Today in Education Counts Michiana 100 books before high school project based learning in Elkhart.

Food Waste Fighters at Saint Mary's College.

Smash Academy for STEM Careers Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Investing in Education and Economic Development for centuries.

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The Deco Foundation Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County.

Crossroads United Way.

Serving Elkhart, Lagrange and Noble Counties.

United Way of Saint Joseph County.

Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow.

Saint Joe Early Childhood Coalition.

And a gift by Elmer and Dolores Tepe.

Thank you.

Welcome to Education Counts Michiana I'm your host, Sam Centellas.

Education Counts Highlights Programs and initiatives that are impacting how we teach, how we learn, and how we embrace education.

This program explores ideas in all education sectors.

Preschool through lifelong learning.

K-12, post-high school and job advancement.

Training with the philosophy that we should never stop seeking knowledge.

Find additional resources.

At WNIT.org and on the Education Counts Facebook page.

First up, reading for Life Bremen Public Library has launched 100 books before high school challenge.

This program not only prepares middle school students for high school, but helps develop a lifelong love of reading.

Kristen Franklin Videographer.

Greg Banks Editor.

I think that we have overcomplicated the this whole system of how to get students to read all in caps.

How do we get students to read?

How do we get students to read?

Our library was one of the founding libraries that created the 1000 books before kindergarten program, which is now used all over the nation.

And I had a thought Why does the literacy have to stop at kindergarten?

Why do we stop those goals?

So while I was looking for a different program, I actually discovered that Carmel Clay Public Library had just launched a program in January called 100 Books before High School.

We have this brand new young adult room.

I have predominantly middle school kids in the library, so I thought, let's start there.

Unfortunately, I think English teachers have inadvertently hurt and killed the passion for students to read.

And that's because whenever we have them read something in the classroom nine times out of ten, we choose the book for them.

We analyze it to death.

We give them all kinds of activities over it that are sometimes a little bit painstaking.

And then we give them something fun at the end to do, like a speech.

And how many students do you know who like to give a speech?

So that's why we've unfortunately kind of killed reading.

So my my whole task in becoming an English teacher was to revive that and to bring back the joy of when you were a little kindergartner and you were getting to go to the library and you could grab your little rug and you could sit on the floor and read all the books that you had found in the library.

Every time a kid comes into this library, I always make sure to tell them, Read at your level.

If you're a 12th grader and you're struggling reader and reading a picture book is your level.

That's your level.

That's fine.

Our goal here is we want you to read.

If that means a manga, graphic novel, comic book chapter book, picture book, e-book, audiobook, whatever trips your trigger, we want you to read.

So having students pick a book is a way better approach than doing, you know, here, here's this book.

Everybody has to read it up to page 20 because students don't always finish that homework.

You know, it's not their book of choice when it's their book of choice.

I get a 100% participation.

Reading is essential.

Readers are leaders, and those students that read have more self-confidence.

Those that can snuggle up to a book and just immerse themselves in the book.

They are much more rounded in terms of experiences that they are able to go on through a book.

Oftentimes, I'll ask students in the fall if they went on vacation and some will say yes and some will say no, and I'll say I did in this book.

I went to this place and in this book I went to this place and students start to see how they can travel with their books and their characters.

And just they they also gain a lot of empathy because they understand different situations.

They're put in those situations through the characters in their books.

Throughout the summer I've probably read around ten.

I read more during the school year.

I like reading murder mystery genre and April Henry books.

I joined because I thought it would be an amazing challenge and to see how far I could get.

So with the 100 books before high school program, these kids get a chance to kind of challenge themselves.

They get to read 100 books.

They have until the end of their eighth grade year.

So starting from sixth grade till the end of eighth grade, they get to do this program.

And for every 20 books that they read, they get a special prize.

And once they are done reading all 100 books, which I hope we get a bunch of kids that do this, then they get a chance to get their ultimate reader's gift basket, which will contain a bunch of different prizes, one of them being a book of their selection.

I think the power of choice is very strong because as an adult I wouldn't want someone else choosing my movie that I watch or picking the magazine that comes to my house or in my feed or picking the books that I want to read.

And so I feel that same is true with the students when they choose their own books, they have buy in, they have ownership, and they tend to do a lot better as far as being invested in the work of the novel.

I think this is a great program to encourage literacy.

This is actually starting to bring up some other programs in the library.

We are starting a super siblings program and then hopefully this will lead into the high school age demographic and also the upper elementary demographic.

I think that they enjoy this type of a program much better because they can pick their book and they don't feel it so much as homework by the end of the year.

Realize that they've read way more than 40 books and they've become that lifelong learner or that lifelong reader that can let their imagination go wild.

Learn more about the program at WNIT.org Project based learning at Elkhart High School can take many forms.

In this instance, high school students worked on a presentation, book and video instruction for elementary students about how K-9 dogs work with local police.

Kristen Franklin, Videographer.

Greg Banks Editor I'm a teacher over at the high school and my students have been working on a big project and their project has to do with the police department specifically.

They've been working with the police dogs.

We are presenting the materials that my students made to a first grade class in a second grade class to prepare them with information about the police force and specifically their K-9 unit.

I teach in the school study Health and Public Safety at Elkhart High School, and the main focus of our schools of study is to allow students to choose an area that interests them as a possible career.

And so a lot of my students that are interested in health and public safety, many of them do find an interest in the police department and being on the police force at some point.

And so this topic really interested them and got them excited for their learning, which made made the work just more fun to them than just giving them paper and pencil, making them do an assignment.

One of my classes created a children's book and it looks like this with help of the Elkhart Area Career Center's graphic arts program.

And so I gave them kind of the bare minimum guidelines.

They had to have the information provided by the police department, and they had to put it in a way that met the requirements for 6 to 8 year olds when it comes to language and content and images and just things that would interest 6 to 8 year olds.

They did a lot of research, so we were learning about the canine units the police use and how they do service in the community.

And we use wrote it so that they entertains the kids because they were going to get bored.

So we just did like coloring pages, mazes is word scrambles and stuff.

I did a page about that.

When they go home, they eat dinner and they always train a lot more than they usually do than the police officers do.

So this book is called The Life of Eli.

Eli is one of the police dogs at the Elkhart Police Department and he is the youngest dog.

Our ultimate goal is to take our package.

So our package contains the children's book that we wrote in English and Spanish.

We also have an activity book that my first hour created with similar information just done in a way that provides activities for kids to interact with.

And then we also have a video that my eighth hour created.

Well, everybody in the classroom played a part in it, and it was pretty cool because there was about eight sections, eight or seven, and each section was divided between two or three people.

So it was basically like, if you don't if one person doesn't do it right and the whole video kind of flops.

So I think it was pretty cool how the whole class came together and made this video and the goal is to take that package as a whole and to provide it to the police department as an option for them to hand out to elementary school students before they come in and do their dog demonstrations with the elementaries in the area.

Hello.

My name is Eli.

I am a Dutch Shepherd.

I am the newest member of the Elkhart Police Department.

He's from Poland.

He came from overseas.

I got it when he was about 14 months old and he had no training.

So we've had to train him for several months now.

Then we did a K-9 demonstration around some of the things that our dogs do out in the community.

His name is Eli, and he's just turned two years old, and I've had him since February of last year.

And he is training explosives and then patrol.

So they're trained for apprehension as well as article search, building, search area, search and tracking.

And then either they're trained in explosives or drugs.

What really surprised me and I was really shocked about it was when the dogs I was like, yeah, the dogs really help more in the community.

They help in the airport wards, police stations, subways and all that.

And they usually use their nose or really specialized nose to track down weapons and all that stuff.

The bad stuff to catch the criminals.

We smell pizza.

It smells good, right?

He smells all the ingredients on that pizza, the smell, the pepperoni, the cheese, sausage, the crust.

That's how good his nose is.

Safety.

First, I put this on.

I went back to big states for marshmallow man.

We have five dogs.

Thought was pretty interesting and cool how that came along.

It was a surprise.

I didn't realize they're doing all that.

It was a great opportunity to show what the canines really do.

There's a perception out there is all they do is go around and bite and apprehend, and that's only one or 2% of what they actually do.

And that's unfortunately, that's all the media sees.

And it's an opportunity to show what all they're trained in and extensive training they go through as a canine and that they're sociable and able to still interact with everybody that even they don't know.

I think that it's pretty sweet because am the teaching the kids of what the dogs do is something they could learn earlier in life.

And like when I did (indistinct chatter) learn more at WNIT.org.

STEM careers...

Smash Academy is a three year college prep program.

It empowers students to deepen their talents and pursue STEM careers.

This free program also connects students to professionals that reflect their same demographics, creating powerful mentorships from STEM scholars to rising students.

Donovan Barrier Videographer.

Greg Banks Editor.

There's obviously a lack in black women in the stem fields, so I really want to be that change and be able to increase the demographics there.

So entering my freshman year, I was paired with my college advisor and she was giving away different programs and things.

So I was looking into some of the programs and I actually was debating about applying to Smash.

It was like a totally last minute thing, but Lucky did I know that it would honestly like change my entire career goals, especially with the STEM field.

Smash is an acronym for Summer Math and Science Honors Academy, and I founded the organization about 20 years ago.

This is our 19th summer running programs for high school students of color from low income backgrounds.

We are basically a college access program focusing on STEM science, technology, engineering and math.

So Smash Academy offers them focused content to nine through 11th graders during an intensive summer experience, usually about three weeks long.

And we also offer monthly programing during the academic year where students are working with training facilitators and really grappling with different STEM subject areas.

Smash Academy has a great list of programs within there.

We do from technology of learning how to code.

So I was able to get some experience with Python and CSS and HTML.

Some of those beginner codes that ultimately influence my current major symbolic systems, which is an interdisciplinary between computer science, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and statistics.

And through this program, I was able to ultimately enhance my skills within that.

So actually, on a professional level, being able to do presentations, it's not just the academic rigor.

It is that we also have project based learning.

So, for instance, they will take their science class and their math class and their computer science class, and they will then apply it to a problem and come up with various solutions.

They've had projects like applying everything they've learned from every class to look at how pandemics spread.

So they're usually very topical projects that touch on things that impact their communities as well as the larger world.

So one of the classes that Smash gave us with learning was an entrepreneurship class, and during the entrepreneurship class we were tasked with creating our own business.

And that business I created was the nonprofit.

My roots are rich.

And they helped me from square one with like coming up with the name How to make this into an actual business, what an LLC was, what a nonprofit was, and how I should go about that.

So Smash Academy prepared our students for college because we offer content in the area of college success, college access and things like that.

So we prepare students by providing them assistance with creating a college list, for example, so that they can select a college that is the right fit for them.

We also offer them programing and activities that help to build their cultural capital so that when they get to college, they know how to be successful.

Right?

So they know who to go to, what they need help.

They know what resources might be available at the colleges and universities that they're interested in.

We also talk to them about financial aid and various other things that they might need to apply for college, be accepted and be successful once they get there.

One of the sad things about public education in our country is that Title one schools, those that serve those from the lowest income families, are incredibly under-resourced.

So it is possible to graduate at the top of your high school class and not have had any of the prerequisites you need to be able to have a STEM major in college.

So Smash has ultimately given me a sense of community working with peers from underrepresented families as well, and being able to not only share the same passion with them is ultimately super helpful.

79% of our Smash Scholars Graduate College with STEM degrees.

So a really whopping number stay in science, technology, engineering or math because of Smash.

What I'm currently doing is it encouraged me to go to historically black college and university.

So I go to Spelman College and I'm very thankful for Smash, for preparing me to be in a space with other minorities.

And I'm just so grateful to the program for showing me how important it is to give back to the community that brought us and to be the change that you want to see.

I can say this with my years and years and years of knowing smash scholars and going and visiting them on campuses, they give me enormous hope for the future of this country.

They're so smart, they're so positive, they're so enthusiastic.

They just want to make the world a better place.

The amount of opportunities that I had are endless.

And I think when you do start leveling up, make sure you always give back to the community.

And I know it's easier said than done, but I truly continue to live my life in that light and continue to blast me endlessly, and I could never be more grateful for that opportunity.

Find out more about the innovative program at WNIT.org Food Waste Fighters, St Mary's College students are taking a stand against food waste.

Students, staff and faculty limit food waste and utilize composting and have saved at least 2,000 pounds of food from landfills each year since the program was started.

Kristen Franklin Videographer.

Greg Banks, editor for St Mary's Food Waste Fighters.

So we are from the Office for the Common Good.

We work with student involvement and community engagement.

And so food waste fighters are split into two community services.

We do food recovery two days a week.

We take leftover dining hall food, and we take it over to the Center for the Homeless shelter here in South Bend, downtown.

We have student volunteers who head that up, and we also do food composting.

So every night we have volunteers who take leftover compostable food and we take it to our compost piles on our St Mary's campus farm.

So we definitely strive to be a zero waste campus, especially for food, all schools.

There is a lot of food waste.

A couple of years ago we started our sustainable farm.

So we farm out there, we grow our own crops and we have classes who help with that.

And we also have student volunteers who are just like passionate about that or just want to do some farm time with their extra time.

I was thinking coffee.

So last year was our pilot year.

This year we have increased the volume of students.

We have maybe 20 to 30 student volunteers that come out on a weekly basis, which is really awesome what we're doing outside right now.

We've been using the compost that we've gathered from campus, and instead of putting it in the landfill, we're feeding it back to the the farm and partly the chickens like to eat the compost, which really helps us fertilize the ground.

They de-sod we're doing the best for the earth with introducing the chicken to the farm.

When we first got to the farm, there was it's it was probably about a fifth of the size of it is now.

And yeah, it's just grown so fast and that's a lot of the students work.

We're trying to make this farm bigger and in the spring will be growing food.

And the main reason that we are so compelled to do this is one sustainable farming.

So we're farming sustainable.

We have used no chemicals on the farm thus far and we plan to keep it that way.

We have been doing it by taking compost, working with our food waste fighters, taking scraps like veggies, napkin tins from the dining hall, and then taking that out, composting it, and then using that as like a foundation for our beds so that we can grow on them come spring.

Currently, right now we have chickens, which is new, and so it's made the process a little different but really fun.

Instead of having our compost go to piles, we take it straight to the chickens.

The chickens later will basically everything up, anything left over with their claws.

They push it into the ground, which is really good because after like a week or so when we move the chickens that land that they were on, it just kind of like revives it.

And with all the new nutrients in it and it just prepares the land for some future cropping in farming in order to, you know, not mess up all the progress the chickens have made.

We're putting down some leaves where we use the compost at the farm and the students.

We're digging trenches so we can put down some woodchips and that will be our walking past so we don't walk over what we've worked so hard on.

But the students love to work together.

They're always goofing off, but they're working towards something, so that's always great.

Getting fresh food in is when you are less fortunate and poor and do not have the means of buying.

It is very, very hard and we want ultimately our farm to be open to the whole South Bend community.

We are planning to start a farm stand, so hopefully we'll be able to sell goods like veggies, eggs come maybe spring or even next fall.

And all those are going to go.

All that money that we raise is going to go back into the farm so that we can keep making it better and just basically just spreading the awareness of that.

Getting fresh food is very hard and we want to make it easier for people.

We just want to spread the awareness that us coming here are very fortunate, but we also want to take that fortune and give it to other people that are less fortunate to us.

Even if you're not remotely associated with St Mary's, come to the farm and hang out with us.

Free.

Yeah.

The chickens love people.

We love people.

So, yeah, that's just expanding the farm and getting ourselves out there is really, I think, another plan for the future.

Check out WNIT.org, for more information on all these stories.

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The success of every student matters Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Investing in education and economic development for centuries.

Supporting the past, current and future development of the Michiana region Community Foundation of Elkhart County.

Inspire Good Kosciusko Community Foundation where donor dreams shine.

The Dekko Foundation.

Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County, Crossroads United Way serving Elkhart, Lagrange and Noble Counties United Way of Saint Joseph County Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow.

Saint Joe Early Childhood Coalition and a Gift by Elmer and Dolores Tepe.

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This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

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