. There are a handful of projects that we do annually, but we're willing to try something new all the time," he said.