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CARRYING A TORCH FOR CODING Schofield said that all of the work is designed for one singular purpose: to give students opportunities that will better prepare them for their futures and allow them to make meaningful contributions to their communities. Chartrand said STEM2 Hub owes most of its success to Schofield, a former teacher who has long carried a torch for coding, computers and technology. Before her work in Clay County, she had worked in human resources with a defense contractor. It was during her years with the defense contractor, and long before computers had become common workplace tools, that she began playing around with coding tomake her work more efficient. Her bosses were opposed to relying on computers for anything other than typing. “They didn’t trust their formulas.” Schofield told the story of the day she came up with a big idea to streamline her work long before Excel was ever invented. “I thought, ‘what if we loaded all of the monthly billing and the customer names and everything into this spreadsheet and I wrote a program that would take the invoice template and put it in like one by one. I wrote a macro that basically prepopulated the invoice and then printed it on a dot matrix printer.” NEWTERRITORY Schofield’s early experiments with coding were not the only time that she ventured into new territory. At a time when others were in the middle of their careers, she began taking college courses to pursue her long dream of teaching. A bachelor’s degree fromUniversity of North Florida in elementary education then led her to a master’s and then to a classroomposition in Clay County in 2006. After four years in the classroom, she was moved to the district office where she began to lay a foundation for STEM programs in Clay County as she oversaw the STEM needs of over 36,000 students in 41 schools. Schofield is the public face of STEM2 Hub, and along with a handful of other key leaders, has built the Northeast Florida-based ecosystem into a model ecosystem in the international STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice. Schofield has become a trusted ecosystem leader and regularly mentors many other ecosystem heads on everything from strategies for gaining public attention to ideas for how to sway a state legislature.
Schofield has the entire history of STEM2 Hub on instant recall and can relate specific dates and events that were critical milestones in its evolution.
GROWING AS A LEADER She became a LEAD STEM fellow in 2017, joining the inaugural class of STEM leaders to enter the formal training program. “I felt like I was at a place in my life and in my career where I needed to expand my viewpoint and learn how to have a greater impact,” Schofield wrote about her decision to join the program. “My role was changing in my ecosystem, and I knew that I needed to learn a new set of leadership skills if I were going to grow as a leader.” She explained that the national ecosystemwork was inspiring. “I wanted to play a bigger role in the national work, learn more strategies about impacting policy, and have a bolder vision to set impossible goals for my region, and then work to achieve those goals,” she wrote. Schofield’s LEAD STEM capstone project, “Exploring in the STEP (Solve/Tinker/Explore/Play) Lab was inspired by her fear that schools were not moving quickly enough to reach every learner who needed deep and meaningful exposure to computer science, coding, robotics and other STEM activities. As part of her project, she spent considerable time talking to and learning from many ecosystem partners and discovered that there was a serious need for comprehensive teacher preparation and professional development for 21st century skills. DEVELOPING A PLACE With several partners, including the College of Education at the University of North Florida and numerous visioning meetings, the decision was made that a “place” needed to be developed. That place would be where teachers could come to learn new skills, where educational leaders could learn to teach in a new learning environment, and where preservice teachers could learn the skills needed to enter their careers with a thorough understanding of problem- solving and critical thinking that robotic technologies and making environments could foster.
ALL OF THEWORK IS DESIGNED FOR ONE SINGULAR PURPOSE: TO GIVE STUDENTS OPPORTUNITIES THATWILL BETTER PREPARE THEM FOR THEIR FUTURES AND ALLOWTHEM TO MAKE MEANINGFUL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEIR COMMUNITIES.
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