When COVID-19 abruptly shut down Prairie-Hills Junior High School in Chicago’s Markham neighborhood, teacher Sheena Birgans-Wright was determined to see that the crisis would not derail the robust STEM program she’d built from scratch during the past decade.
Equally adamant were her students’ parents, who had been excited that a STEM program was thriving in a predominantly Black and low-income school district.
Despite their best intentions, the pandemic ended up severely hampering the hands-on and collaborative aspects of the school’s STEM program.
“Even when our students were able to come back to school in person, the social distancing guidelines prevented us from doing most of our activities, because the students needed to be 6 feet apart,” Birgans-Wright said. “For our students who were remote learning, they needed other people to help them problem solve…
