BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Telegraph Staff Writer
You could say a Bradford County teacher was over the moon when she learned she was selected to receive a $10,000 McDonald’s Golden Grant to fund her Fly Me to the Moon and Beyond project.
Lilly Chappell, who’s the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teacher at Southside Elementary School was one of four $10,000 recipients. The Golden Grants, which are presented by McDonald’s stores in Florida and South Georgia, also presented seven $5,000 grants, 12 $2,500 grants and five $1,000 grants.
In sharing the news as the guest speaker at the Kiwanis Club of Starke’s Dec. 20, 2022, meeting, Chappell said she received an email telling her that she hadn’t been selected to receive a grant. One day later, she was confused.
“The next day, I’m cooking dinner,” she said. “While I’m waiting, I’m scrolling through my emails. This email pops up that says, ‘Congratulations.’ I looked at my husband and said, ‘I think I’m being punked.’”
Actually, it was just an honest mistake as the first email Chappell received had been sent in error. She had indeed been selected to receive a grant.
Some of the things Chappell will purchase with the grant money include drones, a 3D printer and materials, and a LEGO Education SPIKE set, which incorporates LEGO building with technology and coding.
As part of her grant application, Chappell, who’s in her second year of teaching Southside’s STEM program, wrote that the project would build upon what her students have already been learning as well as helping to prepare them for career opportunities.
“Fly Me to the Moon and Beyond will continue my students’ education in coding, building and creating tools to solve real-world problems,” Chappell wrote. “Students 5-K will participate in rocketry, building different models of flight as well as learning to fly drones.
“Florida is the home of the (Kennedy) Space Center, and I am opening their experiences to promote their role as citizens and their future possibilities of careers in the space-exploration field. My students are a part of the generation that will see a human on the moon as well as on Mars.”
Elementary wide STEM education
Every grade at Southside takes Chappell’s STEM classes — she teaches approximately 130 students. Chappell said that’s a big deal in a community where many families don’t have the economic resources to enroll their children in extracurricular STEM camps and activities.
“The biggest thing is getting them involved in kindergarten, building those skills as they go,” Chappell told the Kiwanis Club of Starke. “My goal is one day they have something at the middle school here in the next few years as well as carrying it over to the high school.”
Don’t think that kindergarteners are too young to pick up on the concepts Chappell is teaching. She shared a story with the Kiwanis Club about a video a parent posted on Facebook of their kindergarten student explaining to her family the concepts of gravity while on a trampoline.
“She walked over to her younger sister, who’s 3, and shoved her down,” Chappell said. “She looked at her and said, ‘That’s gravity.’”
As the laughter subsided, Chappell said, “You never know what’s going to stick with them.”
Besides exposing children to STEM concepts at a young age, Chappell wants to encourage girls to continue to embrace and excel in science. She said girls tend to be good in science at the elementary age, only to go to middle school and discover “it’s not cool to be smart.” Chappell has posters in her room of women who’ve made successful careers in science.
Important concepts
Chappell, in responding to a question from a Kiwanis member about the importance of STEM education, said children are learning concepts that, of course, will help them obtain jobs in the future. STEM activities are also a good way to get children to think a problem through in trying to figure it out, while also getting them to do so as part of a group.
“They work as a team, which is a big thing with businesses,” Chappell said, adding, “It’s a skill of learning to be cooperative with one another, thinking through the problem, creating a plan and actually fulfilling that plan by doing it and then analyzing it. Do we need to go back and
change anything? Did it work right the first time?”
Chappell said her students are learning that it’s OK if something doesn’t work right the first time. It’s how we learn and get better at something.
“I tell my students that failure is the number-one thing you need to look at,” Chappell said. “It tells you where your weak spot is. You’re not always going to be correct.
“Failure builds. We build off that failure to figure out, ‘How can I fix this so I can get to this point?’”
Great support
Chappell said two summers ago, as a new STEM teacher, she put a wish list on Facebook to help provide her classroom with materials. People responded.
“I was blessed by a lot of people in our community who helped put stuff in our STEM room,” Chappell said.
Chappell thanked Kiwanis club members Cheryl Canova and Pat Mundorff for their help in her obtaining grant money. The North East Florida Educational Consortium also came through in a big way.
“They have supported our program,” Chappell said of NEFEC. “In fact, they have bought me different robots. The first year, I had $6,000 worth of robots delivered to us. The kids absolutely adore them. This last year, they bought me another $3,000 worth of robots that handle kindergarten and first grade.”
The second- through fifth-grade students work with Ozobots, which at 1 inch in diameter, are billed as the smallest educational robots in the world.
Chappell said kindergarteners and first-graders don’t need to work with robots or anything that’s that small. Instead, they work with Bee-Bots, which are approximately 5 inches long, 4 inches wide and 3 inches high.
“Bee-Bots are these great, big bees,” Chappell said. “They’re adorable.”
What better way to get young children buzzing with excitement about science, technology, engineering and mathematics? And, yes, the children are excited. Chappell has seen how much the kindergarteners who took her classes in 2021-22 have changed as first-graders this school year.
“They’re not as standoffish in trying something,” Chappell said. “They’re willing to jump in. In fact, I have to tell them, ‘Put your hands in your lap until I get done with directions.’ As soon as I say, ‘Go,’ they’re there. There’s no hesitation. They try.”
