Full STEAM Ahead
A Rockhurst High School Blog
How far back shall I go? I grew up in South Kansas City as a Red Bridge Road Runner, finished middle school as a St. Thomas More Cyclone, high school as a Rockhurst Hawklet class of 2000. Millenial in that sense. All the while, I spent 13 summers growing up along Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore in Michigan. Three of those summers I taught river and lake canoeing, outdoor survival skills, and led youth camping trips into Northern Michigan and Ontario. While finishing college I was a volunteer 7th and 8th grade math teacher at Hartman Elementary school. I now run summer programming camps at Rockhurst High School and will pick up where John McEniry left off with teaching computer science to the high school students.
I recently completed my master’s degree in computer science from the University of Missouri here in Kansas City. While I focused on software engineering and big data processing, I also held extreme interest in machine learning and hope to bring some of it to the students at Rockhurst High School.
In any task academic or professional, submit all work, do best effort, meet all deadlines. Step up and be a leader. Identify the needs of others. Provide the tools they need to succeed. Keep an open channel and work to accomodate others so they may deliver based on their strengths.
Outdoors! But hey, computers can’t really “weather the elements” so let’s go with teams of four: standing Steelcase desks with 1:1 whiteboard cards, no chairs, 1:1 17” Macbook Pros, 1:4 4K Televisions. A server rack in the corner, student administered. Remove the ceiling tiles and scaffolding. White boards on spare walls. Enough electricity to power students in any formation. Oh - and Segways. One per teacher.
As a fisherman of intellect, I want to cast a wide net in this city. First, I want to reel in all of the student interest at Rockhurst High School. Then, I want to broadem our reach to the community. I envision students filling internships and satisfying community service obligations by offering their stem skills to organizations in need. I hope to bring computer science to grade schools so that our future students are prepared to go further. I believe this is a city with a high tech ceiling and in general has a lot of potential to bridge the technical skills gap in schools, city-wide. To do so requires making a lot of connections, having a lot of conversations. The interest is certainly there.
J.W. Clark
STEAM Coordinator