Teacher Appreciation Week – May 3-7 – is a good time to recognize the role teachers play in helping their students learn and grow, something that became even more prevalent during the pandemic.
Teachers like Sheri Niedermyer at St. Ambrose School in Brunswick regularly search for resources to meet the needs of their students and to reach out creatively to help them.
Last summer, Niedermyer learned about Mike Neumire, an instructional technology specialist at the Department for Exceptional Children at Monroe 2-Orleans BOCES in New York, a school district with medically fragile students. He sought help on the internet and Niedermyer, a STEAM (science, technology, art and math) teacher at St. Ambrose, saw his plea. She thought it could provide a valuable, innovative teaching opportunity for her fifth-graders that would align with the St. Ambrose STEAM mission statement of solving real-world problems. It also would solve a problem and would help others. However, at the time, Niedermyer didn’t realize the impact her decision would have on everyone involved.
Niedermyer told Neumire, she would teach her students to code games to meet his request and needs for their intervention team. So, the St. Ambrose students were tasked with building 25 Scratch learning app games for the medically fragile students New York, who are part of an overlooked community in the gaming world.
The fifth-graders were the same age as the students needing the games that would help them to learn basic literacy and math skills. St. Ambrose faculty members collaborated to help the students understand their audience, and intervention specialists from BOCES helped the St. Ambrose teachers determine the skills they wanted to include in the games.
Under Niedermyer’s direction, they learned more about developing games using Scratch and took the recommendations of BOCES intervention specialists to develop specific games to meet the needs of their medically fragile peers.
BOCES in New York created a website for their intervention team and students to house these learning games designed by the St. Ambrose students for the developmentally challenged 11-year-olds. The games help them with letter sounds, basic math, social studies and literacy skills.
Niedermyer said it was an affirming experience for all and will be an added Next Generation tool in the BOCES teachers’ toolkit. Click here for more on the project.
“BOCES is home for students who have needs greater than typical environments can provide them. We often find that educational resources are aimed at students in those typical environments. We are so grateful to have connected with St. Ambrose School and their awesome student coders who were able to consider our needs and interests, and make some great projects designed for us,” Neumire said.
The St. Ambrose fifth-graders used Google Meet to connect with the intervention team in New York. They presented the games they designed and got feedback on how well they worked. In addition, they connected with a few of the students. The experience impacted both the intervention team and the students, who were able to fill a need for another school, learn through the process, bring smiles to everyone’s faces and lend their expertise to design games that would be “cool” for other 11-year-olds to use, Niedermyer said.
”We experiment with computer code at a young age here, starting in kindergarten,” she said. “This project was about giving back. Our fifth-graders had to think not about what they liked, but about what the students at Monroe 2-Orleans BOCES in the Rochester area of New York would like. They did a great job and were very proud to witness their hard work helping others.”
St. Ambrose Principal Lisa Cinadr said the school always seeks best practices and future-ready teaching and learning opportunities to help their students grow. “Mrs. Niedermyer embraces and employs our mission with every student she teaches,” Cinadr added
She said Niedermyer also seeks collaborators in professional learning communities to learn herself so she can respond and form her students in connected, creative, critically thinking and problem-solving ways. The experience with the students in New York provided a STEAM learning opportunity. It also created a relationship and an ongoing way to collaborate with a school with a diverse student population, Cinadr said. This not only teaches coding concepts, but a deeper learning and understanding for others with disabilities, different backgrounds and wider perspective and greater understanding of others, Cinadr added. They are looking at ways to continuing to work together and have started discussing future projects, she said.
“The collaboration with St. Ambrose School was a great experience for my students. The students did a wonderful job creating activities that were presented at an academic level that met my students’ needs, yet were age-appropriate and of high interest to my students. We had so much fun exploring all of the different activities,” said Kate McElhaney, a medically fragile teacher from the BOCES team.