Taylor Ray: I remember as a math teacher sitting in one of the meetings and they were talking about their scale drawings that they were working on for, I believe it was a fire station that they were designing. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, we do scale in my classroom." These are things that they're actually doing at a middle school level that are then being used in this industry and in this workforce. And so I hope that our middle schoolers know that they can make a difference and that their voices are small, but they're powerful and they can design and build and they can do a lot of great things.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Welcome to the IDRA IDRA Classnotes Podcast, where we will explore innovative approaches that connect students to meaningful learning and real-world opportunities. I'm Dr. Stephanie Garcia with IDRA, and I'm especially excited about our conversation because we are highlighting one of the most inspiring projects to emerge from an educator externship program. IDRA's Educator Externship Program places teachers with local businesses and organizations during the summer. So this really gives them the opportunity to learn directly from industry professionals and then teachers bring back those experiences to the classrooms, helping their students connect academic concepts to rural careers, real challenges, and real opportunities in their communities. So today, we're joined by two incredible educators who transformed one summer externship experience into a powerful, project-based learning experience for their students. Last summer, one of our guests spent 30 hours working alongside professionals at a local architecture firm. What followed was a collaborative effort between these teachers that challenged students to reimagine abandoned spaces in San Antonio and design solutions that could strengthen their communities. The project culminated in student presentations, community showcases, and even student pitches before the school district board members. It truly is one of the most impactful examples of an externship to classroom learning that we've seen so far. So I want to welcome Taylor and Angel. Thank you so much for joining us today during the summer. Could you go ahead and introduce yourselves quickly?
Taylor Ray: Sure. Hi, my name is Taylor Ray. I am a seventh grade math teacher at the JSTEM Academy.
Angel Watkins: Hi, my name is Angel Watkins. I am the seventh grade principals of applied engineering teacher at JSTEM Academy, and I'm the current DOW STEM Ambassador for Alamo STEM Ecosystem
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Awesome. So I just want to get started. And Taylor talked to us last summer, you spent 30 hours with the local architecture firm through our externship program. Can you tell us about that experience?
Taylor Ray: Yeah, I was paired with LPA Design Studios, which is an architecture firm based in San Antonio. Essentially, I was almost like an employee for the week. I would show up in the morning, be there till about 4:00 or 4:30, I think, in the afternoon. I would sit in on meetings. I would meet one-on-one with different aspects of the design firm. They do all sorts of design front to end, and they specialize in building schools. And so a couple of projects we saw were some local schools in the area that they were working on. But it was a very, very enlightening and exciting experience for me. I enjoyed kind of just being a fly on the wall during regular business hours. That was super exciting. And then also the one-on-one sit-downs with different architect or construction or interior design.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Yeah. What surprised you most about the work that they were doing?
Taylor Ray: It was very cool to see-- we saw some projects they were working on for a local school district, not our school district, but a different one that I know people that work there. And so I'm like, "Oh, hey. I saw the plans for your new classroom. It was so cool." And then being just in San Antonio, San Antonio, a lot of times is a small town-- big town, small town, but driving by and seeing the plans and the schools that I saw on paper were digitally actually being built from the ground up was really cool.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: That's awesome. At what point during that externship experience did you have that kind of aha moment and start thinking, hey, my students really need to experience this, fill in the blank, whatever you wanted to take back, at what point did that happen for you?
Taylor Ray: Well, Angel and I both work at the same STEM school that focuses in project-based learning. And so we teach through the methodology of letting our students solve real-world problems. And so I'm always kind of on the lookout for what's a problem within our community that the kids can solve. I found that even seventh graders, they get a bad rep for being middle schoolers, but at their heart, they want to make a difference, and they want to make change in their community. And so I can find a community-based problem for them to solve. That's where I try to guide them. And as a STEM school, a lot of times we talk about that we're preparing these kids for jobs that don't exist yet in the world of technology and manufacturing and AI and all these things that you see as kind of a STEM related. But there's so much more out there. And I remember as a math teacher sitting in one of the meetings and they were talking about their scale drawings that they were working on for, I believe it was a fire station that they were designing. And I thought, oh my gosh, we do scale in my classroom. And they do scale drawings in Angel's classroom. And these are things that they're actually doing at a middle school level that are then being used in this industry and in this workforce.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: That's awesome. That's incredible to be able to see that connection and to see that y'all are really preparing them. We'll get into that in a second, too, of all the things the students accomplished through their PBL. Angel, I'm curious to hear from you when Taylor brought this idea back to the campus what was your reaction about this PBL idea?
Angel Watkins: Well, she basically brought the abandoned spaces idea, and then she went on maternity leave. So it was up to the team to kind of like take that PBL and run for our spring PBL. But I always like the architecture ones because being the engineering teacher, the students love to build, but then architecture, then I can reach all the students because it just brings in the different skills, not just building or an idea of like a Shark Tank idea that we've done in the past, but it's more of like a community based. And that's when we have the idea of actually bringing in the architects to come talk to them, which took a while. But they had listened to me for the whole semester about talking about architecture and the engineering design process. And this is how we do a skilled drawing. This is how we do a computer model. And so for me, getting them to do that as the big picture at the end-of-the-year project was really exciting.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
[inaudible], should we share the project that the kids worked on? I don't think we've actually addressed that yet.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Please, let's do that. Let's talk about the project itself. And let's go ahead. If you want to share a screen, Angel, and walk us through, what were those major project components that students had to create?
Taylor Ray: So we gave the students the task of we have a school in our district that was closed down two years ago now and is currently sitting empty. And what can we use this space for? Because it's an empty building. How can we repurpose this? And so we have here one of our group-- this actually was done by students. We pulled one of their projects to show today. So we said, we have an abandoned school; what are you going to do with it? And then they were tasked with coming up with their own problem statement. So this group, Coronado Village Elementary, is abandoned and not being used. Justin doesn't know what to do with the school, and they possibly will not just put another school there. We have to choose a different purpose for this bustling school.
Angel Watkins: And then here's the solution statement.
Taylor Ray: Yeah. So this is the solution this group came up with. Our idea for our solution were mostly educational, like making a library, a museum, or even combining the two. In the end, we decided on making something fun and entertaining for everyone, but also educational, which is an escape room. Each room teaches a different thing and tests the student's knowledge on each escape room as they escape.
How fun?
Was each of the empty schools. So there's empty classrooms. And each classroom is going to be themed, like a history one, a science one, a math one.
Angel Watkins: And so here's a few of their deliverables, which is something that I have to turn in before the project can be done. So right here is their physical model that they built in our Maker Lab that has a solid base that we can reuse in the future. But they had to build the little rooms. You can see that they have a jungle theme room. And again, they're all different escape rooms. Here's a planetary theme room. This one was forest. And this one was-- it was ocean themed. On this side, you can't see it, but they had a little boat. But that was this one. Right here is their scale drawing and they have a key. So they had to do their drawing to the 1/4 scale using an architectural ruler. It makes it a little bit easier because it does the math for them. And then they had to do a digital drawing. And then I use the floorplanner.com when we use that. They had to recreate the whole entire school, which is these spaces right here, but then they only design the spaces that they were actually going to be using in their idea.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Oh, wow. No, it's fantastic. I was going to say, all of that looks and sounds just like what professional architects do on a daily basis.
Taylor Ray: Angel mentioned they use the architecture scale. And as I was at the design firm, I saw one on one of the architects' desks and I literally gasped and I was like, "Can I take a picture of this, please?" And I said, "We're going to be using it."
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: That's so great. Well, yeah, because that's that career connected learning experience that we're talking about, that the externship can really render for you and see like, "Oh, what tools are they using? How are they collaborating together in that space?" And I think students benefit just so much when it's not just another classroom assignment, but they have something that's so meaningful like this, where you're truly walking them through the knowledge and the skills. You're hitting those targets, but it's also allowing so much creativity, collaboration, problem solving. So I just love the entire project that you all came up with. And thank you so much for sharing that example. What a memorable experience for you all and for the students. And speaking of, thinking about one experience that I saw, thank you for the invitation. One of my favorite moments, too, was being invited to your school and seeing those architects, like you mentioned, Angel, that came to your library and spoke to the students. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and that interaction between students and the architects?
Angel Watkins: So when the architects came in, it was the very beginning of our PBL Week, which stands for Project Based Learning. And so we literally gave them the idea of the whole project, and then we took them to the library, and that's where they got the presentation from the architects. So they hadn't even got to talk to each other about what they wanted to do. The architects came in and they showed them how they design. They showed them school buildings. They showed them the fire stations that they've designed before. And they're showing them digital and physical drawings. And then they ask them a lot of questions at the end. But what really surprised me is everything that they were talking about in the engineering design process as well is everything that I teach them in class. So it literally validated everything I've been teaching them for the last six months. And I was like--
Angel Watkins: I was sitting next to her and she kept elbowing me in the ribs and being like, "I taught that. I taught that too."
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: "We do this. We're doing everything right. Look at us." I love it. I love it. It is extremely validating. It really is. It was so sweet to see the architects, it sounded like. And tell me more. How did the architects respond to the students' ideas and questions? What was that like?
Taylor Ray: They did such a good job. The architects were phenomenal. At this point of the week, our students hadn't come up with any ideas yet. We literally were in our classroom like, "All right, so this week, your project is going to be redesigning this school. Now let's go to the library." So they had no time to kind of talk to their team. So a lot of their questions are based on what a 13-year-old would think an abandoned building is, rundown, the ceiling's about to collapse. They were very concerned about the infrastructure--
Safety, yeah.
--of this building. And then we had to kind of stop and be like, "Guys, the building is okay. It's just empty." And so a lot of their questions started that way, very service level. And then as we started talking, they started kind of warming up, the students did. They were asking a little bit more in-depth questions of, "Well, if our client wants this, and if whoever's using the building, do we have to think about the community and the surrounding areas?" And so they were starting to get more detailed as the questions went on.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Oh, that's wonderful. It's so meaningful that you started the project often that way to be able to consult with content experts in the field, industry experts in the field, for students to get that kind of exposure and really put on that hat as an architecture. They just met some. It's personal. It's real to them. It's not something that's abstract. So I love that you, yeah, started that way.
Taylor Ray: Many of our students attended this elementary school when they were younger. And so for them to be like, "Oh, okay, I went to that school. That's my old kindergarten classroom. That's my old cafeteria." We really try at JSTEM and the seventh-grade team to design with empathy is a big component of our projects that we push on the kids. Knowing that the space was sentimental to quite a few of them was something that we also addressed.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Yeah. They handled it with so much care, right? It's in their backyard. It's in their neighborhood. It's very personal to them. And I love that you didn't just stop there. You took the project even further. You guys organized a community showcase where community members came to review student work and give feedback and vote on the strongest designs. Can you tell us more about that event?
Taylor Ray: Sure. This is an after-school event, the conclusion of our week. We invite parents and community members and anybody who had any involvement in the project to come and see what these kids have been working on all week. All their hard work, their elective teachers come because they didn't go to electives all week. And so they'll come and see, what have you been working on? And the kids get really good at public speaking in our program, groups of about four to five students, and they'll have their project on the table. And they have a little rehearsed script, an elevator pitch, as parents and community members kind of roam around looking at different projects, and they'll explain it, and they'll speak to these adults and be able to very articulately explain their process and what their final product was.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: That's great. All students get to experience that. To be able to give students the opportunity to share their ideas with other people that they don't know and to get feedback, I'm sure that was a really meaningful experience. How did they handle presenting to district leaders?
Taylor Ray: Yeah, they were nervous and excited. We invited a couple of district leaders to come. We picked some of our top designs that were like, "Okay, this could actually happen." And we invited district leaders, and they presented in the morning, and they were all dressed up, and they combed their hair a little extra that day and wore their nice clothes.
Angel Watkins: And they got to skip class, so they were excited about that. We also presented to-- the same day they presented to the district leaders, it was parts of the school board members. It was the head of facilities. And our school is in Universal Cities just outside San Antonio. And so they presented to one of the people on the Universal City City Council. Because most of their ideas were community-based, and so they wanted to bring in the city to see what their input was for making that building and that space not abandoned anymore.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: You all worked so hard to bring everything together for your students. And as we close up, I'm thinking about that student impact. Looking back at this entire PBL journey, starting from the externship experience, to the board presentation, what impact do you believe this project had on students?
Taylor Ray: I mentioned before that we push a lot of design with empathy. And so I hope that our middle schoolers know that they can make a difference and that they can make change within their community, even though they're only 12, 13 years old. And that their voices are small, but they're powerful, and they can design, and they can build, and they can do a lot of great things.
Angel Watkins: In my class specifically, I'm also trying to teach that a project isn't a project, and an ask from a teacher isn't just an ask from a teacher, it's a promotion. It's a promotion to be a contributing member to society. And when the kids actually see like, "Hey, I can do something with this space that I knew since I was a little kid and played on the playground, and now it can be something greater," it really brings them in.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: That's amazing. That's amazing. And I really think it probably changed their ways that they're thinking about their future. They've definitely built their confidence. You can hear about that. And you can hear about, too, "Maybe I want to be an architect one day," or, "Maybe I want to be involved in my community in this way or that way." And I just love that so much. You guys made a profound impact on your students. And in closing, what impact did this experience have on you as educators?
Taylor Ray: As a teacher, I spend all my days in the school. And so it's hard to be out in the community and be like, "Okay, what are the needs of different industries, and what are they looking for? What do I [as a?] teacher need to bring to my classroom," and say, "Hey, guys, if you want to be an architect, if you want to be an interior designer, if you want to work in construction, these are the things you need to know and be able to do?" And I think that being able to spend the week at LPA, and just kind of-- was like, "Okay, so this is what it's actually like to work at an architectural firm." And I did. I have a girl who I know wants to be an architect, and she sat at my desk towards the end of the school year, and I was like, "Look at all these things from last summer." And I opened up a scale drawing that they had gifted me, and the notes that I had taken, the pictures, and I was like, "This is an actual place in San Antonio you could go work at, potentially." And she just thought it was so cool. And just being able to bring the knowledge that I got from the externship into my classroom is something so invaluable that I think that more teachers need to experience.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: That's incredible. And Angel, I'm excited for you, because you start your externship tomorrow. So I cannot wait. Maybe we'll do a part two next summer and we'll see what comes out of that one.
I'm sure something will.
I already have ideas.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Oh, good. Good, good, good. Before we close, I just want to kind of do a fast recap. That was incredible. There's so much that we got to hear today. Teachers spent 30 hours learning from industry professionals in a local architecture firm. That experience sparked an idea. Two educators worked together to transform that idea into a meaningful project. Students became architects, designers, problem solvers, communicators, and civic leaders. Industry professionals volunteered their time, community members participated. This is exactly what career-connected learning looks like. But unfortunately, programs like IDRA's Educator Externship Program are at risk because, with recent federal funding losses, this has created a significant challenge for us to sustain and expand these opportunities for educators and teachers. So without funding, fewer teachers would have access to paid externship experiences, and then fewer students will have these types of opportunities to engage with professionals and solve authentic community problems. So if anybody is out there that would be able to invest to help keep this type of externship program going, to connect classrooms to careers, strengthen educators, learning, and create transformative experiences for students, we invite you to help us continue to do this work. To learn more about supporting IDRA's externship program, visit IDRA.org or contact our team directly. And thank you again, Taylor and Angel, for sharing your story and spending some time out of your summer with us. We really appreciate all the incredible work you're doing with your students. And thank you, listeners, for joining us.
Dr. Stephanie Garcia: Thank you for listening to IDRA Classnotes. For more information on IDRA and other class notes topics, go to www.IDRA.org. You can also send us your thoughts by email to podcast@IDRA.org.
Students light up when teachers are able to integrate real-world application. IDRA’s work in STEM education helps students and teachers translate real-world application to local STEM careers. IDRA’s summer externship program connects educators with local employers to bring real-world STEM learning into the classroom.
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