Students at Tayac Elementary School experimented with Bumblebee robots, magnetic building blocks and 3D printers inside their brand-new STEM center that opened Tuesday morning.
Dozens of kids packed the STEM center at the Fort Washington, Maryland, school after its ribbon cutting, playing with electrical circuit toys and robots that follow a marker-drawn track that reacts to different colors.
“This is probably my favorite part of the whole school day,” said Aliya Newman, an excited student at Tayac.
“I like the ‘littleBits,’ so it’s like little magnetic pieces and it teaches positive and negative charge. If you put them together the wrong way, they will not snap together,” Newman added.
The STEM center is one of dozens sponsored by the Exelon Corporation and the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation.
“They’re learning circuitry. They’re learning coding. They’re learning how to program. They’re learning some of the real basics of robotics,” said Steve Salem, president and CEO of the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation. “Ideally, there’s a continuation where they go to middle school, they go into a more advanced level of STEM learning.”
Since 2019, the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation has installed STEM centers in over 560 schools nationwide.
“We saw a gap growing even wider between kids from certain neighborhoods to the introduction and interest in science, technology, engineering and math. So this was our way to help bridge that gap,” Calvin Butler, president and CEO of Exelon, told WTOP.
“We put tools in front of our children that will help them be ahead in both math and science, technology and engineering. Our students are happy to be here today. We’re all happy to be here,” said Tayac Principal LaTonya Wright.