BRIDGEPORT — Carmen Hernandez knows the importance of detail.
The 11-year-old sixth-grader at Discovery Interdistrict Magnet School was working with classmate Elon Harvey to build a Lego sail car inside teacher Mary Servino’s robotics classroom when Gov. Ned Lamont entered Friday afternoon, trailed by a gaggle of officials and press.
Undaunted by the interruption, the pair stuck to their task as they explained their work to the governor.
“We’re looking for pieces, making sure they go in the correct places,” Carmen said. “With one mess-up it could ruin everything.”
Lamont marveled at the precision of the pair’s work.
“I’d need a magnifying glass to do what you’re doing,” he said. “You guys have got to be good.”
Lamont toured the school with state education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker, Bridgeport Schools Superintendent Michael Testani, Mayor Joe Ganim, state Sen. Marilyn Moore and others.
The visit coincided with Computer Science Education Week.
The school, which focuses on science, opened in 2011 next to the Discovery Museum on Park Avenue.
There are currently 489 students from eight towns — Bridgeport, Easton, Fairfield, Milford, Stratford, Shelton, Monroe, and Trumbull.
“STEM is our biggest thing,” Principal Sangeeta Bella told the governor. “It’s interwoven into everything that we do.”
Servino’s classroom hosts the robotics club in the afternoon for fifth- and sixth-graders interested in the subject. Seventh- and eighth-graders come by in the mornings.
Students were busy building everything from sail cars to propeller-driven vehicles to miniature trebuchets — a type of catapult — using the Lego kits.
A few doors down, the governor stopped by Diane Goodrich’s fourth-grade classroom, where 9-year-old Mel Sacramento showed him a keychain she was designing on a laptop that would eventually be fabricated using a 3D printer.
Later, kindergartners showed the governor how they were learning to use a Bee-Bot programmable robot in “their first steps in learning how to code,” said teacher Mary Ellen Sharnick, who won an award to attend a conference five years ago through the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
The examples are encouraging at a time when schools throughout the city and state are facing an “unprecedented” shortage of certified staff.
Servino said the shortages are being felt everywhere, but especially among STEM teachers.
“Someone was just asking me ‘How do you know how to do this?’” she said. “It just takes teachers willing to go home and learn it.”
Another positive: the school partners with nearby Sacred Heart University’s Noyce Scholarship Program for college students interested in pursuing teaching careers in science, technology, education, and math.
Servino said she’s currently working with three SHU juniors who are part of the program.
“They’re going to be teachers that know how to teach STEM, which is a whole other ballgame, so I’m pretty excited,” she said.
Walking the halls of the school, the governor and Ganim noted how education has changed from their childhood from an emphasis on rote learning to applied skills, even for the youngest students.
“This is the foundation,” Bella said. “This is when they start. Integration is key.”
The governor’s tour ended with an interview for the school newspaper with Casey Utzler, a 12-year-old seventh-grader, who asked him if he would support more funding for technology education in the state’s schools.
Lamont answered in the affirmative.
“I want the very best people right in Connecticut. I want you to stay in the Connecticut and get a great job,” he said. “This is the language of the 21st century. If you can’t code you can’t compete, and you’re going to be able to code and compete right here.”
Outside, Lamont said he was impressed with the students’ enthusiasm and praised the state’s magnet school program.
But he stopped short of suggesting a more drastic overhaul or regional approach is needed to equalize education opportunities in a state with a persistent racial and need-based achievement gap that, data suggests, was made worse by the pandemic.
“I don’t know about that,” the governor said. “Obviously the state plays a big role in magnet schools like Discovery, and I think you see it working, and I love the fact that you see kids from different communities here and what that means.”
At the same time, he said, “We have some great local schools for those that love local schools.”
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