Civil Municipal - June 2024

a STEM special class at our elementary with art, music, and PE on the rotation,” notes Hinshaw. “And we now have a full-time STEM teacher on the elementary level. Every one of our general-ed elementary students has a STEM course nearly every year of elementary school at Yorktown. That is a commitment that has been made. And all of our general-ed teachers have been trained to implement STEM project-based learning in teaching the core curriculum in their regular classrooms.” Yorktown also utilizes curricula created by Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a developer of an innovative project-based learning program that incorporates science, technology, engineering, and math. PLTW empowers students to develop and apply in- demand, transportable skills by exploring real-world challenges excitingly and engagingly while it also prepares and supports teachers as they strive to make every child in every grade STEM successful. “At our Middle School, we have three different PLTW opportunities for students,” Sturgeon shares. “In high school, we focus on engineering as one of the pathways of PLTW.” YORKTOWN HIGH SCHOOL At Yorktown High School, the academic opportunities are varied, as well as rigorous. “Yorktown has a very strong tradition with advanced placement,” Hinshaw says. “And Indiana has a real focus on dual enrollment. So, we work very hard to create a hybrid model that blends the advanced placement program with a dual-credit model. We are a dual- credit partner with Indiana University, which is a four-year, premier, world-class university. It allows students to complete 30 hours of college credit to be applied to any state university in the State of Indiana – the big four universities and all the other regional campuses that are state-funded take those credits. So, we have a really good process in place there.We don’t offer an Associate’s degree per se, but this is almost the equivalent of an Associate’s degree in terms of the number of credit hours.” E-LEARNING HITS ITS STRIDE When COVIDhit a fewyears back,many school districts across the country were not set up to implement e-learning options for homebound students and 222 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 05, ISSUE 06 BUSINESS VIEW AGAZINE VOLUME 11, ISSUE 01