Photo by Sydney Cromwell.
Eighth-grade students in Ben Thompson’s Project Lead the Way class work on constructing benches for Chelsea Middle School’s courtyards March 7.
Students who ask questions in Ben Thompson’s classroom are likely to be told to figure it out, instead of being given an answer.
It’s part of Project Lead the Way, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) based program that emphasizes letting students drive learning.
“I’ll introduce them to projects and practice as we go, but really the projects are all them,” he said.
Thompson’s classroom and workshop at Chelsea Middle School is the home of a number of different classes: app design, automation and robotics, “green” architecture and a course called “Medical Detectives,” to name a few. He teaches six-week classes for sixth-graders, semester-long classes for seventh-graders and a yearlong class for eighth-grade students.
Next year, Thompson said he’s adding a building and design class for a small group of students.
Throughout the day, Thompson might guide students in programming a basic robot, modeling a home with drafting software or designing a safety strobe light. In the green architecture class, Thompson discusses human impact on the environment and ways to design or operate a home in more environmentally friendly ways.
One of the most recent projects was a series of convertible benches, which can be turned into tables, for the school’s courtyard.
The benches were constructed by his eighth grade green architecture class, with grant funding from the Shelby County Schools Education Foundation. Eighth-grader Brandon Ridderhoff, who has taken Thompson’s green architecture class, applied for the $1,000 “Imagine the Journey” student grant, which he received in January.
Thompson started his career as a Latin teacher at Hoover High School, but when his position was cut he got a science certification and changed his educational focus. He has been at Chelsea Middle for five years.
“I really enjoy getting to take over the idea of STEM,” he said.
He said the Project Lead the Way learning style takes some adjustments for his students, who are often used to asking a question andbeing given an answer. Instead, he focuses on teaching them skills to find the answer or create the solution to the problem.
“If I keep telling them the answer, they never have to think about it,” Thompson said. “… They hate that, when I tell them, ‘You need to figure that out.’”
Once they have those skills, Thompson said he’s mainly “directing traffic” to make sure students have what they need to complete their projects, even if they come up with different approaches. For instance, the goal in his automation and robotics class might be to make a two-story elevator, but the kids come up with how the elevator functions.
“They have to figure out all of that all on their own. So, it’s interesting to see how kids will attack it completely differently,” he said.
While working on the benches in March, Thompson assisted with problems and helped students figure out their next task, but most of the work of assembling the benches was on the students’ shoulders as they wielded drills and lumber rather than pencils and paper. Some come into his class with no idea how to even handle basic tools.
Thompson said he likes that Project Lead the Way introduces STEM and workshop concepts before students get to high school, in hopes that they’ll continue with those courses as they grow up and even consider STEM careers.
“I tell the kids at the beginning of the year: ‘This is going to be a class where it’s OK to be wrong, OK to fail, it’s OK to get frustrated. The only thing you can’t do is quit,’” Thompson said.
