Dryden STEM project finishes 2nd in national contest
Students and staff at Dryden Elementary in Arlington Heights are celebrating a national recognition and the $5,000 prize that came with it last week.
Fifth-grade art teacher Tricia Fuglestad and her students came in second place in the annual McGraw-Hill STEM Innovative Educator awards.
Fuglestad’s classes used iPads to draw an animated video, integrating art into the STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — curriculum. It took more than 100 students over a month to hand draw 335 images with stylus pens and iPads for the video.
Teachers entered the contest by submitting a short video that demonstrates innovative teaching methods in their STEM classrooms. Thirty finalists were selected by teachers and a panel of guest judges, and were uploaded to the STEMIE site to encourage teachers to review, share and vote on other lessons. In all, more than 22,000 votes were cast for projects from all across the country, according to McGraw-Hill.
Fuglestad also was named a Teacher of Distinction from the Golden Apple Foundation in 2012 and named 2011 Illinois Art Teacher of the Year, but she said this contest was about the students and how much they enjoyed a new type of art.
She said that if Dryden won they would spend the money on more iPads for students.